Wear Your Clothes is a monthly column that expands upon and celebrates the sentimentality that comes with a long-worn and Very Good Garment™.

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There’s an impostor syndrome that looms over anyone adjacent to the world of fashion who cannot actually design. It’s a feeling akin to shame; How am I supposed to be able to competently interview designers—or even simply get dressed—if I have no idea how the fuck to make clothing?

The thing that has given me some solace in this anxiety is the concept of wearing clothes themselves as a process. The production of clothing is not a binary: garment doesn’t exist, garment exists. Rather, each instance of wearing is part of an ever-evolving voyage towards concocting an item that is singularly mine. The loafers I bought in Amsterdam five years ago were not the loafers I am wearing today.

It’s a dumbed-down version of the ship of Theseus, the unanswerable paradox. If you continuously replace the planks of a ship until none of the original pieces remain, is it fundamentally the same ship? Further, if you strip away the planks without replacing them, is it the same ship in a different state—or a different entity entirely? I admit, this analogy’s relevancy sits somewhere between weak and medium.

So despite having an increasingly untenable closet (with regard to just pure quantity), I find myself relying on a few of the same pieces day after day. Their deterioration is directly correlated to an evolution. As they wither, my relationship with each item becomes more valuable. The sense of comfort they provide, both physically and intangibly, increases as their actual being erodes.

In an eclectic closet, I return repeatedly to three pieces: the crocheted hat from UK brand Story mfg that I pined after for three years before purchasing; the Doc Marten loafers my dad bought for me five years ago on the last trip we ever took as a united family; my perfect pair of jeans, the culmination of a lifelong quest to find pants I would excitedly don everyday.

I spent the last month paying special attention to the feeling of these three garments, both in a physical and sentimental sense. They have become both internally a way of anchoring myself, and externally I’ve started to hear how others see them as an identifier of who I am. Separately, this connection with the pieces has also made getting dressed easier.

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THE LOAFERS

I have this high-definition image in my mind of the guy working at the Docs store where I purchased them and his pair of perfectly worn loafers. There was something unreachable about how perfectly his had started to age, how the vivid vermillion color bled through the cracks of the otherwise dark oxblood. He told me to get them a size down; they were immensely uncomfortable, but any doubt was assuaged by a glance at his pulchritudinous loafers—I specifically hunted for a word to convey the weight of their beauty and happened upon “pulchritudinous,” a seemingly made up word.

So, I followed his sage guidance.

This month I have been fighting shin splints. Oddly enough, I have only two pairs of shoes that don’t exacerbate them. My Hoka sneakers, which make sense, and these loafers. As a pseudo-reformed sneakerhead, I derive such an immense pride in what these famously uncomfortable shoes have become for me. Their state is a physical comfort and a reminder of the fact that I managed to wear one pair of shoes consistently.

THE JEANS

I’ve found myself perhaps a bit too deep in what I will refer to as the “jeans in the bed” discourse. And while I’m not going to sit here and opine that I wear my jeans in bed, I was shocked (appalled!) to find that some people view their denim as uncomfortable, aghast at the idea that it could come anywhere near the serenity of a slumber chamber. A well-broken in pair of jeans is the bedrock of a wardrobe. You shouldn’t wear your jeans in bed; but the option should be physically available.

After I spend thirty minutes trying to manifest some outfit that perfectly toes the line between “fashion” and “chill”, only to find myself nowhere near the line (the line doesn’t exist?), I always end up putting on one pair of jeans. I bought a pair of Evisu Lot. 2001 jeans with the coveted multi-pocket logos a little over two years ago on Grailed. The honeycomb fades that have developed from almost nonstop wear (had to hop into a quick raw denim forum for that vocab choice) are—like my loafers—a reminder of the hours I’ve spent cloaked in my beloved jeans. My hope is that everyone may one day find a pant that provides for them what these have provided for me.

THE HAT

My hat was actually the impetus for writing this piece, as it is the first item of clothing I’ve ever owned that I started to hear external identifiers applied to. “Your signature hat,” my roommate Jack called it a mere few months into me owning it, and I grin when I think about it. My signature hat.

I’ve been enamored with Story mfg. for close to ten years. Their sustainability initiatives aside, they also just make some of my favorite clothing in the world. It is clothing that begs to be worn. And since purchasing the Snail Hat, not a three-day window goes by when I don’t wear it at least once. It’s my hat!

This installment opens with the imperative: “Wear your clothes!” At its most superficial, this is a TikTok-eqsue fashion advice column. The one fashion life-hack you need to know! You’ve been getting dressed all wrong. Just wear your clothes!

More sentimentally, actively viewing getting dressed as a design practice in and of itself forces you to be more intentional about who you envision yourself to be. And ultimately, it makes getting dressed and leaving your apartment easier. The more you wear your most precious pieces, the more they wear. And the more yours they become.