I Can’t Dress for "Myself."

"Myself" is just three other people in a double-breasted bubblegum pink trench coat.

Last week, I published my study on women’s clothing and how it’s perceived by different genders and orientations. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, but my own bias came through in the outfits I chose to show—lots of bubblegum or pastel pink, tight clothes, and a disproportionate amount of exposed midriffs.

Who, me?

While most of the outfits weren’t intended to be good (and I inserted some that were deliberately meant to be ugly or polarizing) I was surprised by how anti…how do I put this…anti-Barbie most of the comments were, from nearly every demographic. I quickly realized that some of my favorite things to wear—or at least things I thought were my favorites—the aforementioned hot pink athleisure, crop tops and tight clothing—might be *Law and Order slamming sound* dated. Or if not dated, just plain garish and tacky—the kind of thing that only works on twenty-year-olds.

Upon hearing that, I have to admit I soured a bit on these colors and fits. Not that I would immediately toss them and dispose of them like a 19-year-old DOGE employee slashing a program to feed poor children, but I started rethinking them. Or at the very least, wondering if I should use this as an excuse to buy an entirely new, classier, simpler, less revealing, blacker and whiter, wardrobe. Surely, I gained enough paid subscribers on that study to make my case to Nick.

Now, I know many of you will say, “Who cares, CHH? Dress for yourself! Don’t give a fuck what other people think!” but that’s the problem. This feeling didn’t come from embarrassment, or the desire to please people in spite of my own preferences. For some reason, my “dressing for myself” is an amalgamation of other people’s perceptions, disguised as my own opinions. I can’t decouple them.

After all, as much as I love heels and cute form fitting dresses, you’ll never see me wearing that while I’m alone at home, because at the end of the day, it’s really not about me, it’s about how I imagine myself to look to a nebulous crowd of Other People. I don’t even see my own outfits that often, unless I’m repeatedly walking past mirrors for some reason. When I wear a cute outfit—even if it’s an outfit “for myself”—a big part of me hopes other people see it and compliment it. On a much more subconscious level, I really only perceive my clothes from a third-person perspective. For this reason, dressing entirely for myself feels impossible, unless I’m in my pajamas.

Fashion is inherently social. This is why, during the COVID lockdowns (which in my case, were voluntarily extended) fashion took such a backseat. It’s also why, once the lockdowns were over, fashion got really crazy, as I wrote about before. It’s the reason people talk about wanting to have “places to wear” their favorite clothes, even though there’s no law saying you can’t wear something fancy at home alone.

The true fun of fashion is being seen. And while it’s not fun to dress in a way you hate purely for the approval of others—something that certain overly-literal Redditors believe is the crux of most fashion discourse, all of us at the behest of snobby Devil Wears Prada People decreeing that seafoam green is “so out this season”—it’s also not that fun if you’re the only person who sees or appreciates your clothes. If I get the sense that my clothes are disliked by the majority of people—especially people who actually care about fashion—they truly become less appealing to me as well.