The Memories Hanging in My Closet
By Meghna Iyer, Fashion Columnist
Imagine being able to feel the ocean breeze from your favorite vacation in your hair, relive your wildest shenanigans with friends, and experience your most memorable concert again this week, all in the midst of a pandemic. With travel bans set up throughout the world and previously well-loved activities abandoned or adapted beyond a semblance of recognition, these experiences feel like memories from another lifetime. In this new lifestyle that’s been forced upon us, most of our passions have vanished from thin air, leaving us to wonder whether they’ll ever be back. However, there is one thing that can bring us back to these sought-after moments: our closets.
We all have pieces of clothing we associate with specific memories. Whether the memory is good or bad, you never forget what you wore to the momentous occasions of your life. It could be the suit worn to your very first interview or the earrings reserved for only the most dramatic music festival, but they go down in history. The clothes you buy on your favorite travels across the world are just as powerful. When I studied abroad in Ireland, I took a trip to Galway where I ran into this weaver’s store of handmade, fluffy Irish sweaters. Every time I have to brace myself for a Boston snowstorm, I reach the coziest sweater I own and am instantly transported back to a rollercoaster time in my life when I was exploring the world on my own.
Ireland was a transformative experience for me and extremely impactful on my style evolution. Having grown up attending private school, I spent most of my life until this point in school uniforms. I have since made a promise to myself that I will never don a polo again — imagine my horror when polos recently became trendy. On the few days of the year that I didn’t have to wear my uniform to school, I made it a point to dress up and use the nice clothes that I had. My mother, the inspiration behind my love of fashion, drilled into me at a young age that I had to look put together and stylish before leaving home. Before I had found my interest in fashion, I would try to sneak past her on my way to school in sweats, like all the other kids. She never failed to catch me and send me upstairs to change out of my “pajamas.” Suffice to say, she is not a fan of the athleisure trend and I still hesitate to leave home in leggings today if I’m going anywhere except the gym. For someone who had to wear a uniform every day, I had accumulated quite a bit of non-polo apparel, which made it overwhelming to choose outfits on the rare days that I could. I knew this struggle would be even worse once I went off to college; thus came my should-be-patented ‘Outfit List’. I promise all of you, this is my only crazy habit... or at least the best one!
The ‘Outfit List’ was started on my first day of college, which was also my first day abroad in Ireland. With one suitcase of clothes to last four months, I was determined to get creative rather than repeat outfits. This meant mixing and matching, layering dresses with tops, and wearing my going-out clothes in the daytime. In order to do this, I started writing down every outfit I wore in a list on my phone. It has been two years since I started the list and I now live by it. I have a database of outfits created for every season that is constantly updated and gives me the ability to use every piece in my wardrobe. It allows me to make the most of my closet and saves me precious time in my busy days when I can simply refer back to The List for inspiration. I was often asked by my peers when studying abroad how I did it, and this is my secret. Not only does it expand a closet, but it has been a valuable source of control for me during the pandemic.
You make a lot of memories over the course of two years. The outfits I wore on some of my favorite days embody those happy memories, like the day my best friends came to visit me at college last year. While COVID-19 keeps us all in our separate pockets of the country and prevents us from spending time with one another, I revisit this day whenever I put on my navy blue linen jumpsuit. Now more than ever, the stories behind outfits and clothes mean far more than the label on them. Favorite outfits make us feel confident and like the best version of ourselves, and the memories they evoke are comforting — even if you don’t need your own ‘Outfit List’, now is the best time to live vicariously through your closet.
