Existential (Style) Crisis

Ode to Sunday blouse (c/o) (similar)
& Other Stories skirt (similar)
Mango heels
Louis Vuitton handbag
Mango sunglasses
Mejuri ring (similar)
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Saint-Boniface Cathedral – Winnipeg, Manitoba

I didn’t know that an existential style crisis could happen, until I started having one. I mean, I suppose I should have considered it. If you can have a general existential crisis, there’s no reason you can’t have a focussed one. I’m in the midst of one at the moment, and all my attention is on my wardrobe.

When I feel out of control, or life doesn’t go according to my meticiulous plans, I am always quick to blame my clothes. I have a history of this kind of behaviour, which I’ve documented in the past. And how can anyone really feel in control in the midst of a pandemic? Although we’re relatively sheltered here in Manitoba, and I have the freedom to do many things that I considered high-risk, like getting my hair coloured and my nails done, this is not the life I envisioned for myself in 2020. It’s impossible to know when that life I imagined might someday become possible again.

In the meantime, I’m bored – which means I’m shopping. And I’m nostalgic, which means I’m shopping for periods of my life that have either long passed or that I imagined living this year, but missed out on. Just this week, I bought a dress from Sezane because it reminded me of a dress I owned in the summer of 2013, when we lived in Paris. It is printed, and colourful, and will look blindingly bright in my otherwise neutral wardrobe. This despite the fact that I’ve truly never felt more comfortable with the contents of my wardrobe than I do right now. My collection of basics is perfectly curated, my ability to make new outfits out of existing pieces practically infinite…

…and maybe that’s part of the problem, too. From an existential perspective, I wonder how much value there is in a wardrobe that is so perfectly curated that it leaves no room for deviation from routine, no possibility of error or potential for surprise? The answer, truly, is that I don’t know. It’s been two summers since I’ve done anything sartorially that could be considered mixing it up. (And a single experiment with an orange dress doesn’t even really count.) And while I always knew that you miss all of the chances you don’t take, that fact has never seemed more poignant than it does in our current reality. I realise that the intent behind that phrase wasn’t really to remind us that life is short so we should just buy the shoes. (Or the bright printed dress, for that matter.) But that’s how I’m choosing to interpret it.

After all, I may never get another summer in Paris. That possibility, which once seemed remote, is now very real. I can’t control it either way. But I can control my closet, and that means there is no time like the present to take sartorial chances. After all, just like all other chances, they might never come around again.

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