Consumption is Killing My Soul
dark void of purchasing one’s way into self-actualization
First…thanks for being here! This Substack began largely as place to process my relationship to clothes and more broadly, material possessions, worldly desires, and how they define or fail to define the “self,” and murky knowledge of what I TRULY desire in a world that is constantly bombarding you with things you “should” like for whatever profitable, capital-driven reason, and how important is it all REALLY, in a meaningfully lived life? And what is a meaningfully lived life? But I am sure there will also be things about literature and music and so on. I actually wrote this post half a year ago and then chickened out.
I’m also sharing things I like — books, movies, perfumes, clothing/jewelry, instruments, all the earthly joys to which I am so endlessly beholden…which also falls in line with this continual effort to define the self, the desires, etc etc…
My partner and I underwent a hellish move last year. Moving by nature is hellish, and this move was worse, largely thanks to our Cursed apartment and the unholy trinity of pests (use your imagination) that erupted within our abode a month before we were meant to clear out.
Pests aside, however, one of the Bad things about this move was treating our clothes to ensure we were not taking said pests to our new home. We ripped things from hangers and shoved them indiscriminately into trash bags, ran them for hours at high heat through the dryer, shoved them back into trash bags that were then piled by our front door. These were clothes I normally handled with excessive care: painstakingly sorting into like colors and materials, air drying if they were cotton and linen, washing by hand if they were silk and wool. When they hung in my closet, I stroked and admired these pieces like works of art, imagined and then enacted all the ways in which they could change me, give me a self closer to my true self. Rumpled and ruined and shoved in their plastic bags, everything suddenly looked like trash, scrubbed of its beauty, its possibility. The most damning of the suspected pests turned out to be a false alarm, but the damage was already done — our home was already demolished, both physically and spiritually.
There were also a LOT of clothes. This was another shock. The apartment we were fleeing was large and dark, full of closets, and in these closets I squirreled away garment bags full of sweaters and lost things in shadows. Our beautiful new sun-filled and pest-free apartment had ONE closet, and suddenly everything was out in the light, spilling from trash bags, with nowhere to go.
Liz and I moved from Iowa to Philly in two SUVs. Much was sold and donated and left behind in our move. There was this sense I had, a sort of desperate and panicky feeling, that I needed to “rebuild,” I needed to reclothe myself, find a new exterior that would best illustrate my interior — in a controlled, effortfully effortless, shiny way, of course. I also felt as if I were rebirthing as a whole new person with the geographic move, and the ending of an academic program — shedding a previous self, plunging into naked, amorphous nascency yet again. I am deeply affected by false feelings of scarcity. I’m this way with food, too — when it feels like I won’t get to eat, I enter a state of panic. I’m afraid of being always, eternally hungry. When food is finally available, I eat it all, endlessly insatiable, desperate. This is how I can consume things, when things are bad.
When we got to Philly we found thrift stores in the wealthy surrounding suburbs full of affordable natural fiber treasures; a monthly church sale where I snagged YSL jeans and an Oscar de La Renta sweater for mere dollars, along with cashmere cardigans from Talbots; small consignment shops around the city that seemed to hold at least a few treasures per visit. And then there was my cluster of resale apps — Depop, TheRealReal, EBay, Etsy, Poshmark, etc. I’d already been falling into the resale app void before Philly, but something in my sartorial desires had shifted towards more “far-out” items, things I perceived as more niche or hard to find (and therefore “better?” “Cooler?”) — antique sleepwear, archival designer, etc etc. Suddenly I was saving searches for Edwardian French linen nightgowns and indigo dyed chore jackets and vintage sailor pants and Cop Copine and chiffon twist Pleats Please and Prada mary janes; I was scrolling these searches nearly every day, liking, saving, comparing. Buying.
Where was the desire for these things coming from? Was it originating authentically from me, a result of my sartorial evolution? Or was it a subliminal attack from all sides — seeping into my subconscious from the various influencers and Fashionable People I was following (and I was ever adding to my parasocial roster of Cool Fashion People) and the things they wore and coveted? Was it yet another form of masking —meticulously studying what was Most Wanted out there in the world, and adopting those wants for my own? Was I needing to be ever cooler, ever hotter, ever more enviable — because it felt the least vulnerable, particularly when I felt so soft and alien and at odds so much of the time out in the world? It’s hard to say. I don’t know if it's possible to have a pure, original desire that emerges cleanly from within — we just don’t live that way; we are always bumping up against the influence of others and of our times and our geopolitics and our economy; we are impressionable and searching and lost creatures. But regardless, these desires were emerging, and I was answering them.
I have had an issue with overconsumption since I was in college and started getting my first real paychecks. I worked various jobs in college — physics tutor, cafeteria worker, late night cook, physics lab TA — and was surrounded by people who were very, very wealthy. These people were beautiful with beautiful clothes. I had always loved clothes, since I was a young girl — my mother, a thoughtful, mindful, sharp dresser, had clothed me in beautiful things, many of which she sewed herself. She bought little, but everything she acquired and made was lovely.
I was not Cool when I first arrived to college. I had like, five button downs from the Gap and two pairs of skinny jeans and one pair of ankle boots. An orange Jansport backpack. College, with its sudden social and class expanse, was painfully jarring, and utterly terrifying; I had never felt smaller, more alone, more vulnerable. Getting my first jobs in college coincided with doing a summer physics research fellowship in Tokyo — which also landed me a good amount of extra cash — where I spent hours out in the streets of Shibuya, Daikanyama, and Harajuku, staring at the outfits walking by, and the people wearing them. With my leftover money, rather than saving, I bought things. I bought a new haircut — sweepy bangs (I showed them a photo of Jane Birken…) and lots of new clothes, mostly from Zara and the Shimokitazawa thrift shops. I remember people praising me for my hair, my new clothes, when I came back to school — you look like a French actress! I remember someone saying. It was intoxicating, being recognized in this way. Being deemed “cool.”
In the three years of college that followed, I blew a lot of my leftover earned money on clothes. It was very Carrie-Bradshaw-owning-Prada-and-Manolos-while-having-$900-in-her-savings-account. The majority of it was from Zara, and I rarely bought anything that was over thirty dollars. Once, I splurged and bought a dress from Reformation, and felt a vice grip of panic as I hit “place order.” I felt out of control, I felt something Dark and Bad. I knew there was something financially irresponsible about what I was doing — I was spending beyond my means. I had a package rolling in nearly every week. When I placed the order, I felt that rush of dopamine, but sometimes, when I opened the packages, I felt sick to my stomach. Nothing was quite as good as I imagined. Very few of those clothes became loved and cherished belongings.
In the years since, my buying habits have morphed. I’m going to sound like a sustainable fashion influencer as I itemize these things for you now: I shop almost entirely secondhand — when I do buy something new, it is usually something along the ilk of “organic cotton basic” blah blah blah; t-shirts, underwear, perfume. I avoid fast fashion. I get a thrill from finding nice things for low prices. I’m good at it. I tell myself that because almost everything is a “deal,” I’m being “responsible,” not only financially but environmentally. I try to tell myself that my habits are now more ethical and more healthy, but I still have moments where I feel that sick, panicky feeling that I’m spiraling out of control, into the void — shopping binges, where too many packages arrive and I feel the desire to bury them deep in the earth to hide them, evidence of my vices, my misplaced and unending want. Because of course I know I don’t actually WANT all these things — I want something else, something painful and unattainable I can’t quite put my finger on. I still sometimes shamefully buy things that are far too expensive for me — putting them on a credit card, or doing some kind of pay-in-four loan to magically will the money out of thin air. When I open these packages, I can feel when something has been purchased because I really wanted it, and when it was purchased merely to give me that rush. I know deep down there is nothing “sustainable” about this.
There’s also the undeniable economics of overconsumption, a problem dealt with by people who have any disposable income at all. Not to even get into the environmental impact of it. But I’ve always been too good at contorting my disposable income into heavily discounted secondhand shoes or thrifted linen shirts and jeans or nicer things paid for over the course of four paychecks, even when I was making under twenty thousand dollars a year. I’ve always had a skill for finding a great deal. In fact —full disclosure — this is the first year of my working life where I am finally making OVER twenty thousand a year. When you’re not making much, it’s easy to fall into a few, often contradictory fallacies — one being that you’re making so little money that it isn’t even worth trying to pinch pennies, and the other that somehow every “frivolous” financial decision feels overly fraught, like a mark against one’s character, somehow a moral flaw. Any luxury or splurge could be money put towards something more responsible, more selfless, more meaningful. There is the feeling that I am just kicking something down the line, that if I keep this up, this financial shortsightedness in a society that seems to require a ten-thousand-dollar-minimum safety net to survive any kind of unexpected emergency — be it medical, a layoff, debt, a housing crisis — is going to punish me one day.
Where does this compulsion come from? I often wonder. I armchair psychoanalyze. My parents were very frugal, they rarely bought new things; I was always wanting, craving. But my brother doesn’t have the same compulsions I do! I have ADHD, I tell myself. My brain is wired to desire that kind of instant jolt; it is wired to chase those hits of dopamine, and to be bad at the delayed gratification of something like building my savings account. Our capitalistic, surveillance-advertising, click-and-scroll-and-attention-economy society is designed to make us consume, to always want more, but still! And I know that there is this sort of endless, insatiable wanting in me — it’s there when I follow the latest beautiful, effortlessly cool Fashion Girl, when I search up an item I saw my cool friend wearing earlier that day. There is this constant yearning to be better, cooler, more unique, more effortlessly stylish; because that effortless style communicates some kind of strong, unshakable self-confidence, a deep self-knowledge. A union between the internal and external self. It dreams up a world that looks at me and not only knows me, but knows me to be something good and wantable. And each time I hit “purchase” I am hoping I can buy that feeling, at last.
The irony is that the people whom I most envy, the people whose style I covet and who most strongly “influence” me, seem so cool because their wardrobe is deeply a part of who they are. I feel a unique sort of pleasure to see my friend wear her same cool jacket again and again. The pockets are full of her receipts, keys, chapstick. It has become a part of her life. Or to see Liz cycle through her small but excellently curated sneaker collection. And you can’t really purchase your way into that kind of style. Especially if you’re in a frenzy of purchasing more and more to try and crawl your way to that state of perfect wardrobe-to-self harmony. If I get cool enough clothes, that effervescent quality will follow, a part of my mind says to me, as I add things to cart. It’s not true. There are objectively beautiful things I’ve purchased that have hung in my closet since I bought them — they haven’t even yet touched my skin.
It was a dark month, that month we spent tearing apart our home and moving. My hobbies slipped out of existence. I couldn’t knit, because my projects and yarn were tied up in bags. I wasn’t reading, I wasn’t playing my instruments, I wasn’t exercising. I certainly wasn’t writing. There was nowhere in our upturned home to do these things, I told myself. So I went on my phone. I was on Instagram, looking at beautiful, half-candid shots of people wearing their cool outfits running around the city or drinking coffee in their cozy curated living rooms or getting dinner with friends; I was on every resale site, scrolling and saving, itching to buy my way back to a good feeling again. There was a deep, aching emptiness in my life, normally filled with the warmth of home and cooking and the making of art, and I was filling it instead with the promise of these outfits and the full, rich lives that seemed to come with them.
After our move I spent hours pouring over my closet and being honest with myself about what was truly a part of my Real Wardrobe, something beloved and melded with my sense of self, and what just wasn’t. I made a google doc of clothes and asked my friends if they wanted anything. I slowly started whittling down. And I told myself to take a deep breath, and try, try, to step away from consuming, endless consuming.
I love clothes, I will always love clothes, I will always look at clothes, I will always buy clothes. A part of me does believe that clothes can be art, and they are history, they are a fascinating reflection of a population on the tides of current events and war and shifting politics, and they are an expression of self, of culture, of one’s personal values. But this love of mine is always wavering on a razor’s edge, threatening to tumble into the dark void of consumption. Just as clothes can be deeply entwined with one’s context, culture, or lifestyle — a paint splattered pair of overalls an artist puts on every time she goes to her easel, the jade Buddha necklace my mom passed down to me — clothes bought in the Dark Spiral of consumption can also easily fall out of context, become dead things that don’t ever become a part of a life or a history at all. I don’t quite have an answer for how I can lastingly pull myself from the edge of this darkness. Fashion is a complicated art — tied up almost inextricably with class, capitalism, exploitation, environmental destruction. But does it have to be? Does it have to be a Dark art? I don’t know. But I guess it matters enough to me to see if there’s an answer to that question.
Things I Like:
My Filmhead brother had Liz and I watch Suspiria (the 1977 Dario Argento version) and I was absolutely obsessed with it. I love film that does mysterious/unsettling vibes well (it’s part of why I love Twin Peaks so much) and Suspiria is built on those vibes (in fact, the vibes are more robust than the actual plot, which excuses itself from making too much sense or having too much density to it). But the vibes are perfect — sets whose obvious falseness makes them only more eerie (an oddly empty and flimsy apartment complex full of dark windows, a vast and empty marble square surrounded by darkened marble monuments that almost look like cutouts — lacking an interior, or even a world beyond them), immaculate lighting, and excellently spooky use of the color red and odd textural choices (velvet wallpaper!).
The novel pictured above, Temporary by Hilary Leichter, is immaculate. Now that I have a Real World job that has nothing to with writing — and a position that feels vaguely ephemeral, at that (it’s an assistant position that fills and empties every three or so years, I fill a role that is easily replaceable, unlike my coworkers, who are all longstanding specialists, etc) — I spend a lot of time thinking about work, and jobs, and how much of our lives we spend doing them, and how we’re meant to find purpose or stability or something else more or less intangible in our work. This novel, in its fabulist, magical way, has shaken up and straightened out and electrified all of these thoughts, and is one of the best reflections on Work and our relationships to our work that I have read in recent memory. It expansively creates loops just to later close them in the most astounding ways, creating a world that feels like many interlocking systems that are both chaotic and inevitable. Everyone should read it.
Fancy fish salads — tinned tuna or salmon, butter beans, chopped olives, shallots, every possible herb, lemony mustardy dressings…I know everyone is eating fancy fish salads already but…they’re good!
Hear me out, cottage cheese. Get a good slice of toasted sourdough, some olive oil and red pepper flakes, some smoked fish and arugula, slices of a GOOD tomato?!
Sartorially I am intrigued by/thinking about: silk tap shorts (think 30s era. This idea was planted in my head by fashion genius @oldloserinbrooklyn on insta. I don’t know if I can actually handle these, as much as I am intrigued by them. It’s like bloomers for me. I love the look on some people but I worry about feeling too exposed and Underweary in them). Sailor and pirate core (I’ve always enjoyed pirate core…I’m a Pirates of the Caribbean kid…) Polka dots — I’ve always enjoyed polka dots and they are abounding! And I already own lots of polka dots! Chunky glass beaded necklaces. A tastefully beaded/sequined silk slip skirt a-la Carrie Bradshaw in that one episode…it’s pink and she’s wearing it with a white tank…curved hem velvet bolero style jackets (am I getting influenced on this one??? As Liz said, it’s very Gossip Girl 2010. In fact in the 2010s I had a beloved brown half-length sleeve cardigan with double buttons and a curved hem l o l, very much a Nordstrom fast fashion trickle down of an Alexander McQueen jacket.) I crave a really cute pair of Miss Sixty-esque low rise, very femme and cutsie pair of flared jeans. I think I am deffffinitely getting influenced on those. I don’t think I’d actually look or feel good in them, but I love how they look on other people. Fun pendants, like watches and handmirrors. Brooches!
Okay, that’s a lot and that’s it! If you made it here, thanks!
I just shoved two reusable shopping bags filled with unworn garments into my closet because a guest is coming over my house! Thank u for sharing, look forward to reading more.
Thank you for writing this, sorry about your bug problem, legitimately had nightmares about it happening to myself.
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You mentioned people who have limited amounts of clothes (and they really got that shit on fr). Friends of mine who are this way actually have immense anxiety about trying to have the perfect outfits. Similarly to trying to retain a minimalist home, have the healthiest meal prep, the most optimal workouts, etc.
I don’t know anyone personally who has a limited amount of clothes (and doesn’t care about clothing) while still looking cool. I know these people exist but I assume they must be generally removed from our society or specialized in something unexpected.
There is a whole can of worms to unpack about what revolves around taste and class in that last sentence, but moving on LOL.
I also see you’re trying to dig into why you have these clothing needs… I am able to point out at least a dozen key moments or desires in my adolescence to what impacted my feelings towards clothing or wanting to be cool. Can you pinpoint any for yourself? I definitely recommend trying to figure those out if you can, its helps me keep my current day ADD/wide variety of fashion interests in check.
I also haven’t had feelings of envy or intense desire other people’s clothing in since I was a child, and it always surprises me when I hear people having these feelings when the person is already cool. You’re obviously cool.
I feel similarly to you in terms of having an array of hobbies, interests, and taste. I feel like it’s reflective of the amount of clothing I own/different styles I wear, and I’m comfortable in that. BUT EVEN STILL I feel crazy amounts of guilt that I’m still sorting out. And similar to you it has more to do with my spending habits than my actual clothing interests.
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These over-consumption/capitalist/self-loathing conversations around clothing are common within my friends who work or are deeply entrenched in fashion.
I think fashion as art and expression can be fully void of these feelings and archetypes. There is a lot of historical evidence of this. But like most art and expression we are reflective of our current societyyyyy blah blah blah.
I wish you luck on your journey figuring this out, we’re all in the same boat.