Today was the day to change the wardrobe from summer to winter.
Summer’s ended in a heap. Anyone else? As March became April became May and my head sank deeper into the semester, my clothes—so gleefully unfolded in September— turned to wrinkled melancholy.
Fact is, I am quite the clothes storer. I say that with some pride. At 47, I’m still wearing pieces from my twenties.
There’s a particular loose-knit cardigan—picked up in Lyon while on tour—Jill was visiting. I’d just danced the lead in Nutcracker. There was a guy I quite fancied—followed by a letter, a slow dance, a very late night. The next day, Jill suggested Max Mara. We walked in and there it was—beige, open, effortless, saying everything about the person I felt like that February in France. And somehow, 20+ years later, it’s still here, in rotation, carrying the trace of being 21 and not knowing a damn thing.
This all made me think how much a wardrobe is a uniquely personal project and curation. Even my pile of tracksuits, a garish mountain of nylon and polyester, has stories in every shapeless leg (my father is cringing in his grave).
So yes, the stuff we wrap ourselves in and how we present ourselves to the world—when lumped all together on a bed at the end of the season—is a textile dump of who we are. A biography of sorts. How fun to see a patchwork of Australia this way: every person laying out their clothes—Wardrobe Archaeology: A National Exhibition of What We Wore and Why. Complete with mothballs, old perfume, and the lingering smell of last summer’s sunscreen.