Revisiting My 'Do Not Buy Or Wear' List

Oh, how things have changed, a year later.

A few weeks ago I had some time to kill in downtown Helsinki. I decided to swing by one of the more swanky second hand locations that operates on consignment. The air in this place is filled with breathy bossa nova and various slightly too heavily-spritzed perfumes. Trendy looking people enjoy macarons in the adjoining café and Totême pieces can be found on almost every rack.

I came across a dark gray Lemaire merino wool knit dress that I decided to try on. It was a nice dress, in good condition, priced reasonably, and it fit well. I looked at myself in the mirror, trying to tap into Lemaire the brand – that effortless, neutrals-wearing vibe that looks like an impossibly casual but elegant lifestyle rather than clothes on a person. I knew that I should have wanted to buy the dress, but instead I felt nothing and left the dress behind.

Two hours later I found myself in a grubby suburban thrift store operated by the Salvation Army. I saw an intricately drawn-thread-worked back yoke of a shirt poking out of one of the stuffed racks. The fabric felt like dirty old bedsheets. It was a shirt from the early 1900s, maybe a part of a folk costume, with initials N.M. penned on the back of the neck. The shirt was severely yellowed all over. It felt grimy and gross to the touch, but the stitches in the garment were short and tight, the drawn-thread-embroidery intact, the collar meticulously set into the tightly-gathered front pieces. I didn’t hesitate. I had to buy it.

At home I soaked the shirt in hot water and gall soap. The water turned greenish yellow from the dirt. I had to rinse the shirt many times until the water ran clear. As I waited for the shirt to dry, my mind returned to the Lemaire dress and how dramatically my understanding of clothes and myself inside them has changed in the last year or so.

In January 2024 I wrote, on a whim, a newsletter that became my most read and restacked piece by far. It still gets likes and comments. Nothing else I’ve written before or since has got that kind of traction.

To recap what the post is about: I have a list on my phone for things that I don’t want to buy or wear. The idea is based on the psychology concept of the mere exposure effect: the more we see something (like in this case, a fashion trend), the more we begin to think that we might like it. While trying to curb my shopping addiction, I began to list trending things that I knew in my heart I didn’t care about, to stop myself from buying them in the future. When a trend began spreading to the masses, I could go back to my list to see how I felt about the trend when it first started circulating. At some point I began to add to the list things that might be considered style classics that I had previously tried, but they just hadn’t worked for me.

The popularity of My Current ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ List feels weird to me, for two reasons: 1) at the time I just wrote something quickly and I hadn’t put much thought into it, and 2) I feel completely alienated from the subject matter now, only a year later. I can hardly believe that I wrote the piece.

I used to visit my ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ list on my phone frequently. I’d add more things to it every season, and I’d pull it out at least weekly, just to look at it and to keep myself and my shopping in check. My Notes app tells me that the last time I’ve visited my list was on April 11th, 2024. I had added boat shoes to the list, which feels weird now, because I haven’t seen boat shoes on a single person in real life since they began showing up online. In my fashion content consumerist era I had felt the need to write down boat shoes on my list, even though no one around me was wearing them, and I can’t even imagine myself wearing boat shoes under any circumstances. (That’s got nothing to do with boat shoes themselves, I’m just very peculiar about the types of shoes I like.)

I recognize that my ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ list was a guardrail of sorts, to protect me from my shopping addiction that feasted on my insecurities and resided in the endlessly scrollable alternate reality of the online style and fashion discourse. I had to actively remind myself of who I was, to not get lost or tempted. It all feels a little sad to me now.

I recently got a comment to My Current ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ List piece where a reader said that she and other readers would maybe like to know about the flipside of my ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ list: what is it that I do like to buy or wear. The question is valid, but it makes me feel uneasy, because the answer doesn’t reside in the same universe as my ‘Do Not Buy Or Wear’ list.

I like to buy and wear old stuff. I buy a grimy antique shirt over a Lemaire knit dress. I wear my husband’s old navy merino wool turtleneck three times a week. I reach for one of my three favorite skirts to wear with it, unless I’m in the mood to wear vintage trousers with a fitted shirt and a vintage waistcoat. I buy a grimy antique shirt without consulting a wishlist or a set of rules. These days what I want to own is so hard to come by that I don’t really need to limit myself artificially. The person who kept the trend-based Do Not Buy Or Wear list does not live here anymore.

You've seen me like this a million times before.

As I float deeper into a style space that’s my own, I discover that I like twisted history, a bit of a costume, the way antique shirts bunch up under the armpits, the details on the inside of these garments that no one else knows about. My interest in clothes, fashion and style has narrowed to a tiny sliver of what it used to be. I spend my time researching folk costumes, Edwardian tailoring and mourning jewelry instead of current trends, street style, or what brands are producing. The last two issues of Vogue Collections sit practically untouched on my desk.

Last summer I had a feeling that this was going to happen. I wrote:

[...] I haven’t figured out [...] how to stay engaged in the world of style and fashion. So much of style and fashion talk revolves around what’s new, what we’ve just bought, and what we’re going to buy next. I don’t know how to make sense of that anymore. [...] I still care about clothes, but the system is broken and I can’t quite find my place in it. I can’t take part in fashion and style specific social media anymore, I can’t subscribe to shopping newsletters, I can’t browse online stores or resale platforms, I can’t read trend reports.

The less I’ve engaged with the online fashion and style community in the past year or so, the farther my mind has wandered from it. The fewer outfit pictures I’ve shared and the more private my style has become, the less I feel the need to display it, explore it, expand it or explain it to others. It’s a strange, new feeling. Since the dawn of social media and blogs, I’ve wanted to reach out to the world through style and clothes, but I’m beginning to wonder if doing so just made me drift away from myself. This poses some questions about the future of this newsletter.

I’ve had some trouble with my writing for some time now. When I worked on my newsletter about the things I bought in 2024, I noticed that I’m becoming more and more uncomfortable with writing about shopping. It feels a little tedious. I’m not a stylist and therefore I don’t have styling tips or product recommendations for others. I don’t keep up with trends anymore, so I can’t advise on those either. Others write much more eloquently about the state of fashion and its massive, world-destroying ecological footprint. So here I am, apologetically writing about the grimy antique shirt and how the Lemaire dress just felt soulless in comparison, and I can’t explain it. More importantly, it doesn’t feel like it’s worth sharing. Nothing quite does.

A likely culprit for this state of affairs is my effort to reduce my screen time. The less time I spend on my phone or my laptop, the stranger it feels that we share all these things, big things or little things, about ourselves to all sorts of people out there, through various social media outlets, and there are other people on the receiving end, watching and following us, real people with lives. It seems so perfectly bizarre when I stop to think about it. It’s our own personal Truman Show, but we do it willingly, and we are both Truman and the world that watches him, simultaneously. It freaks me out.

Or maybe it’s because I’m still upset over David Lynch’s death and I seem to observe everything through that “Directed by David Lynch” sticker that someone famously stuck on their window and suddenly things made more sense to them. I keep seeing an old, lovely clip of Lynch sitting down and chatting with Harry Dean Stanton, the two men chuckling knowingly at the nothingness of human existence. If we are nothing, what’s the point of anything? To pull myself away from existential dread, I let my mind wander as I’m mending a pair of wool socks. Doing something grounding like mending my socks helps me see that everything is kind of silly and lovely and insignificant and precious anyway, and the absurdity of it all is probably the whole point. But none of this makes writing about style or clothes any easier, but maybe the trick is to just keep going anyway.

Sunday Style Thoughts began as “a newsletter about clothes and style for overthinkers”. I’m starting to think that perhaps I’m no longer quite the overthinker I was when I started writing this newsletter over two years ago. Sure, I ramble and I like to ask questions, but things tend to be simple and straightforward, if I just let them.

I’m going to publish this particular newsletter even though I’m not exactly happy with it, but not before I give you a current list of my yeses and nos, because people like lists that they can react to and agree or disagree with, and it’s all about connection anyway, no matter how feeble. In true Lynchian fashion, I refuse to elaborate. (Well, I might, if you ask nicely.)

No:

David Kibbe’s Power Of Style book
The previous owner’s perfume on second hand clothes
Nosferatu (2024)
Dries Van Noten the brand without Dries Van Noten the man
Gnats in houseplants

Yes:

Adjustable waists in vintage trousers
Poirot (1989 - 2013)
Julee Cruise’s Mysteries of Love
Suspenders with leather loops that attach to buttons on the waistband
Killing gnats in houseplants with sticky traps

A snippet of wisdom from Hercule Poirot.

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