Honestly, what a queen

Since Marie Kondo’s new television series, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, released on Netflix last month, I’ve been thinking about how to apply her organizational principles to my own life. My penchant (re: obsession) for fashion has led me to amass a medley of incongruous garments; I’ve acquired everything from chore jackets to double-riders, black skinny jeans to pooling wool flannel trousers, floral camp-collar shirts to linen popovers. Menswear has hundreds of subcultures, and as my fashion sense has matured over the years, at some point I’ve been smitten by each and every one. So, my wardrobe is dotted with the remnants of my fleeting interests — Royal Jordan’s from when I first discovered streetwear, denim jackets from my Americana phase, several expensive graphic tees from my fashion fuckboy phase (picture below), and more.

Yeah, we don’t talk about this phase…

At present, I no longer wear most of these residual pieces. As my tastes have shifted, I’ve found myself reaching for an ever-decreasing subset of the clothes I own when I get dressed every morning. It’s not that I‘m no longer fond of my clothing; it’s that I no longer have anything to wear most of it with. I’ve bought all of the aforementioned items because, at some point in my past few years of sartorial excess, I truly admired the menswear subcultures they belong to. In a vacuum, I love every item of clothing I own. Yet, working them into an outfit that I like is almost impossible. I no longer have a pair of trousers to go with them, or the right shoes, or the right belt. I keep them because I still love them, but I don’t wear them because they don’t have a place in my wardrobe as a whole.

Marie Kondo’s main principle of tidying up is as such: one should only keep items that spark joy. As I tried to apply this principle to my wardrobe, I encountered a problem: I wasn’t getting rid of any clothes! The issue with Kondo’s advice is that, when it comes to fashion, individual items are merely the interchangeable parts that make up outfits. Although all of my clothing sparks joy in and of itself, not all of it fits into outfits that spark joy. I found that instead of thinking, for example, “does this shirt spark joy?” I needed to consider, “can I put this shirt into an outfit that sparks joy?”

Using the aforementioned question as my guiding principle, I’ve significantly reduced the size of my wardrobe. It’s difficult to get rid of clothing that you like, but the sense of coherence and harmony that a well-structured wardrobe brings is priceless.

Thanks for reading! If you want to see what my wardrobe looks like now, check out my Instagram.