What happened to dressing well and feeling good?

I used to dress well. I had a deep burgundy vintage corduroy blazer (now too small on me...le sigh) that I would wear on top of fashionable t-shirts and nice Japanese denim jeans and a pair of Fluevog leather shoes (when they were good). Not the highest fashion, but I was definitely batting outside of my income league for those articles of clothing and accessories. It was an investment of money that made me feel good, even if feeling good in the moment would eventually be met by clothes no longer fitting, denim eventually wearing down, and my own tastes evolving.

About six or seven years ago, I made it a goal to get back to dressing uniquely. Brighter colors (or rather, not black or grey), primarily independent designers, slow fashion, and a feeling that, at any moment, Bill Cunningham would appear to take my photo because I just had that look. Not because I sought fame, but rather because I sought validation that I was a walking statement.

When covid happened, everything went sideways. Folks stayed in, or, when they did go out, remained masked with a keener eye towards collective human survival than "what 'fit can I throw together that would tastefully clash and make a personal statement?"

We're just over six years since covid's arrival and perhaps a year or two since it made a vague exit. Vanity is back and more terrible than ever. Narcissism is an apparent virtue. Perhaps, just perhaps, I can do a little something for myself, not based in narcissism, but rather to feel a bit better about myself (maybe that's narcissism). Not for the perception or the looks that I would solicit, but rather because I feel like I lost a bit of my identity in these years of the great modern pandemic. Regaining my identity would be a reminder to myself that I'm still human, with a visual design obsession; a unique individual with opinions that are exclusively mine. And that these opinions that deserve an outward expression of inward struggle. I need a way to make sense of who I've become, who I am, and who I want to be.