fashion and mental health

I have to ask, can we be­come our fash­ion sense?

Fash­ion is self ex­pres­sion. It speaks be­fore you do. It lets peo­ple know what your be­liefs are and what you like; what sub­cul­ture you de­fine with and what you are feel­ing that day.

My style changes con­stant­ly – it changes dai­ly with my mood.

I’m gen­er­al­ly in­spired by vin­tage, but it can be any­thing. I use it as an ex­ag­ger­a­tion of my mood, of who I want to be or what I want to ac­com­plish that day. I’ll change through­out the day. 

And if I could change per ac­tiv­i­ty, I would.

When I’m down I use fash­ion to lift me up.

It’s my morn­ing af­fir­ma­tion that must be phys­i­cal­ly as­sem­bled. It al­ways serves me.

I think: This is how I feel, this is who I am to­day, and a look is born.

Even when go­ing to the gro­cery store or sick and go­ing to the doc­tor, a look can serve you. It ac­cen­tu­ates you. It’s hap­pened that the low­er I feel, the more wild and cre­ative I’ll be with my style in or­der to lift my­self out of melan­choly sub­ur­ban life.

Fash­ion is a mask. A shell.

A shell that pro­tects vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, and some­times un­hap­pi­ness .… but it can also ex­press hap­pi­ness, con­fi­dence, and pride.

“Cloth­ing could be used as a means to mange mood, a way to feel bet­ter about themselves.”
—Dr. Car­olyn Mair, The Psy­chol­o­gy of Fashion

Styling up an out­fit for the day can def­i­nite­ly boost down feel­ings, or even boredom.

Fash­ion can also be a pos­i­tive source of con­nect­ing with others.

Women of­ten use fash­ion to com­pli­ment each oth­er or to break the ice, ini­ti­ate a friend­ship, or just as a pass­ing no­tice and ac­knowl­edge­ment be­tween women. Mair says, fash­ion can en­able women to make new friend­ships through unit­ing around cloth­ing strug­gles and tri­umphs. Even though it could be seen as fake or su­per­fi­cial to some, I think com­pli­ments bring women clos­er to­geth­er only ad­vanc­ing our bond of womanhood.

“Cloth­ing is a medi­um through which the self is realized.”
—Ibid

Which is why fash­ion brings me and so many peo­ple joy. I be­lieve you can get clos­er to your­self through your style. Fash­ion grounds me, re­mind­ing me of my own skin, my place, and my be­ing in this world. It’s an out­ward ex­pres­sion of who you are.

Cloth­ing will al­ways be there be­cause it’s a ne­ces­si­ty, so why not use it as your clos­est phys­i­cal ex­pres­sion of psy­cho­log­i­cal needs. Use it to lift your­self up. Get into it.

“We can­not sep­a­rate cloth­ing from the self and iden­ti­ty be­cause what we wear is an out­ward dis­play of our self and our identity.”
—Ibid

Per­haps be­cause I am a self-pro­claimed in­tro­vert – but with a lot to say – fash­ion is a re­ward­ing way for me to ex­press myself.

It’s who I am or who I want to be that day. It can mark chap­ters or in­tro­duce a new feel­ing into your world. There’s so much free­dom and pos­si­bil­i­ty to your ex­pres­sion. So wear it, and serve it, and serve it over and over again, if you’d like.

 

part two: the flip side
One has to re­mem­ber that women have not had this much free­dom to dress as we please, like­ly, ever be­fore now.

Our bod­ies and our gar­ments have al­ways been po­liced by so­ci­ety, I.E. men.

Women were ar­rest­ed, beat­en, dis­crim­i­nat­ed, and shamed for what they wore, pret­ty much … always.

In the past women could be fired or not hired be­cause of their hem line or even their looks.

Women have had a very slow crawl to this free­dom we have to­day. Some places in the world still po­lice women’s wear. Too much cov­er­age. Not enough cov­er­age … it doesn’t mat­ter what the cur­rent rule is, they al­ways want to be judg­ing and con­trol­ling the items we choose to con­ceal our­selves in.

There’s still some dif­fi­cul­ties in be­ing able to tru­ly ex­press and wear what you de­sire if you’re a woman.

I still couldn’t walk down the street to­day in a tight mini skirt and feel com­fort­able about it. Our bod­ies are overt­ly, open­ly, and blunt­ly ob­jec­ti­fied and this has cer­tain­ly had an im­pact on the evo­lu­tion of my style.

There’s not a true free­dom. I have to think about where I am go­ing, what kind of peo­ple will be around, will I have to walk etc. be­fore I dress.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I have to think about oth­ers when I get dressed still or I maybe I will be sub­ject­ed to un­wel­come re­ac­tions re­gard­less if I mind my own busi­ness or not.

I’m not talk­ing over­ly sex­u­al­ized looks ei­ther. Even some­thing sim­ply form fit­ting, I don’t feel com­fort­able wear­ing in most cas­es due to the open­ly tox­ic male ha­rass­ment I’ve re­ceived just walk­ing down the streets my whole life.

It took a long time for me to com­fort­ably wear the funky, bold vin­tage pieces I want to wear. Grow­ing up in a surfer beach town where peo­ple most­ly just wore Vans and sweat­pants, I would al­ways get ugly stares by the lo­cals when I would wear my flam­boy­ant, mix-matched-whatever.

For­tu­nate­ly, I left that place and trav­eled, which boost­ed my con­fi­dence and I came back each time not giv­ing a lick what these peo­ple thought.

How­ev­er, I still tense up and feel the looks, hear the lip smack­ing, see the stares from men and I hate it.

Bal­anc­ing what you want to ex­press with your safety.

This is a women’s ex­pe­ri­ence when get­ting dressed, which I wish was not the case. I wish not to think about men when I am get­ting dressed. I wish it tru­ly was for me, but not yet, it is not.

 

—fiona pitt

Flom­mist Fiona Pitt is a jour­nal­ist and fash­ion mod­el whose work has tak­en her to Asia and be­yond. To­day she is con­cerned with sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the ef­fects con­sump­tion has on our fu­ture. Copy­right © 2020 Fiona Pitt.

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