Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 24, 2020

Ok, so I know I talked about clothes last week, but apparently there’s a lot of unpacking to do there.

There’s honestly so many ways to look at clothing. What is I mean is that it can be about more than encasing one’s body in fabric and protecting your soft, fleshy body from the elements.

In the privacy of your own home, clothing can mean something completely different to the role of clothing when you’re in the outside world. When you’re at home, clothing is mostly about comfort and how it makes YOU feel – unless you’re living with someone super judgemental who has strong opinions against messy buns and singlets.

But in the outside world, I would argue that clothing can be about more than the practicality of putting a layer between a public bench and your private parts, beneficial as that may be. It’s about communication. It’s about projecting an identity. It’s about persuading other people that you’re not a piece of poo bobbing around in the toilet water of life.

It’s about what other people think, whether you think you care about that or not.

What triggered this deep contemplation about the role of clothing was my housemate, who said it was weird that the fabric or colour of your clothing determined whether you could wear said clothing in public.

I mean, I still don’t really have the answers there. I like to think that wearing something with confidence will soon convince people that your threads are suitable for the occasion, but confidence will only get you so far – especially if you’re trying to get into a fancy bar. I mean, the bouncer might appreciate your high self-esteem, but that won’t change the fact you’re covered in food dye.

There are dress codes everywhere you go, but they’re not always printed out in black and white on a laminated sign that tells you not to wear thongs or dirty work shirts.

Sometimes, they’re unwritten. The dress codes are laminated in our minds and stuck on the wall in our brains.

It’s like how when I go for a jog, I wear this oversized unisex t-shirt that hangs down to my knees. I also wear a pair of lose running shorts inbuilt bike pants, which protect me from the dreaded thigh chafe and gives me somewhere to put my phone so I can listen to music without having to hold my phone in my hand like a chump.

But the shirt hangs lower than the shorts, making it look like I’m only wearing an oversized shirt with nothing on underneath. So when I’m in that outfit and not running – say, if I’m too puffed to continue and I have to make the walk of shame home – I feel pressure to tuck one corner of the shirt into the band of the shorts to show that I’m not just wearing knickers under that top. And it’s weird, because the outfit in no way changes – I mean, tucking in the shirt doesn’t change the length of the shorts – but the tucked in option feels so much more appropriate for public wear.

It’s those weird tiny details that make you feel like you’re better dressed, but you haven’t really changed anything.

Like, I’ll put my watch on if I want to make an outfit that’s teetering on the fence between “sloppy” and “put together” fall firmly in the paddock of the latter.

For example, I have a marle grey (which is another way of saying “it looks like the static you’d see when a TV wasn’t working back in the days before digital TV and their blank error screens”) jumper that I’ll often pair with a pair of high-waisted denim shorts. Depending on the occasion, I’ll feel the need to look a little more polished. So I’ll put on my watch and suddenly it looks like I thought more about what I’ve put together outfit-wise. And I suppose I have, because I’ve thought to put on a watch, but it just looks a little more… proper? Less… slouchy? More acceptable?

The weird thing is that my watch ran out of battery long ago, so it doesn’t serve any practical purpose except for making people think that I’m less slapdash than I actually am.

But, then, when I think about it, you could argue that most clothing has that element to it.

Except, of course, what I’m wearing as I write this column in the privacy of my own room: a tattered Christmas-themed pyjama top, no pants and an overstretched bright purple cardigan. That’s obviously 100 per cent about style.