It’s Me, I’m the Problem

Last year, I started the what-will-hopefully-be-longstanding tradition of leaving town for the month of July with my family. I continue to work, but, with the kids out of school, for one month I am temporarily released from the handcuffs of our regular highway hypnosis-inducing schedule and get a perspective shift in another part of the world, specifically Europe. It’s an exercise in validating my suspicion that NY is more ridiculous than ever, however unsettling that validation may be. 

I am not a “Europeans do everything better” person, and this is a dangerous position to take as an American traveling in Europe during the vacation months, because the lens you see things through with a U.S. income and vacation-time expenses is not the lens that regular Europeans, no matter where you go, are using. A 5 euro glass of wine is only a steal because in Manhattan an $18 glass of wine is the low norm - in Italy, and for everyday Italian, it’s not a bargain. So when I walk around in July with big heart eyes I try to constantly re-center myself on the more likely reality that there, though it does not cost $100 just to step outside your house the way it does in New York, lower living expenses are mostly commensurate with lower income expectations. 

In the fashion industry, one of the hardest things for American designers to wrap their minds around is the difference in shopping mannerisms between Americans and Europeans. The biggest difference is the relative lack of the obsessive, wasteful, constant consumption performed by Americans, which only seems to become worse every year. You don’t find nearly as many “brand haul” posts from European influencers or even regular-degular people, because the S.O.P. for European customers is not to hoard, consume, then toss the way that Americans have socialized themselves into thinking is an expression of wealth or status. 

This is why global brands obsess over how to crack the American market, because nobody - nobodyyyy - shops like Americans. The volume of purchases, the general lack of care of what they are made of or how long they will last, the expectation that every new trend will be acquired and displayed proudly…. This behavior has become somewhat of a specialté, visible across all industries, a runaway train filled with passengers who are largely unaware they are even moving at all. 

And it’s super, super hard to reconcile a love for fashion and its magic with a general horror at the way people consume. In a newsletter I received recently, the author encouraged anyone who is interested in buying those mesh flats that have taken fashion feet by storm this spring/summer to just go out and buy them. “Stopping yourself from purchasing a pair of mesh ballet flats is not going to save the planet. Real change comes through public policy.” And however true both of these sentences may be, the overarching sentiment that our personal consumption habits do not affect the planet is so… sad. Of course they do. Why do you think all these companies are producing all this shit? Because people keep showing them that they can and will buy it.

We do seem to have reached a point of nihilism, knowing that a few decrepit senators and the Koch brothers' impacts on the planet are more than we will ever personally be able to affect. And to be fair, being asked to do anything at all while our rights are under attack, everything is too expensive and nothing feels secure is… unfair. But also, the smaller behaviors that we can tweak in our own lives, at scale, truly impact the culture, and the culture is a huge part of what’s keeping us sick, in debt and hurtling toward extinction. Perpetuating a culture that each of us deserves 1) everything we want 2) all the time 3) as quickly as possible only does harm to the other half of the global population that lives on less than $7 a day. 

This year so far has been a bit of a cocoon year for me. I am working a LOT, which I am grateful for, but it’s taken most of my free time and attention away from thinking about how I look. I am growing out my natural hair after decades of chemical and heat abuse, and this is leaving me more self-conscious and unsure of how I look than I have felt in 20+ years. I haven’t bought many new things, and the things I feel drawn to are those that feel like they have some sort of historical importance to me, like the Prada Sport windbreaker I bought from The RealReal, from back when Prada was discreet and often quite functional, or a little red shift dress from J. Crew, whose catalogues in the 90s represented the kind of life I assumed I would have as an adult - bouncing between my open plan loft on Wooster Street and my enormous beach shack out east in my old Saab. Unfortunately I’m still pretty off trend, but I’m also dressing pretty authentically to my own personal style pathology, which feels alright. 

As September approaches, which is often a time that is easy to let your consumption get out of control, I try to take a mindful approach.

• Before I buy anything for Fall, I will unpack my entire wardrobe (this is a whole day event because I pack things away seasonally to stay organized and focused and save room), and see what I want to pull out and mix in for the season ahead. If there are things that no longer fit me or truly do not serve me anymore, I will typically gift them to a friend who I know will appreciate them. I know it’s tempting to try to resale everything, and if this is your way of earning income then more power to you, but nothing beats passing something down to a friend instead, if you’re able. 

• Before I shop for new school clothes for my daughter, we carefully clean out her wardrobe together and divvy up hand me downs to ship to her many younger friends across the country. We talk about what we need and whether we actually “need” it, and then talk about where to get those things from and why we get them there. For anything that is not pass-downable, I save them for the Helpsy bin that I organized for her school, so that I know they will reach a fabric recycler and get a chance at a second life that doesn’t involve distribution to the Global South.

These two things - which are no small feat and I shame exactly no one for not making time to do them if they genuinely cannot - keep me accountable to my already many possessions, shares the love within my friends and loved ones, and ensures that every time I do buy something new (or pre-owned), it is genuinely me saying, “You, I pick YOU, I love YOU!”

Let me know if you’re doing some version of this too!