Words: Irina Chitas
Photos: Ricardo Santos
Shoes: Wock, New.ve
In an article brilliantly written by Nancy Beach for The New York Times in 1979 (“You Are What You Wear”, published that year on August 26th), several psychologists and psychiatrists discuss the emotional reading of the choices we make when we dress. Beach even mentions that “although we can all agree that the way we dress invokes some sort of response in those who see us, psychiatrists use these responses in a very concrete way. The first sentence in a psychiatrist’s mental status exam — the equivalent of a physician’s physical exam — starts off with a description of the patient in terms of dress”. In my case, as I’ve always been nostalgic for times I never even lived through, buying almost exclusively vintage clothes fits like a Ulisses’ custom-made leather glove.
I grew up with an ingrained awareness of the ephemerality of human life. I prefer to say that I have a “collecting” personality rather than a “hoarding” one (although anyone who has been inside my house may have a different opinion), largely because I believe that I am part of the history of the small curiosities I inhabit, and not the other way round. I never see an object as disposable: I apply biodegradability to my body — I pass through the world, it doesn’t pass through me. And that’s how I came to look at my clothes many years ago. I had the privilege of being part of the life of this garment. Our stories crossed a certain viaduct of time. Before me, there were other bodies, other stories. After me, so many others. If I buy a garment whose design is obviously from the 1970s, I find myself musing that the trousers may well have been witnesses to the Carnation Revolution, that they know what it’s like to live without freedom and that they felt their skin crawl at the first chords of Grândola. I also know that I romanticise too much, and I’m not particularly interested in finding out what the psychiatrists in that American article that is almost five decades old have to say on the subject.
It is perhaps because of this emotional charge that I imprint on my wardrobe that the pieces that belonged to my parents and grandparents take on special relevance in my personal narrative. There is no tradition of aesthetic dedication in my family: I’m not heir to wardrobes that are windows to the history of fashion, to grand balls in grand halls, to Sunday walks in silk skirts or to delicate brimmed hats from seaside holidays. I am, in fact, heir to lower-middle-class families, grandparents who ploughed the fields of Ribatejo and whose greatest luxury was yearly pilgrimages to downtown Lisbon to replace one shirt or another. I therefore have very little textile heritage left. But these are precisely the pieces I wear the most, cherish the most and talk about with the most pride.
It’s with my mouth full that I respond to compliments with “thank you, it was my grandmother’s”. I sometimes talk about the sustainable side to the issue — pieces that already existed, better materials, greater durability — but if before writing this text I thought that the justification for this warm rhetoric was just a superficial response of connection, through clothes, to someone who was so close to me, I only had to start writing to understand how the way we let our clothes tell our story every day has more weight than a burel blanket. In a 2023 study published by Ana Neto and João Ferreira, they talk about textile waste as an immediate symptom of a failed relationship and also the truth of the opposite argument: the longevity of garments is directly related to the duration of interpersonal relationships. This is the obvious part: I’ll take better care of an object that belonged to someone dear to me. But there are other layers: belonging, which we seek so much through the dress codes we choose every day to present ourselves to the world. By belonging to one of my grandmother’s pieces, by letting the piece belong to me, I not only fit into my own history, but I also take on the commitment of belonging to myself. In this garment, I shall continue, and not interrupt myself. There is also a tribute element to it to consider: maintaining a legacy of incorruptible values that we share, and which are different in every household — in my case, the fight for a fair life for all, community thinking, working for the whole and not for exclusive individual gain are inseparable. I’m not unaware that there’s an almost ironic side to this: I work in fashion, I’ve wanted to work in fashion for as long as I can remember, and I’m so fascinated by the wardrobes of people who used to see clothes as an exclusively utilitarian object. To now exhibit these pieces bought decades ago, without any aesthetic reference and in a Portugal without culture, and receive compliments from pairs of highly-trained eyes makes me want to laugh. Especially knowing that for my grandmother this would mean absolutely nothing.
You don’t need to be a psychologist or psychiatrist to know that, in the end, we can summarise much of what I’ve written as attachment, a difficulty letting go, the constant fear of these days and of the future. Yes, we’re in need of comfort. We’re living in troubled, threatening, terrifying times, with a social and political context that I’m almost grateful my grandmother isn’t seeing for herself, and maybe that coat is more of a kind of hug-meets-shelter. To wear it is to feel that no one is letting go of anyone’s hand, and whoever takes my wardrobe can also take away the certainty that they are not alone.