Recently I was re-watching episodes of Downton Abbey and was struck by the scene in which Matthew Crawley discovers his dinner coat has a burn mark on it. The horror! In Edwardian England, this was a big deal. Today a person with the equivalent of Matthew’s net worth might simply discard the jacket and buy another or choose from many other replacement options in the closet. Poor Matthew however struggled with two disconcerting prospects: First, the fact that he would have to appear at dinner with inappropriate clothing; and second, that the coat would need to be sent out to London so that a tailor could replace the damaged panel.
The rigidity of aristocratic Edwardian dress code aside, a couple of things are noteworthy in this scenario. In the past, we relied on fewer items of clothing, each appropriate to a given situation, and wore them repeatedly. In addition, the attitude about the value of an item of clothing was such that you didn’t simply discard it; you repaired it. Dinner coats were meticulously made, hand-crafted garments with meaning: focused attention to details that made them appropriate for display in specific venues.
Why have we changed our attitudes about the value of a garment? Unfortunately today, we are caught in a vicious consumer cycle of fast fashion in which the number of new things that one owns and can show off each season has become a gauge of worth. This consumer-addictive mindset is perpetuated by the fashion industry which cycles trend-based seasons of clothing in and out again up to six times per year. With so much constantly available, nothing is rare. And with the short-lived boost of satisfaction that comes with the purchase of practically any new thing, we have lost the ability for procuring, or actively seeking out something crafted with care and meaning. As a result, we surely miss out on the comparatively longer-term joy and satisfaction that purposefully crafted garments can bring.
Marie Kondo’s well-known books about tidying up and sparking joy gave many of us pause about the amount of meaningless junk we tend to accumulate in our homes. Can so many items really be useful? Or are our overstuffed homes that we must constantly sort, arrange, add-to and re-arrange simply making our lives more complicated and less satisfying? These questions apply to our closets as well, which tend to be filled with too much cheap, mass-produced clothing -- and yet we never know what to wear! We must ask ourselves if a closet full of hundreds of things really makes us happier.
In Edwardian England, aristocrats didn’t need to show off so much as they had to hold up a traditional set of customs. There was no need to put wealth on display with, for example, a closet full of multiple dinner coats if a single beautiful one would suffice. Wealth was evident. But the point is not to be evidently wealthy, the point is to be satisfied and happy. We will have an easier time discovering this sweet spot if we focus on finding meaningfully made garments that not only bring joy into our lives, but that we wouldn’t think about discarding.
Photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker