Frivolous

I like clothes.

I like getting dressed. I like outfits. I like complimenting other people when I see that they look nice, or if their make-up looks good, or if they've got a particularly interesting handbag: friends, strangers on the street, my kids' headteacher. I have a small section of my brain that is dedicated to outfits I once saw and liked. Claudia Winkleman's gold sequin kafkan from Taller Marmo. Mary-Kate Olsen's all-black, 'don't-look-at-me' look with her beaten-up old Birken. Zendaya's hot-pink Tom Ford co-ord. Early Friends-era Phoebe Buffay in her big jumper and velvet scrunchie. Stevie Nicks in her massive floaty cardigans and her attitude.

And they don't have to be famous. Nor do their outfits have to be massively exciting. The other day, I saw a woman walking across a car park wearing jeans, a belt, a tucked-in shirt, and silver brogues. You look amazing! I wanted to shout at her. I didn't because that would be slightly insane given how far away I was.

The point is not the actual outfits. If I wore, for example, Florence Welch's turquoise dress, put on a hundred necklaces, and smudged my mascara, I would not pull it off. But she does. (In fact, I would argue that one of the all-time most memorable red-carpet outfit crimes looks excellent on Ashley Tisdale, even though nobody should ever try to replicate it unless doing it ironically.)

There's something about a good outfit. I don't know how to describe it. It doesn't mask you, or hide things away. It reveals something about you. A subtle something. I recognise it in myself because of the way it makes me feel. A little extra boost, like something clicking, satisfyingly, into place. The way I stride out of my door in the mornings. I recognise it in other women, too. They look great because they think they look great. Does any of that make sense?

The first time I remember feeling this was at a school disco, wearing a green velvet dress, my frizzy hair twisted into sections and pinned up with tiny, shimmering butterflies. I was wearing body glitter! I sparkled like a disco ball in the sunlight. I felt incredible. I smiled extra wide, I chatted more, I laughed louder. Something about that green dress shifted my 'inside' personality and made it more obvious on the outside. Something that, as a shy introvert, I've always struggled with.

And I would never have imagined myself, at the age of 37, enjoying clothes as much as I am. 18-year-old me would have thought that the late thirties are far too old to make any sort of effort. But 18-year-old me was stupid. I didn't know that I had years and years of terrible outfits ahead of me. My twenties were like one long, painful process of elimination. I learned what didn't work:

• Anything strapless. You have to wear a special bra, or go braless, and then spend the entire day hoiking it up lest your boobs pop out at random
• Ballet flats. Some of them look beautiful, but they are essentially made of cardboard. They will disintegrate and screw your feet up
• Bodycon dresses. Painful. Can't breathe. Can't eat. Pointless
• Anything too girly. I've got a pretty green floral maxi dress. Every time I wear it, I get compliments. It objectively suits me. And I never wear it. Why? Because it feels too delicate. It makes me feel like a Victorian lady on the verge of fainting. If I step out of the door in a floral outfit, I feel a bit uncomfortable and on edge, like someone might kidnap me, or like I might topple over in a slight breeze

Now I know what I like. That's important. Saves money, saves time. More importantly, I know what makes me feel good. That's what I think people are doing when they're categorising different styles into 'aesthetics' (a word I would ban from every human mouth and brain, if possible). It's just people trying to nail down what they like, but trying to do it way too quickly. It actually takes ages to work out what clicks with you, in all areas of life. And it constantly evolves; I'm trying to buy pieces that I can keep for years to come, but I know it'll shift a little as I get older.

I don't think my style fits into an aesthetic (blegh). I can't easily put it into words. I like oversized. I like t-shirts that hit thigh-length and make me feel a bit like a surly teenage boy. I like the occasional bit of glitter. I like earrings that are just about bordering on obnoxious in terms of size, but not quite tipping over into ridiculous. It's not something I can explain, but I do know when something fits and when it doesn't.

I use the app Indyx. It reminds me of being little, sitting at my dining table, making tiny little clothes for paper dolls with my friend Vicky. We had templates of wonky, biro-drawn girls, and then we'd make up outfits to lay on top of them. Sometimes on rainy weekends, we'd make a new batch of clothes for each other's dolls, put them in an envelope, and post them through each other's doors just for fun. Part of me has always loved this, part of me has always enjoyed the creativity of it. (A big part of me has always loved handbags, too, which is why I seriously considered moving to London and becoming a bag designer when I was a teenager. Until I saw how much the courses cost. And how much it would cost for me to live in London. Dream immediately extinguished.)

Indyx is like the digital version of that paper doll activity. You upload photos of your clothes, and then you play around with them. I have gameified the process of clothes buying. If I'm going to buy anything, it has to go with at least five outfits (unless it's for a one-off occasion). I'll take a photo of the item (or screenshot it from Vinted), put it in the app, and assemble it with my current clothes. If it doesn't work, I won't buy it. I have become a bit obsessed with beating my outfit score. How many outfits does my Joanie sweatshirt go with? 6? 7? 8? If I can get to 10, I'll be really pleased. If I'm going to buy something, I want to always want to reach for it, I want to love it, I want to use it until it becomes unwearable.

Also, the part of me that loves statistics enjoys the geekiness of Indyx. I log my outfits each day, even if I'm just wearing joggers and a t-shirt; then I can get end-of-year stats for each item. Like Spotify Wrapped, but for clothes.

And look. I feel a bit uncomfortable writing about this. Partially because this is primarily a newsletter about gaming and pop culture, and nothing about this is touching on that. But also, I do understand the criticism around fashion. It's frivolous, it's superficial, it's pointless. Who cares about what people wear? Can you be a deep thinker, and also obsess over a bag for months until you eventually get it for your birthday?

There's always part of me - the snobby, not-like-other-girls part of me - that rejects fashion as nonsense, that wants to rile against it, because something about it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. A bit ... at odds with who I feel I am.

There's a little nugget of psychological goodness here. If I were a therapist, I'd dig into this like a person on a late-night ice-cream binge, rooting through a tub of Ben & Jerry's for a good chunk of cookie dough. I've talked about this before, but the '00s were truly a terrible time to have your formative years. And I say that as someone who has a lot of fond memories of it. I think about the messaging that ran rampant back then: only girly girls care about clothes. You're not a girly-girl, are you? You're different. A deep thinker. You don't care about this shit. Do you? All the different parts of me were at war with one another.

But if you look at actual fashion back in the '00s, not only did we have utterly unattainable body standards to reach, we also had programs like What Not to Wear, and even the endlessly more endearing, body-positive How to Look Good Naked. Everything was still about flattery. Cinch that waist! Go shorter in the skirt, show off those pins! Get a good bra, show off that cleavage! Even the well-meaning shows were all about the F word.

I remember my friend Heather bought me a book for my sixteenth birthday. It was a little pink square-shaped thing, packed with tons of tips for actual adult women, not teenagers, but we felt like adults at the time anyway. I devoured that thing. 'When it comes to sex, small-breasted women should go on top, otherwise your boobs will disappear when you lie flat,' it said, 'but women with big stomachs should go on the bottom, because it makes their tummies look smaller, and this will be the most flattering.' (I'm paraphrasing here, because this was 2004, but this is the one bit of advice I remember pretty clearly.) I, being sixteen and a virgin, stored this nugget away in my brain for the future, not realising that the concept of having to stick purely to the missionary position just because you happen to have a larger stomach is absolutely bonkers advice.

Flattering. I'd ban that from every human mouth and face, or whatever it was I said earlier. Fuck flattery. Embrace non-flattery, is what I say.

I'm being a bit facetious here, for fun purposes. Some of it I eventually shook off as being irrelevant. But on the whole, flattery was the one thing that was holding me back for so long. I felt chained, trapped by the need to be ... what? Good-looking? Pretty? The right shape? The right size? And it's all very well and good if you want to optimise your outfits for your body shape or whatever. I'm not interested in other people's decisions. We all make our own choices. And, while I'm on it, we all have body wobbles, too. I have days where I feel self-conscious about my stomach or my thighs or whatever. But on the whole, I've realised, the word 'flattery' is a trap. For years, I wanted to dress in a way that would look good or acceptable to men, rather than wearing things that would actually make me excited to go out of my house sometimes. You know? Men (or rather, their opinions of me) were a haunting invisible presence, even though I wasn't consciously aware of it. And stepping out of that, as I get to the age where I give less and less shits, is liberating. I feel like the Olsen twins, rejecting what people would like them to wear and digging into what they actually feel good in, instead. As the wise woman Angela Scanlon once said, the lioness does not concern herself with dressing for the male gaze. Whether I'm wearing a big old comfy jumper or a sheer dress, it's for me, not you.

Finally, I have found balance: I can love clothes and handbags and shoes, and still feel like the inside version of myself. I can use one to display something about the other. It's a subtle freedom, a little perk of getting older, and I'm enjoying it.

I reject the idea that fashion is purely superficial. To use the obvious argument: why isn't it art if it hangs on your body instead of your walls?

There are parts of the fashion industry that I detest. The unfair labour practices. Influencers using the word 'obsessed' to describe items they know full well are going to dissolve in the washing machine. Microplastics leaking from our clothes into the ocean. Mountains of fast fashion items, shipped to other countries and dumped, the Earth itself drowning in polyester. There are brands that I wear that actively contribute to this. I try to work around it by buying almost all of my clothes second-hand. But actually, it's not okay. And I could be doing more to protest against this.

But there are parts of the fashion industry that I love. Like, have you seen Rahul Mishra's F/W 2025 collection, Becoming Love? How can you look at this and not admire the craft of it?

And of course, this is elite fashion. Clothes that you wouldn't actually wear as a regular human. But on a more relatable, everyday level, I do think that putting together a good outfit is an exercise in creativity. I've noticed that the more creative activities I pursue (guitar, embroidery, etc), the healthier I feel in my brain. I become more curious, more open to ideas. My writing gets better. It's like I need to fuel that part of my brain in small, seemingly unrelated actions.

The truth is, I'm often at home. It's something that I have to contend with as both a freelancer, and someone with a chronic nerve pain condition. I have to be here. Sometimes, I put together a nice outfit knowing full well the only place I'll be going is school, and maybe the corner shop. But there's something psychologically helpful about getting dressed properly. My pain sometimes feels so large that it's unmanageable; easy to lose myself in there, somewhere, to forget that I am an interesting person in my own right outside of the pain and the tasks I'm managing every day. This act of getting dressed is me holding up a sign to myself. You're still in there! Don't let the darkness swallow you up. You're bright and vibrant, despite everything. Don't let it take you completely.

So I keep making an effort in the mornings (not all mornings: if I'm busy with the kids or I'm in a tremendous amount of pain where even trying to put moisturiser on my face hurts, I give myself a pass). And I get on with my day. And sometimes, if I catch sight of myself in a mirror or whatever, I feel a little tiny burst of joy. Which is a huge shift in mindset that twenties-me, in all her judgmental attitude about age, could never have imagined.

If you liked this post and you want to support me, you can do so on my Ko-Fi page, where I am currently vlogging my way through advent. (In fact, you can watch me making outfits on Day 4 if you're also into clothes.) Any amount enables me to keep pouring time into this thing. But really, I just appreciate you being here, and reading right until the end. 💜