Ought to I Get Rid of My Garments After a Divorce?

I’m just lately divorced after 14 years. I’ve lived all over the world and, in a month, I’m set to maneuver to Los Angeles. Over time I’ve amassed a wardrobe that expresses each the power of the locations I lived and the lives I lived in them with the particular person I as soon as liked. However all the things in my life is downsizing. So what do I preserve? What do I shed? Methods to make these selections? — Donatella, Brooklyn
Not lengthy after the actress Ellen Barkin divorced the billionaire Ronald Perelman when she was simply beginning to movie “Ocean’s 13,” Ms. Barkin determined to dump all the jewellery she had acquired throughout her marriage: a group of over 100 items that had been valued at greater than $15 million.
“These are simply not recollections I wish to put on out each day,’’ she informed Ruth La Ferla, who wrote concerning the sale for The New York Instances.
That’s an excessive response to a divorce, but in addition an comprehensible one. Neglect Proust’s madeleines; garments are repositories of feelings, recollections and tales, and easily seeing them can take us sliding down the wormhole to the previous. That’s partially why we grasp on to them: They comprise the emotional imprint of who we had been after we purchased them, or wore them.
That behavior is usually seen as a very good factor. It’s what’s behind the observe of holding a marriage gown, symbolic of that ceremony of passage. Likewise, my mother-in-law had a rose-print frock that had hung in her closet for many years — a relic from the time she met Queen Elizabeth II as a younger girl after a taking a ship throughout the ocean from Canada.
However this observe can backfire if the tales contained within the materials are sad. If, say, you see a pair of denims and bear in mind the struggle you had together with your accomplice once you wore them, or a sure gown makes you recall some unhealthy information you acquired or a skirt brings up emotions of betrayal or entrapment. That’s why, relating to divorce, magazines corresponding to Glamour sometimes characteristic articles like, “Getting Over a Divorce Meant Saying Goodbye to All my Stunning Garments.”
In your case, the most effective method could also be to easily undergo your wardrobe and see what feelings are conjured by every garment — primarily play free affiliation together with your garments. Maybe do it with a pal, who can maintain up each bit whilst you say what involves thoughts. It’s a variation on Marie Kondo’s “does this convey me pleasure” method. Kind the clothes into piles (preserve, discard) in accordance with the sentiments they evoke. When you can’t resolve, create a 3rd group of maybes. In any case, ache does recede with time, and it’s doable {that a} shirt at the moment stuffed with angst that after upon a time additionally represented, say, exploration, would possibly someday once more.
As for the discard pile, take a web page from Ms. Barkin and contemplate promoting garments in good situation on resale websites like Vestiaire or The RealReal. That method, you aren’t solely escaping unhealthy recollections, but in addition benefiting from them and utilizing them as a method to transfer ahead into your subsequent section. Something that may’t be bought and remains to be in fine condition must be donated — simply because a bit represents one thing unfavorable for you doesn’t imply it may possibly’t be a delight for another person, which in flip could also be a soul increase for you.
And don’t consider the garments chances are you’ll abandon as a sacrifice. You wish to winnow down your wardrobe not simply since you are being pressured to by transferring right into a smaller house, however as a result of it’s liberating to create each literal and psychological house for a brand new you, with a brand new look, to emerge. That chance is a present you may give to your self.
Your Fashion Questions, Answered
Each week on Open Thread, Vanessa will reply a reader’s fashion-related query, which you’ll ship to her anytime through e-mail or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.