Fixing My Wardrobe

I don’t like my clothes anymore.

That’s not entirely new information. I wrote about it recently, the wardrobe post, the labels and the aesthetic I’m moving toward. But writing about what I want is easier than confronting what I actually have, and what I actually have is a rail of jeans and neutral tops that belong to a version of me I’m quietly in the process of leaving behind.

I haven’t bought anything for a while. I think I stopped buying things when I stopped knowing what to buy, when the old defaults stopped feeling right and the new direction wasn’t yet clear enough to shop toward. That gap between knowing what you’re moving away from and knowing what you’re moving toward is an uncomfortable place to stand, and I’ve been standing in it for longer than I’d like.

The direction is clearer now.

What I want is androgynous, skewed feminine. Dark, considered, a little alternative. Clothes that feel like mine rather than clothes that feel like a decision I stopped making years ago. I’ve written about the labels I’m drawn to. I know the aesthetic. The knowing isn’t the hard part.

The hard part is the body.

I own some skirts. I’ve never worn them in public. There’s a version of this where I say that’s about confidence, or about not being ready, and those things are true; but the more honest version is that I’m waiting for the physical to catch up with the intention. Hormones will come, but not yet, and even when they do the changes will be slow. Months. Perhaps a year or two before things begin to feel like they match. Dressing femininely before that point feels, some days, like wearing something that doesn’t quite fit yet, like trying on a life that’s almost yours but not quite.

So the plan is slow and deliberate. Androgynous first, feminine gradually. Build from the middle outward rather than arriving all at once somewhere I’m not yet ready to inhabit fully. Replace the jeans one at a time. Find pieces that feel like progress without feeling like performance.

The wardrobe won’t fix itself. But I know what I’m fixing it toward.