If you are planning to hang around for a while, it is worth spending some time to make sure your old clothes are in good shape.
Over time, holes will appear in the fabric, buttons will fall off, and seams will start to split. It is not hard to sew patches over these things, but if you do it yourself you will have to decide how to do it, which can be difficult. If you are used to sewing nice flat areas on the inside of your pants or shirt, you may find that patching is tricky. But if you tailor your clothes yourself, what seems like a small problem can turn into a big one.
It’s very easy for your old clothes to become worthless. Your main goal should be to extend their lifespan as long as possible; after that they will be beyond help anyway.
The problem is that by the time you get to be an adult, most of your clothes are already out of style. If you still like something you bought in high school, for instance, it’s hard to find a more fashionable outfit that will look good with your body type and your personality.
And even if you can find something new, it may not fit properly and you may end up feeling uncomfortable. The result is that most of us end up having more clothes than we need, and many of us never wear them at all.
You can avoid this problem by taking advantage of the fact that fashion is cyclical. If today’s fashion is out of style tomorrow, it usually comes back later in the cycle. So don’t worry about being different. Buy what looks good on the racks now but maybe won’t be fashionable ten years from now.
You are probably familiar with the comparison between a pig in a poke and a pig in a poke. The first is an item of unknown quality, but if you buy it, you can always check it out by trying it on. The second is an item of unknown age, but if you buy it, you can examine the date on the label to see how long it has been sitting around.
Likewise with your old clothes. If they are not too bad, get them out of your drawer and try them on again. You may find that they fit better than before. If they are good, you can sell or give them away, or put them away for when they will fit you again.
You don’t need to buy new clothes if you know how to make them. And you don’t need to buy new clothes, even if they are the right color, if you know how to make them look like they do on the television.
The basic idea is that the more expensive, the better. If something is cheap, it can be made cheaply; but things that are expensive are worn out or damaged by use.
To get a suit made of silk or wool requires making an expensive suit out of cheap materials. But the difference isn’t so great between $300 and $350 for a suit. When you’re talking about $1,000-plus for a suit, the difference starts to matter. And then it matters still more when you’re talking about $5,000 or more. It’s not just that these suits last longer than others; it’s that they feel better than others, and of course feel better than less expensive ones of their kind.
“If I’m going as a character from a beloved comic book, I’ll do my best to make sure it’s an accurate representation. But if I have to wear a costume, I don’t want to have to wear a costume that is going to be uncomfortable and out of date.
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
We have to create a whole new set of rules to see how they play out.
And that takes not just a new mindset and a different way of thinking but also a whole new language, and even a whole new set of symbols.
