Rewilding in 2022: Final Progress Report

This year, it's fair to say, didn't quite go as I expected. Between February and August, Dai, the Spud and I seemed to constantly shuttle between different illnesses and viral infections. The chronic migraines that blighted my childhood came roaring back and made my life a misery until I was able to start on several medications and a course of acupuncture. In November I was diagnosed with a gastro-oesophagal condition that was intensely painful but which is now managed with medication, and I was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety, which I think I had been masking with my excessive shopping behaviours instead of actually dealing with. I have since begun therapy and will be on a short residential programme next year.

Our little family spent an awful lot of time indoors, either taking care of each other or simply sheltering from the record-breaking sweltering heat during the summer. For a while, it felt as though my one remaining nod to something approaching wildness was the organic veg box I was getting with a half-price discount code, which at least encouraged me to cook from scratch more - a habit I'd neglected - and try out new vegetarian and plant-based recipes. The feral housewife rearing her head perhaps.

One thing I didn't expect this year was that I became much more committed to my self-care. I'm not sure what caused this, I think maybe I was tired of feeling like my own last priority, or perhaps my new collection of medical diagnoses, but I started gradually adding habits like dry body brushing, taking more time choosing my outfits, eating more plants, getting routines in place to keep my house clean and tidy, and daily yoga and then I felt like it kind of snowballed. I started getting out of bed earlier and feeling excited and motivated each day. I found I had more energy, so I started trying new forms of movement like Buti yoga, kayaking, paddleboarding and running. I became amazed and proud of what my body could do, and excited by all the things I could feel it wanted to do as I got stronger. My confidence increased dramatically and I found I was better able to deal with life admin tasks - and life in general. 

As time wore on I found myself developing in different ways. When I stopped dressing daily in Goth style some years ago, someone I used to work with posted an image on my Facebook page that read, "You used to be a wild thing - don't let them tame you," which at the time unsettled me, but in hindsight makes me laugh. I am much wilder now, in my 'basic' dress, than I have been since childhood. As a younger person I was too devoted to my image to do half the things I do now. I used to go to the beach in full make-up, fishnet tights, boots, a faux fur coat and hair extensions - you wouldn't have got me on a paddleboard for all the tea in China. This year I've been more willing to try things, more physically active, and even a bit braver than I have known myself to be before.

Yet I realised that, for three and a half years now, I've written, thought, moodboarded, researched and analysed almost constantly about clothes, shopping and style. This thing that I have been trying to escape from is consuming me. The least interesting thing about me has come to dominate my creative life. 

Speaking of which, what about my style challenges? My 'Mrs Baggins' Style Challenge, and my mission to wear every single piece of clothing in my wardrobe, co-existed very well and after a time became the same thing, interwoven with my no-buy challenge like a triple-strand braid.

When things really started to get interesting was when I took a look back at my childhood for some of the posts I was working on. I started to remember how I had most enjoyed dressing, what sorts of combinations made me feel good. I began layering waistcoats over dresses over jeans, mismatching my earrings, tying scarves around my waist over long skirts. I thought about the adage, said by (I believe) Iris Apfel, 'when you don't dress like everyone else, you don't have to think like everyone else'. I started to receive compliments on my outfits, but the best thing about it was that I felt good, I was having fun, I felt like myself.

It was weird how continuing to wear my own clothes felt like a slightly radical and subversive act at times. I found myself somewhat flabbergasted at the existence of the word 'rewearing'. When I was young, we didn't need a word to express the concept of using the clothes we had bought and owned. How our perceptions and culture around clothing have changed.

I also found that, although the cool style of a friend could still occasionally send me off on a couple of hours' browsing through Vinted and Depop, the distinctions between different clothing styles and labels - such as 'alternative' - came to seem less important to me. At some point mid-browse I would find myself getting bored, as defining myself (or anyone else) by clothing came to seem less and less relevant. Having learned to focus more on my other interests, I naturally found myself returning, over and over, to books, music, cooking, art and nature, and finding less importance in what I did or didn't have in my wardrobe.

Could I still see myself wanting to buy more things in the future? Yeeees, but not in the same manner that I have previously. I have been amazed by how much I can do with what I already have. Interestingly, fast fashion, even second-hand fast fashion, holds less appeal than it ever has. I no longer want to continue accumulating. 'My wardrobe' no longer feels like a semi-abstract concept encompassing all the things that I have yet to buy. Instead, I see a future of creating endless combinations with my existing clothes, visible mending, making and customising my own pieces, and the occasional vintage or charity shop find, spiced up from time to time with commissions from slow fashion artisans or purchases from small businesses on my travels. A simple shift, a change of mindset, and yet I feel so much more grounded and happier in myself.

That said, by early December, I found I did have to make a few purchases - I had almost run out of socks, my everyday bras were no longer fit for purpose, my slippers had split at the seams, and several of my wardrobe staples (favourite T-shirts and jeans) were falling apart. It was a pain to have everything disintegrate at once, but I also felt triumphant - it was probably the first time I had needed new clothing since being post-partum. Replacing my worn-out socks at Christmas was a staple of my nineties childhood and I felt oddly proud to return to it - even if it had taken three and a half years to wear through my existing collection!

I was told that firewalking would change my life, and by the end of August, a month after putting my bare feet on hot coals, I had come to believe that. There was an energy that I could feel rising in me, a new sense of my own power. I was starting to get a feel for the enchanted life I had been yearning for - I didn't, and don't, know exactly how to get there, but I knew how to start, and the seeds are beginning to unfurl. I began by spending less and less time online (it's possible that you'll be seeing less of me on this blog in the new year, but we'll see how that shakes out). I took up my knitting needles and painstaking hand-sewing projects, accompanied by an innate understanding that every stitch, every purchase not made, every mass-produced object not consumed, took me another tiny step in the right direction.

I began clutching at creativity, as if every thought and urge I had suppressed in the all-consuming maelstrom of new-motherhood suddenly came surging to the forefront. Reading poetry. Brewing my own tea from herbs. Making natural dyes. Weaving. Sketching. Playing pennywhistle by firelight. Devouring folktales and stories of women losing and finding themselves in the natural world. Travel plans and festival tickets. Something is beginning to take shape around me, and it's a little bit wonderful and exhilarating and electrifying-frightening all at once. 

This is the rewilding I was looking for. It is slow-coming, creeping up little by little through art and story and the play of starlight on frost, but I can see at last a time approaching - inexorably - when it is me and I am it. I can't imagine ever going back to a life of Primark hauls and spending every waking moment on Instagram. I don't need those crutches any more. 

Inspirational reads this season:

Make, Thrift, Mend by Katrina Rodabaugh

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth

Wintering by Katherine May

Wild by Jay Griffiths

Sustainable Badass by Gittemarie Johansen

You Are Not A Before Picture by Alex Light

Tatterdemalion by Sylvia V. Linsteadt and Rima Staines

A Still Life by Josie George

Other inspiration:

The Hagitude podcast

Workshops and newsletters from Walk the Spiral Path

 I devoured the entire archives of The Hermitage with joy and wonder

I'm going to be taking some time off over Christmas and New Year, and next year I'm considering not sticking to such a regular schedule of posts, but we'll see how that goes. For now, blessings of the season to all of you, and best wishes for 2023.

The 'Mrs Baggins' Style Challenge

As you'll know from last week's post, I was beginning to think of style as a kind of scam to encourage us to feel dissatisfied with our selves and our clothes. You might think that this feeling would lead to a sense of liberation, but instead I found myself a little despondent: "You mean, this is it? Get used to feeling slightly uncomfortable in my skin, all the time, forever? I never get to changing-room-movie-montage my way out of this?" 

Then, in a rather timely manner I received a newsletter from Jill Chivers at Shop Your Wardrobe which contained a link to this post, which contains references to lots of studies about how the way we dress can affect our mood, confidence and self-image. I couldn't help but think back to how I'd felt all day in my jeans, which were just slightly too short to look right with my shoes. I'd wanted to work on accepting myself, but was I just stifling myself instead? Why didn't I just change the damn shoes?

This has been a year of many challenges, from several months of no-buy to a big rewilding plan, walking across hot coals and wearing everything in my 100+ item wardrobe. So I started to think, perhaps it was time to set myself some more.

I recently came across a piece of wisdom that suggests we give ourselves three years to work towards a chosen goal. At the end of that time, we have either succeeded, made progress, or perhaps learned that it's time to peacefully let go. But I've been working on this no-buy for three years, and to be honest I didn't fancy spending another three obsessing over the contents of my wardrobe.

So I decided, okay. Three months. For three months, I would lean into this whole style thing. I would do my best to learn whatever lessons it had to teach. I would shop my wardrobe. I would not leave the house in an outfit I did not like. I would take copious notes on how I felt and how it affected me. However, I would not shop. I would either make outfits with my own clothes or borrow from friends. Adding new clothes seemed like a thing that would only compound my state of identity crisis and confusion. 

At first I thought I should get some style guides and try to enact their advice, perhaps challenge myself with a different book for each month, but then I wondered if maybe I was looking at the whole thing wrong. The point wasn't to become stylish, it was to find my style. I feel fairly certain that my style is not to be found in someone else's list of essential basics or defined by which fruit or vegetable I most resemble. So I decided to start really, really simple, by just putting together outfits that I actually like when I get dressed in the mornings.

I know, right, it's hardly revolutionary. Usually when we are encouraged to discover our style, the suggestion is that style is 'out there somewhere', possibly still hanging on the rail in H&M, waiting for us to go and catch it in our fashion-y net. This is the kind of talk that makes me wary, makes me start thinking fashion is a con game. Comparatively, consider the wisdom of Leena Norms: 

 "When it comes to showing who you are through your clothes, I think that isn't a misguided idea, but if clothes are supposed to speak about who we are, surely where they came from is as important as, like... what colour they are. How frequently I buy them is as important as how 'me' they are, whatever that means. I also think that re-wearing clothes makes them more you. Like, you really settle in to your style when you re-wear stuff you really, really love, and people start knowing you for that. So rather than always having to reinvent the wheel and walk into New Look and be like 'Right, I've got to find an item that's 'me',' the secret might actually be already be at home in your wardrobe into looking like yourself."

I'd already learned from wearing my wardrobe that I have those things because I like them. So it's kind of ironic that I end up feeling bad when I wear them. Especially when I quite possibly have the power to... not.

Do you know what made me think twice about buying a bunch of style guides to slavishly follow their advice? (I recently flicked through one that suggested leather leggings are a must-have wardrobe staple... all I will say is, to each their own, but I cannot express how much I do not wish to wear a pair of leather leggings in this lifetime.) I was scrolling on Pinterest, because although I know it's a total waste of time it sometimes feels like I'm doing something productive and if I can just find the right image it will magically solve all my fashion conundrums forever, and I found myself looking at a picture of Emma Orbach.

I deeply admire Emma Orbach. She lives in a self-built hobbit house on the slopes of a mountain in Pembrokeshire, off the grid, where she lives off the land, tends horses and plays the harp. And has done, without running water or electricity, for over twenty years.

In this photograph, Emma Orbach was wearing a crystal pendant necklace and a stripy v-neck jumper. And I thought, for heaven's sake, this woman lives in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere, presumably without a mirror, milking goats and communing with her spirit guides, she obviously knows there are WAY more important things than her appearance, and she can still be bothered to put on a nice necklace that she likes. So why the hell can't I?

I wanted to wear my equivalent of Emma Orbach's necklace. Nice things, that I like, in a combination that I enjoy. 

So I'm calling it The Mrs Baggins Style Challenge. I give myself three months to see if a little bit of style really can change my life, or even just my mood. I'll keep you posted.

This week, this blog is also two years old! Does it feel like two years to you?!

I Wore Every Single Item In My Wardrobe

In the manner of quintessential mad scientists throughout time, I decided to run an experiment on myself (and my clothes) to see if I could settle the ongoing wardrobe conundrum that I identified in my last post. The premise was simple: I set out to wear every single piece of clothing and accessory that I own.

I know I was recently thinking about adding some more styles and silhouettes to my wardrobe, but it occurred to me that this perhaps wouldn't be the best plan while I was still overwhelmed and finding it difficult to identify what I do and don't like. I could easily end up fielding total chaos, and I didn't want that. So first I decided to try to get clear on what I do and don't feel good in - but not by intellectualising it or thinking my way through it, because I've already learned that that doesn't work. I couldn't decide just by thinking about it whether I feel happier wearing more quirky, unconventional outfits or simple, refined ones - or something in between - but I realised that I could start to find out simply by using what I already had and just paying attention. Do I feel embarrassed and unattractive or cheerful and empowered in bright layers? Do I feel invisible and staid or sexy and elegant in plain black? Time to find out.

I'd noticed over the course of this year that whilst I often think I'm wearing all my clothes, there are items I do actually avoid, often because of a vague feeling of discomfort that I've chosen to ignore instead of take notice of, or because my body doesn't get on with the garment (like shorts that are just so pretty, but which also ride up between my thighs and have to be pulled inelegantly out of my crotch every two minutes). So to try to help myself stop avoiding and ignoring these feelings, I started using this wardrobe inventory spreadsheet from Christina Mychas. I just took a moment each morning after getting dressed to note down the items I had put on. I also started noting in my journal each evening how I had felt throughout the day.

I felt a bit worried starting this experiment because I had a feeling that I didn't actually like the way I felt in a lot of my clothes. I was also concerned that I might mistake temporary boredom with an item for genuine discomfort or dislike, so I decided to only commit to wearing the items at first, not making any final decisions about them. That was a bridge I'd cross when I came to it.

So what did I learn from challenging myself to wear my stuff?

First, I learned to pay attention more to the most subtle of feelings. Sure, the T-shirt and leggings I'm wearing right now are cute, but I can feel that I don't want to go and run my errands later wearing this, I'd rather change into something a little smarter. Previously I would have ignored the tiny deep-down feeling of reluctance and just gone about my day feeling a little bit less-than.

I also learned that having some things I don't wear often is... not a bad thing. Classic minimalist logic would dictate that I should get rid of things I wear less than once a year, but I have some beautiful medieval dresses that I only wear very occasionally... But I love them! They make me so happy! I started to think it would be a joyless wardrobe (life) without the occasional frivolous thing, even if it wasn't practical for regular use.

Encouragingly, filling in the inventory spreadsheet allowed me to see changing trends in my purchasing behaviours. Items purchased before 2020 were more likely to be bought new, and for reasons such as 'just liked it'. Items purchased in 2022 were almost all secondhand, and the reasons were more likely to be 'replacement', 'versatile', 'basic' or 'needed for a trip' (the latter being a ski jacket I got off Vinted to keep me warm and dry on our Shetland sojourn). 

I found that I could style 99% of the things I had in multiple ways, even the 'maybe' items and many things I had mentally earmarked as unwearable. The exceptions were the items that simply did not fit or which caused physical discomfort in some way, and eventually I ordered a Re-Fashion bag to deal with those.

A couple of weeks in, I noticed that I was feeling differently about my wardrobe. The itch to buy this or that 'one more item' to 'pull everything together' had completely faded as I was coming to appreciate the sheer vastness of what I already had. I was also coming to understand just how much money, labour and resources had gone into the making of this hugely abundant selection of clothes. This made me want to keep wearing them for longer, instead of putting myself through some intensive makeover experience to end up with an entirely different set of clothes, which was the idea that had been niggling in the back of my mind for quite some time beforehand. I mean, I knew I had a lot, but actually making myself wear all the things helped me to experience that on a physical, visceral level. I have ENOUGH.

However, I also noticed that I had lots and lots of the same kind of thing. My biggest vice, apparently, was still T-shirts with printed designs, dozens of black ones in particular, mostly purchased for the simple reason 'I just liked it'. Whilst they are all wearable and I still like them, I have made a mental note that when they start to wear out I will replace a good half of them with different items - long-sleeved tops that I can layer with, tank tops for the hot weather we are seeing more regularly in the UK, maybe even some T-shirts that are not black (wild, I know). I've been pulled towards uniform dressing, and I do appreciate the simplicity of the tee-and-jeans combo, but after several weeks cycling through my many semi-identical tops, I was, frankly, a bit bored, and eager to mix things up a little bit. And not by buying another T-shirt, which I suspect is the strategy I was previously applying, hence why I have so many.

Did I manage to answer the question - simple or chaotic? Well, yes and no. I must admit that I don't think I'm ready for a uniform just yet. I found that I really enjoyed layering things in unusual ways and being creative. My emphasis remains on comfort and practicality, but I found a lot of enjoyment and - yes - empowerment in adding distinctive touches and flourishes. So I remain betwixt and between, but happily I no longer feel as though I'm being pulled in different directions, because I understand what works for me right now.

I also felt, for the first time in a long time, a strong connection to my younger self and my authentic style. At last I am beginning to choose to pay attention to my unique aesthetic impulses and preferences, rather than assuming that other people know more about style and taste than I do, at least as it applies to myself. 

This was a really worthwhile experiment, and I'm glad I made the effort to plumb the depths of my cupboard and those lurking 'maybe' boxes. Some of those items made the best outfits, by the way.

Inspiration:

Closet Beliefs that are Limiting Your Personal Style

My Ever-Evolving Relationship With My Clothes

6 Bad Style Habits You Need To Break ASAP