I just didn’t realise it at the time.
Every time my life changed, so did my wardrobe.
I just didn’t realise it at the time.
When I look back over my life, I don’t remember my clothes nearly as much as I remember why I wore them.
There were clothes for different versions of me. The young woman finding her way. The wife. The working woman. The woman who had lost her confidence somewhere along the way. And eventually, the woman who decided she wanted to find herself again.
For a long time, my wardrobe reflected how I felt about myself.
When my marriage fell apart, so did a lot of my confidence. I put on weight and, like so many women, I found myself hiding behind clothes rather than enjoying them. I wasn’t particularly happy with myself, and it showed in the way I dressed.
Then one day I decided enough was enough.
It wasn’t one dramatic moment. There wasn’t a magic solution. I simply realised I didn’t want to keep feeling that way. I wanted to look after myself again. I wanted to feel good about myself again.
So I started making changes.
Losing the weight was hard. Fifteen kilograms later, I had a wardrobe full of clothes that no longer fitted.
But looking back, losing the weight wasn’t really the most important part.
The important part was that somewhere along the way, I had started caring about myself again.
I began to see myself differently. I had more confidence. I enjoyed getting dressed again. I started choosing clothes because I liked them, rather than because they hid me.
And then came the wardrobe cull.
Out went the clothes that no longer fitted, the clothes I had kept because I might wear them one day, and the clothes that belonged to a version of me I no longer recognised.
It was surprisingly liberating.
Then Geoff came along, and life changed again.
There were new adventures, new places and eventually life aboard Onyx. My wardrobe had to become smaller, simpler and more practical. Suddenly I couldn’t have a wardrobe for every occasion. I had to decide what I really loved wearing and what actually belonged in my life.
And perhaps that was another lesson.
The older I got, the less interested I became in having lots of clothes and the more interested I became in having the right clothes.
Clothes that felt like me.
Clothes that worked for the life I was actually living.
Even my hair became part of that journey. When the silver started taking over, I eventually stopped fighting it. It became another part of accepting who I was rather than trying to recreate who I had once been.
Looking back, I can see that my wardrobe has never really been about fashion.
It has been a record of my life.
It has changed when my circumstances changed. It has changed when my body changed. It has changed when my confidence changed. And it has changed when I changed.
Perhaps that’s why I have always been fascinated by clothes.
As a designer, I see the fabric, the cut, the colour and the construction.
But as a woman, I now see something else.
I see the woman wearing them.
Because sometimes the clothes we wear are telling us something long before we are ready to listen.
They can tell us when we’re hiding.
They can tell us when we’ve stopped caring.
And they can tell us when we’re beginning to come back to ourselves.
That fifteen-kilogram weight loss changed my wardrobe, but the bigger change was learning to care about the woman who was going to wear it.
And I think that’s something many women understand.
We can spend years looking after everyone else and somehow lose sight of ourselves along the way. Then one day, we look in the mirror and realise it’s time to come back.
Not necessarily to the woman we used to be.
To the woman we are becoming.
Maybe that’s why I still love clothes.
Because every wardrobe tells a story.
And the best ones don’t just tell us what a woman wore.
They tell us who she was becoming.
Let’s catch up again soon.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Is there something in your wardrobe that carries a story? Perhaps a garment, a colour or a piece you’ve kept because it means something to you.