The fashion of staying sane

You wear that ugly neon green sweater! Experiment! Give your old clothes a new life!

I open my eyes in the morning and feel like I had never slept, like I open my eyes to the same day. Living in lockdown as a student is not easy, especially when half of your uni experience is watching online lectures and waiting for the n-th lockdown to end. But on this Sunday morning, something was different. ‘Snow’ I said to my boyfriend, who was still half-asleep. We watched the snowflakes fall towards the London pavement and for a split second, it felt like the fears and doubts of the people below were being covered in white hope. 

With this first snow, the first impulse in me was to pick an outfit for that beautiful, special day. ‘What should I wear?’ I asked my boyfriend, who most certainly was not too concerned with my fashion dilemmas. But he jokingly replied ‘Why don't you wear that ugly sweater of yours?’ (by that he meant the neon green knitted sweater that I bought during the six months when neon pink, green and orange items were really in fashion, and fast fashion brands, that I will not name in this article, were hurrying to produce). I smiled and said that maybe I will wear it, and that goes to show how much the snow improved my mood as I would have never otherwise let anyone speak like that of any of the items in my wardrobe. 

So I wore the green neon sweater and you’re now probably wondering how any of this is relevant to fashion and to the article that you’re reading. Well, this little morning anecdote really got me thinking about a lot of current fashion issues, and with everything that has been going on, I felt it was only right that I bring you The fashion of staying sane - a few words of advice that will keep you both sane and in style during this glamorous, (hopefully) last lockdown. 

Firstly, clean up your wardrobe! You will never wear that shirt that you keep telling yourself you will find a way to style. Let go of your old clothes and I promise you will feel like a brand new person. Cleaning up your closet and getting rid of the things you don’t wear is like cleaning up your mind and letting go of the past so you can grow and move on. 

There are so many options as to what you can do with clothes you no longer want. Charity shops like Oxfam, Cancer Research UK, and the British Heart Foundation accept donations that they resell to collect funds for their respective cause. Another option is selling your clothes on Depop or Vinted if they are still in good shape. Go against the fast fashion industry by recycling your wardrobe while making a few extra pounds! 

Finally, as much as shopping is part of our fabulous fashionista lives, now is the best time to take a break. Just for now, not forever, don’t panic!! But spending time and energy trying to keep up with the hottest trends will always leave you wanting more and will never make you feel fulfilled. Now is time to recenter yourself, find that balance, and focus on you and you only. Save that extra money for a shopping spree once the restrictions ease. There will be far more to look forward to and way more reasons to wear that bad b outfit that you’ve spotted. 

So what do you do when you can no longer pursue your shopping passion? *coughs*addiction*coughs*. You wear that ugly neon green sweater! Experiment! Give your old clothes a new life! There are enough DIY videos on TikTok that you can choose from. Start feeling confident and beautiful in less, because we all know that we feel and look best when we are happy. 

By the end of that Sunday morning, my boyfriend looked at me, smiled, and said ‘That sweater is actually pretty cool. It’s growing on me’. I guess the takeaway message from this article is that fashion is about taking risks but it is also about self-care, self-love, and patience. So take the time to slow down this lockdown and express yourself through fashion in a different way, in a way that will allow yourself to heal and grow, not in a way that will make you restless and unhappy. And this my little Anna Wintours, is called The fashion of staying sane.