How Much Shit Do I Need?

I’m a 4th generation clothier.
I’ve worked in the clothing industry for 10+ years.
blah blah blah

▸ PREVIOUSLY

I still have no idea how to clothe myself.

Part of that is industry. When clothing industrialized, How to make and what to wear separated, with almost nobody left in the middle. I grew up on the making side. My mom has been sewing for 50+ years but never once made anything for herself.

On top of that, I am Vietnamese-American. Neither costume nor assimilation feels true.

On top of that, my body changes. Clothes don’t.

On top of that, me.

My specific coloring.
My specific proportions.
My specific days.

HELP

One gives infinite options and no direction. The other gives direction but no options.

“One shouldn’t spend all one’s time dressing. All one needs are two or three suits, as long as they and everything to go with them are perfect.”

Coco Chanel

Huh. Direction + Options.

But would that actually work?

Can you really wear 2-3 suits everywhere?

Then why do we have closets of a bajillion?

Do they have to be suits?

What is a suit?

The more I sat with it, the more it made sense.

But only after I got over the fear of being seen in the same thing over and over.

That’s really the problem, isn’t it?

I wondered what the other dead designers said.

Isn’t that interesting?

NOBODY EVER SAID BUY MORE SHIT

▸ Then Why Did They Make More Shit?

…and kept making cheap shit till they couldn’t make shit any cheaper?
…and find companies that could make even cheaper shit?
…and put their name on shit they didn’t make?
…and pay people to tell other people to buy more shit?
…even people who’ve never sewn a button in their life?

No matter what you call it, categorize it, slice it or dice it…

Don’t we just end up with huge heaping piles of shit?!

How did we land so far away from two suits and some shoes?

The dirty secret is that “buy less” advice has always been accompanied by a “buy more” business model.

The Dead Designers knew that volume is the enemy of style** but the cruel irony of it all is that selling less clothing won’t make more money.

So the people who knew clothing the best often preached restraint while building empires on the exact opposite impulse.

No wonder we’re so confused.

** often but not always

Let’s not forget these people hated each other…

▸ DRAMA

Story goes Elsa rolls up and starts stealing turf Chanel spent decades cultivating. Salvador Dalí. Joan Crawford. Wallis Simpson. The cover of Time Magazine.

Coco is livid. At a costume ball before the war, she allegedly steers Elsa (dressed as a surrealist tree) into candles. Elsa goes up in flames. Guests put her out with soda water.

Post-war, Schiaparelli shuts down. Dior rolls in. Coco comes out of retirement just to spite him.

“A milliner.” “A dreary little bourgeoise.”

Elsa Schiaparelli on Coco Chanel

“That Italian artist who makes clothes.”

Coco Chanel on Elsa Schiaparelli

“Look how ridiculous these women are, wearing clothes by a man who doesn’t know women, never had one, and dreams of being one.”

attributed to Coco Chanel on Christian Dior

“Saint Laurent has excellent taste. The more he copies me, the better taste he displays.”

Coco Chanel on YSL

…Okay, maybe it was just Coco being Coco.

…with the exception of YSL and Givenchy who were besties <3

…which makes it all the more remarkable that they actually agreed on something:

Not too many clothes. Less is More. Wear suits.

“Buy a good suit and live in it, rather than a lot of cheap clothes. Let it be a good, tailored suit, carefully made, with beautiful material, and above all, don’t be afraid to be seen in it too often. Good clothes, simply made, never “date”, no matter what anyone tells you.”

“Wear your suit to business; wear it to dinners; to the theater; wear it twenty-four hours a day, every day in the year, if you must, and if it is a good suit, you will always look smart, attractive. On the other hand, if you own a fairly large variety of cheap clothes and change them a dozen times a day you will never appear chic, cheapness is always apparent.”

Elsa Schiaparelli, Photoplay interview, 1936

But that’s 1936 Paris. What about now?

I must investigate. Starting with Dior.

Dior was my first love but as I got older, I noticed some issues…

To wear Dior, you have to wear a corset or a girdle.

Sometimes both.

The uber-cinched waist has little to no room for breathing on top of the corset.

Heavily interfaced, stiff af, to preserve that shape.

The skirt is HEAVY and there’s scratchy petticoat on petticoat underneath that in order to keep all of that fabric up and out.

Forget life, how would you even wear this for a day?

How would you sit?

What if you needed to bathroom?

WHAT IF YOU NEED TO SCRATCH YOUR BACK?

“Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise, it is not luxury.”

Coco Chanel

But Chanel can’t be that much more comfortable, can it?

OH YES IT CAN

Okay, I get it Coco.

I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

But I still want my poofy skirt.

Except…

My waist ranges from 26″ to 34″,
which is every size from a S to an XL.

Even if something fits now, it won’t fit for very long.

And that sucks. Every shift feels like a failure, another thing that no longer fits, another person to explain to that my body shapeshifts.

No, I haven’t been stuffing my face with potato chips.

I have PCOS. Adjustability is non-negotiable.

Every Dead Designer suit depended on the waist. Skirts and trousers hang from it. Jackets closed around it.

The problem is that waists change every hour.

PCOS or not, waists are an unreliable anchor.

Shoulders are reliable because skeletons don’t change.*

Clothes that last will flex at the waist and hang from the shoulders to accommodate change over time.

*Shoulders are also not nearly as gendered as waists or hips. An ideal starting point for nonbinary design.

I have been denied voluminous, magnificent, full pleated skirts because they are built on a fixed waist.

I don’t have a fixed waist.

So: delete the waist, keep the pleats.

Dior for PCOS

I have my one suit.

Now where the hell do I wear it?

If I lived in 1936 Paris, I could wear this suit anywhere.

But I don’t live in 1936 Paris.

I’m now in Las Vegas, where the only person in a suit is getting married, getting buried, trying to get you to buy shit, or making sure you don’t steal shit.

My video editor friend just turned to me and said, “Never trust an editor in a suit.”

In the US, formality is environmental.

Where are you?

Clothes answer with fabric.

Same pattern, different fabric = different registers of formal

If wool already covers the extreme end of formal, the casual end belongs to the most democratic fabric ever made.

Denim.

But is it still a suit?

Even in the tiny bubble of dead Parisian midcentury designers, a suit was never the same thing:

So what exactly is a suit?

I consulted Merriam-Webster.

Suit (noun)
: a set of garments: such as
a : an ensemble of two or more usually matching outer garments (such as a jacket, vest, and trousers) — “businessmen wearing three-piece suits”
b : a costume to be worn for a special purpose or under particular conditions — “gym suits”

Merriam-Webster

A suit isn’t a lapel and trousers.

It’s Same Fabric.
Same Color.
Top and Bottom.
Worn as a matched set.

…which is infinitely more useful to someone who doesn’t want to look like a used car salesman 24/7.

If you think about it, a suit could be anything.

While I could wear these two suits most anywhere, designing an all American/European wardrobe for myself didn’t feel quite right.

What do I wear to Tet?

I know the ancestors were pragmatic.

They would probably say “It’s OK con, just do whatever works.”

But I have a sneaky suspicion they’d actually be more disappointed if I didn’t try at all. Even a whack, but respectful, Ao Dai gives the ancestors something to judge and I think they’d rather have that than be left behind.

Weird-but-remembered beats polished-but-forgotten.

But I have no accumulated hours in Vietnamese clothing. No muscle-memory. No childhood nostalgia.

Traditional Vietnamese clothing will always feel like costume on my body because I am not traditional Vietnamese.

How do I belong without performing heritage cosplay?

I HAVE NO IDEA

▸ I AM VIETNAMESE BECAUSE I WEAR NON LA (CONICAL HAT)

I was so proud of myself.

My mom took one look at me and said “Be Ha, Why you do that? Just wear bucket hat. So much more practical. You can fold it into your bag”

Then she went back to sewing.

She wasn’t offended.

She wasn’t impressed.

She was just very confused why I would choose the less practical hat.

I wanted her to be proud of my Vietnamese-ness.

But my mom didn’t inherit the non la.

She inherited a mother who said “Why you do that?” to anything remotely unpractical.

40 years and an ocean later, she’s still saying it.

Vietnamese-ness is not a hat.

I went to the motherland to find out.

Alone. At 33. First time.

I found three girls and a smoothie.

Three girls in a cute cafe taking turns snapping selfies with the same avocado smoothie. Each girl in an Ao Dai. None of them in the same Ao Dai.

They took a group photo.

Three completely different Ao Dai in the same frame.
Nobody rioted.

The Ao Dai was never the same thing.

Then I left the cafe and saw a dude crossing the street.

Ca phe in one hand, baguette tucked under the other arm, wearing what looked like the love child of the Ao Dai and a polo shirt over Western trousers.

Nobody looked twice.

THAT’S IT

Strip away the ceremony, the tradition, the colonial residue, and my mom’s voice telling me I should wear the Ao Dai.

What’s left?

A long shirt

Áo = shirt
Dài = long

Áo dài means long shirt.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

I GASPED.

This is me, this is me, this is me!

I think I figured it out.

On my last day in Vietnam, I wrote to my 69 year old cousin. Someone I only met once:

I wrote in English, because I was afraid of using the wrong words in Vietnamese.

I told him I always thought I was adopted, because no one else in my family was like me. Then I met him and as he told me stories of travel and adventure, I kept thinking THAT’S ME!

I didn’t feel so alone in my own family anymore.

He wrote back:

I asked AI to read it out loud.

I started sobbing uncontrollably and I didn’t know why.

Vietnamese-ness is not a hat. It’s not even an Ao Dai.

I used to think the soul of Vietnam would end with me. That I was the weak link in a three thousand year old chain. I can’t even read Vietnamese.

It didn’t die.

It just started speaking American.

But wait!

THERE ARE 4 SUITS

Didn’t the Dead Designers say 2-3?

Yes.

The Dead Designers were also not navigating a cultural identity crisis :)

2 suits for the country I was born in.
2 suits for the motherland.

But we’re not done yet.

Coco said 2-3 (or 4) suits are all one needs only if they, and everything that goes with them, are perfect.

Onward!