Does My Closet Make Me Look Fat?
InStyle|April 2019

ON A QUEST TO FIND JOY IN THEIR CLUTTERED CLOSETS, CONSUMERS ARE LEARNING TO LOVE SHOPPING DIETS. WHAT’S BEHIND THIS MADNESS?

Eric Wilson
Does My Closet Make Me Look Fat?

While it seems as if the rest of the world has been caught up in a Marie Kondo–inspired whirl of tidying up, I, dear reader, have taken the decluttering craze to the next level. For an entire year I went on a shopping diet.

The rules were simple: Twelve months, no new clothes (not counting underwear and socks—I’m not a deviant, thank you very much). This was penance for a lifetime of gluttonous consumption of things I hardly needed or rarely wore. What I discovered, like so many shopping-diet enthusiasts before me, was that my relationship with fashion was not entirely healthy, and not at all rational. Day by day I cleansed my wardrobe of joy-deficient sweaters, complex-inducing jeans, and one what-was-I-thinking turquoise corduroy suit. By the end of this self-imposed fast, my closets and drawers had become neatly organized shrines to functionality, my thoughts less fractured about what to wear each day, my savings account the equivalent of a fitness model’s “after” picture.

But was I happier? Not really.

This journey toward a more monastic, self-efficient me, in fact, surfaced all sorts of previously undetected issues. For example, what long-suppressed trauma caused me to buy a rainbow hoodie in the first place? Does my purchase of synthetic fabrics, which are bad for the environment, mean I’m nihilistic? If no one notices I haven’t bought anything new in a while, doesn’t that also mean people just don’t like me? Does being less stressed lead to being depressed? And why do I still feel a desire to detach from my belongings?

In search of answers as to what’s causing this cultural shift in consumer behavior, including my own, I sought professional advice from life coaches and decluttering experts, including Kondo herself.

This story is from the April 2019 edition of InStyle.

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This story is from the April 2019 edition of InStyle.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.