Replacing the placeholders

I recently walked into a Buck Mason store in pursuit of their Baja Twill Chino. I had come across someone selling a pair on Poshmark and had to ask myself — can a pant really be THAT flattering? I tried them on in-store¹ and sure enough, I was shocked by just how incredibly these pants fit. I posted a picture from the Buck Mason dressing room on Notes, and the people agreed with me: I believe it is my most-interacted-with note to date.

Trying on those pants (which I haven’t yet bought, by the way — read on!) also came with the crippling realization that many of the clothes in my wardrobe just don’t fit as well as those damn pants. I promise it wasn’t just the novelty: the overall quality and fit are unlike anything I own currently. These pants begged the question — what if EVERYTHING in your wardrobe made you feel that good? A tantalizing, aspirational thought, to be sure.

I read this piece by

Irene Kim (김애린)

last week, “Five Questions I Ask Myself Before I Buy Anything.”² Of course, that’s the kind of laid-out thought process that I eat up with a knife and fork, so I clicked. Question #4 of Irene’s made me ponder: “Is this a placeholder piece?”, i.e. is this a less-expensive, lower quality item that I am test-driving to validate whether or not I would use the more expensive version? Funny, in all my years of agonizing over clothing purchases, I have never ONCE thought to ask myself that.

In the past, I have been an experimental thrifter. I want more tiny tank tops, I want more skirts for summer, more shorts — ALWAYS more sweaters. And also, the cheaper I could get for the quality, the better. Fair! I was a high school student, a college student, then entering the working world with -$1000 to my name. But thrifting indiscriminately often means sacrificing on fit. If this pair of pants at the thrift store is $5 and I need more pants right now, maybe I’m not as picky that they gap in the waist or are highwaters. Later on, though, worn down and dissatisfied by pants that never actually fit in the first place, I end up returning them to the Fashion Circle of Life, i.e. re-donating them. Meanwhile, my Notes app is a place for me to gaslight myself about whether or not I really really want a more expensive piece, because it’s so hard to know until it’s in my hands.

With the Baja Twill pants and Irene Kim on the brain, I scrolled through my virtual closet in the Indyx app. I want to preface that I estimate about 90% of my clothes are thrifted, and the average cost of items in my wardrobe likely hovers around $20. As I scrolled, I selected only about 15 items that had the Baja Twill Factor, i.e. I wouldn’t change anything about them. Maybe that isn’t THAT surprising. And you know what, God bless the broken road that led me straight to all of my clothes! I believe you DO have to experiment a fair amount and make mistakes in order to figure out your own sense of style. To Irene’s question, however, I have never completed the SECOND part of question #4, actually replacing the placeholder, which I feel leads to lower overall levels of satisfaction and feeling like I have nothing to wear.

Replacing the placeholders with items that I am excited about wearing seems to me like a surefire way to buy fewer clothes overall, especially the ones that are $5 and I buy because they’re there. It also neatly solves my problem of Notes app purgatory items — I don’t have to worry about spending a lot of money on something that may not work in my wardrobe because I already have proof that it does.

I haven’t bought those pants yet. Like I said, I have nothing else in my wardrobe like them. I will circle back to them at some point, or find them secondhand. I want to focus on editing down the clothes I have now, and see where I find myself.

1. The luxury of in-person shopping now that I’ve moved is one I will never take for granted again! I only lasted on my feet in the mall for about 45 minutes, but baby steps :. Also if anyone works for Buck Mason PR, please hit my line bc this is free advertising!!

2. It’s an older piece but I’m still relatively new to Substack. Instant subscribe!