On the form and style of clothes

When growing up, the relationship between most women and clothing is like a history of battle—frequently struggling between buying and not buying, wandering between throwing away and not throwing away.

If you think about it carefully, in daily life, I spend a lot of time dealing with "clothes", including buying clothes, choosing clothes, washing clothes, and folding clothes. However, now I find that I am almost speechless about "clothes" - I can't tell you what color of clothes I like, what style of clothes I like, and I can't tell what brand of clothes I like. I can't answer any of these questions.

But it doesn’t mean that you know nothing and feel nothing. If someone is dressed up and passes me by without any logic, I still feel dazzled. When I am faced with choosing which pair of shoes to choose from among two pairs of shoes, I often make the final decision because the counter lady says, "This pair is more suitable for the style of your clothes." There are still colleagues who say to me: "I admire your style of dressing." So, on the topic of clothes, I still have "style" to talk about!

But when it comes to discussing the style of clothing, for me, the core issue is form. The form I am talking about is not a matter of styles such as skirts, pants, dresses, etc., but about the arrangement of clothing matching. I have some basic principles of form.

Regarding the concept of clothes, my enlightenment came from my parents. Before entering junior high school, I grew up in a small town. It was when Taiwan's economic miracle was unfolding, and it was an era when some of my classmates' parents were long-term workers. I was lucky enough to be born into a gentry family in a small town. Not only did I avoid the suffering of material scarcity, I even enjoyed some things beyond ordinary people. For example, when the seasons changed, my mother would take us sisters to a tailor shop to order uniforms. I didn’t understand that this was a blessing at the time, but the act of “customizing clothes” seeped into my judgment of clothes in the future, and that was the principle of “clothes must fit.” After marriage, this concept is the flashpoint of disputes between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. When buying clothes for my children, my mother-in-law always wants to buy them in a larger size so that they can last longer; but I cannot accept the logic of wearing one size larger. However, later on, this principle also made me suffer when I was getting fatter in middle age, because the clothes gradually became unwearable, and many classic styles were no longer wearable.

Regarding the concept of clothes, the second mentor who has the most profound influence on me is my little aunt. She is a modern woman in the 1970s. She taught me a golden rule of dressing when I was twelve years old, and I still dare not break it to this day: "Stripes cannot be matched with dots." In addition, the extended principles are that horizontal stripes cannot be paired with straight stripes, stripes cannot be paired with plaid patterns, and dots of florals cannot be paired with plaid pattern stripes... The family is not enough to prepare, so that my clothes have always been different in my life. It is a minimalist route, and it still adheres to the matching method of the three primary colors of black, white and gray. There are few floral patterns in the wardrobe and there are no complicated accessories.

As for the concept of "line", I probably got it from my own experience while walking. There are many cloth merchants in Taiwan with advanced textile technology, but when the fabrics are cut into clothes, they seem to lack some beauty or something indescribable. They are often loose and comfortable but without lines. For a while, national leisure brands such as Xiu Shanzhuang were very popular among relatives and friends, but I personally avoided them.

However, some ideas have been adjusted by the years. For example: When I was a child, my father told me that if I want to buy, buy the best. I also followed the trend of my relatives and friends to collect classic models, but I quit the business when I found that maintaining them was not easy. Over the years, I have discovered that there is no need to buy the best clothes, because clothes will wear out, or people will always like the new and hate the old, and clothes will eventually end up replacing the old ones with the new ones.

Dressing according to the occasion is something I am gradually working on. It goes without saying that formal attire is required for formal occasions, but there are still some gray areas that seem to lie between personal and formal occasions. Regarding this matter, my deepest reflection is when I fly. Because I feel that traveling is a private matter and sometimes the flight time is very long, I have worn flip-flops when flying for more than ten years. As I get older, although my dressing philosophy still strictly adheres to the expectation of maintaining my own style, I have gradually become able to accept that while maintaining my own style, I also respect the perceptions of those around me.

I often wonder: Why are there no classes in primary and secondary schools in Taiwan to educate students on how to dress? There is actually rigorous form in beauty.

If my relationship with clothing when I was growing up was like a battle history, its format should be a chronological history.

None of the clothes I picked out, washed, and loved when I was young are in my current wardrobe.