What are clothes other than daily exposure to the world?

I hesitate to say this, but maybe there is hope around. There’s traffic on the streets, the masked faces I recognize now, and more street noise than I care about, but so is urban life. As I slowly return to the world, I am struck by the ills of the world’s most gracious women. I don’t have clothes. Which isn’t really true, because I have way too many clothes. But after spending the past year and a half in mothed pajamas and T-shirts, I no longer understand how to dress for the outdoors. What are clothes but a daily exposure to the world?

In Tom Ford’s wonderfully sparkling and immaculately textured film, A Man, Colin Firth’s character thinks about how, every morning, he takes some time to become himself. His words follow his movements as he chooses clothes stored in some sumptuous dressers of mid-century modern persuasion. I love that scene because it recounts my own morning ritual on days of face-to-face classes as I used to go out to teach. Colors, cuts, moods, accessories. An unexpected t-shirt, a casually blended pattern on pattern, brokers a delightfully pleasant day in Chennai. Blingy shoulder-duster.

If you think I’m a little extra for a teaching job, trust me, there are others. Several years ago, my fellow anthropology graduate students and I anxiously went through the pages of The New York Times Magazine, which chronicled the life of ‘The Stylish and the Tenor’ in 2008. Michael Tausig, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, was prominent and resplendent. I think all academics should follow in the footsteps of Chimamanda Adichie and love herself some fashion.

Perhaps you’re thinking that what I’m saying doesn’t refer to a large percentage of the population that can’t stand this cornucopia of possibilities. think again. Because the sense of self is not the property of the landlords only. Pay attention to the working classes working on and off the streets and see how you can choose them for color, matching clothes, accessories and swag. Every time those boys who live on the busy Chennai streets with no regard for life or longevity, I can’t help but notice their buzz-cut, drainpipe pants and nifty sneakers.

Fashion Flannery

Pre-pandemic, my favorite form of flannery was simply walking around in the ladies compartment of the local train, where women of every fashion were brought to and from work, home, festivals, weddings, celebrations, school and college. Unique sense of self for the world. They were booed by canny train vendors with their stock of earrings, scrunchies, safety pins and keychains. And I can imagine how the daily struggle, domestic dullness, worry, fear and despair can be forgotten for a while in view of the flower-studded blouse and the crisp iron and pleated saree. In Rabih Almadin’s classic novel Hakawati, The protagonist tells us that the more agitated his mother’s mood was, the more she focused on presenting a surprising scene to the outside.

You might think that clothing and fashion have a contradictory relationship with truth and authenticity. On one side is Gandhi, who wore the truth of his life on his sleeve through khadi and loincloth. On the other hand, with everyday life, popular culture and our ‘wear of the day’ our desiring selves are in search of validation, short-term bliss and daily pleasure. So is clothing also a useful distraction to serve the world a version of the self that has nothing to do with any true self? We better try to be like Sri Annapurani Amma, the naked and splendid “Fiery River of Man” profiled in Arundhati Subramaniam women who wear only themselves.

We know that clothing is a matter of free expression and marking identity in a free, definite fashion. It is temptation, pleasure, armor, resistance, disagreement, ideology, power and powerlessness. In other words, it is deeply political. What if we were to wear all of these in the process of becoming ourselves? What if our outfits are simply the versions of ourselves we try on every day as we go about the daily task of finding resonance in the world? What if our clothes reflect the hope that maybe one day, in a perfect world, we too will give up on it all?

The author teaches anthropology for a living, and is otherwise invested in names, places, animals and things.