dimanche 18 mars 2012

Out of sight, out of mind

Ce que je trouve déroutant sous un climat tempéré où la majorité de mes vêtements sont rangés selon les saisons, c'est que lorsque nous sommes comme actuellement en période de transition et que le printemps n'est pas encore définitivement installé, j'ai tendance à "oublier" que j'ai des vêtements pour la saison à venir.

Avec les boutiques remplies de nouveautés, mon esprit semble affecté d'un trou de mémoire quant à mes fripes acquises dans le passé. Si je m'écoutais, à l'arrivée du printemps je suis limite à poil avec pratiquement rien à me mettre...Ce qui est, bien évidemment, loin d'être le cas.

Le danger concomitant à cette amnésie partielle c'est que j'ai tendance à succomber à une énième marinière ou une nouvelle chemise bleue alors que j'en possède déjà un petit nombre tout à fait raisonnable et dans (presque) toutes les versions. Les exemples sont d'ailleurs assez mal (ou assez bien ?) choisis puisque j'ai trouvé le moyen récemment de compléter lesdites collections chez COS et H&M...

Alors le week-end dernier pour éviter ce genre d'accumulations et la tentation du neuf, j'ai passé quelques heures à évaluer quels vêtements de mi-saison que je pouvais d'ores et déjà exhumer.

A chaque fois que je déterre mes vêtements des saisons antérieures, c'est quasiment une nouvelle découverte d'un vieux trésor, le plaisir de retrouver des vieilles connaissances chéries mais vaguement perdues de vue, comme mes pulls Etoile et H&M, mon bon vieux trench Zara, et  les vêtements de la catégorie "j'avais-complètement-oublié-que-j'avais-cette-chose." 

En parlant d'oubli, il m'est arrivé une situation assez drôle il y a quelques semaines. Comme vous l'aurez constaté, j'attache une certaine importance à mes vêtements auxquels je porte pour la grande majorité une affection qu'elle soit purement esthétique ou/et sentimentale. Mais assez mystérieusement il arrive que certains s'évanouissent de mon esprit et, plus rarement, de mes armoires.

C'est pourtant ce qui est arrivé avec ce pull en cachemire marine Zara dont je me suis soudainement rappelé l'existence en feuilletant mes archives mais qui était porté disparu.

J'ai littéralement mis ma chambre à sac, sens dessus-dessous, vérifié la cave de fond en comble (!), me demandant si je ne l'avais pas jeté lors d'un épisode de grand rangement/liquidation de mes affaires. C'était rageant. Je ne pouvais tout simplement pas le trouver ni me rappeler la dernière fois où je l'avais vu. J'étais à la limite de questionner son existence même, si ce n'était que des photos prouvaient que j'en avais bien été propriétaire un jour.

De frustration, j'ai évoqué mes recherches à ma mère sur Skype qui m'a tranquillement répondu que ledit pull se trouvait rangé dans ma chambre, en Afrique où je l'ai laissé il y a bientôt près d'un an....

Une vague de soulagement (parce que je n'étais pas complètement devenue folle) et d'incrédulité (à cause de l'état dans lequel je m'étais mise pour un pull!) s'est abattue sur moi surtout considérant que jusqu'à il y a quelques semaines encore, je n'avais même pas remarqué son "absence".

Dans ma commode donc: coexistence pacifique entre hiver et printemps, neuf et ancien.









 So in my chest of drawers: peaceful coexistence between winter and spring, old and new.


What I find disturbing living under a temperate weather where my clothes are mainly stored according to seasons is that when the weather reaches this transition time when the new season hasn't properly settled in yet, I seem to "forget" that I do have clothes for the coming season.

With the stores crammed with new and fresh items, it seems like my mind draws a blank on my past  season possessions. If I listened to myself come spring I'd be almost naked with next to nothing to put on which is obviously is far from true.

The incidental danger of this partial amnesia is that I tend to fall for the umpteenth striped top or blue shirt whereas I already possess a fair amount of said items in almost all versions imaginable. The aforementioned examples are actually ill (or well?)-chosen as I recently toped up both collections at COS and H&M ...
 
So last week-end, I spent a few hours assessing which mid-season clothes I can already bring out.

Each time I dig up past seasons clothes, it's an all over again discovery, the pleasure to find back some old and cherished somewhat forgotten acquaintances like my Etoile and H&M knits, the basic and useful Zara mid-season trench and the "I-completely-had-forgotten-I-owned-that-thing" items.

Speaking of which, a funny episode happened to me a few weeks ago. As you must have noticed I give my clothes a certain importance, due to the aesthetic pleasure and or sentimental feeling they provide still quite mysteriously some vanish from my mind and even sometimes from my closet too!

Which happened with that Zara navy cashmere sweater that I suddenly remembered while browsing my "outfits" archives but was MIA. I litterally put my room upside down, checked the cellar, wondering if I had inadvertently thrown it during one of my big clearance phase. It was maddening. I just couldn't find it nor remember the last time I had seen it.  I was about to doubt its very existence if not for pictures proving that I indeed had owned that item one day.

Then, as I was whining on Skype to my mom about my search and she quietly told me the sweater was stored in my room in Africa (!) where I had left it about a year ago.... 

A wave of relief (because I wasn't completely nuts after all) and disbelief (because of the state I had put myself into for a sweater!) washed over me especially considering that said item had been there, thousand miles away from me, all that time and that till a few weeks ago I hadn't even noticed its "absence".

6 commentaires:

  1. I guess the advantage of a one-season country means I never actually put clothes away and forget about them - they're all there before my eyes, whether I wear them or not.

    But some things I wear intensely for a few months and then switch to something else, and then back again. I never really miss the unworn thing until it hits me suddenly one day as well. I think this shows how irrational our desires often are!

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  2. Haha! I'm glad you found your sweater! The same thing happens to me at my mom's. I either forget things there or take them so my mom can fix them and then I forget all about them.

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  3. ah, hear hear! i try to avoid keeping items in my dresser unless they're super basic items like tees or undergarments for this very reason. it's way too easy for me to forget about knits especially. i am trying to keep everything hung up and/or folded in visible piles in my small closet :)

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  4. I know exactly what you mean. My clothes after a few years of shopping addiction are stored away in bags according to seasons, in drawers and baskets and storage cupboards and with my mom in Spain. A few month ago I stopped shopping in Zara and H&M and have been trying to reduce the size of my wardrobe and go cold turkey on the addiction.

    The seasonal storage is the worst enemy of a recovering shopping addict as you forget about great pieces that you have and think you need to buy another jumper, a trench, a blue, green, grey knit?

    Lately I have been trying my best to store things with labels on boxes, and to make sure to keep mid season things in close proximity. Another rule I have been trying to implement is to go through all storage before I even consider shopping for new season. It's amazing how you can rediscover your own wardrobe!

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  5. Yep, I absolutely wish I had a gigantic closet so I can see everything in plain view. I often forget the items I have that are stuffed in drawers. I do, however, enjoy that feeling of newfound love for the pieces that I forgot I had.

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  6. Lin: How great to have everything you own in plain sight! Even if it doesn't change the fact that mysteriously some clothes take the front stage to the expense of others...

    Emmy: The worst is my mom used to get rid of my stuff behind my back! Luckily she stopped doing that or I'd never let anything in her "care"! Ha ha!

    miss sophie: I try to do the same and to "rearrange" my drawers more occasionely and that's when I find tees folded way back in some dark corner...

    T like Bubble Tea: Your story sounds indeed familiar to me! Your tactics are clever and that's what I've been trying to do too. With Spring already here, I've been pulling out clothes and acessories to assess more precisely what is fine, needs to be replaced etc. It's really helping to limit the temptations.

    Teresa: Oh, yeah a BIG dressing room would be great, plus a kind of computer that would make an inventory of everything! Huh! I should play the lottery more often!

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