The Wonder of Borrowed Clothes

Today I want to talk about borrowing clothes or borrowed clothes and how these clothes can be an amazing addition to an outfit, bring a different colour or just complement your style if you cannot find a piece which explicitly represents exactly what you were looking for to complete your outfit.

I recently was lucky enough to go home for a short period and did not bring home adequate nor appropriate clothing. I forgot what clothes I had at home and what clothes I didn’t. The weather was also slightly cooler than I was expecting. So at certain points, I had to borrow clothes to make outfits work.

Borrowing clothes can have many benefits. People borrow clothes for several reasons. They might be like me and just incapable of packing appropriate clothes. Or they might need a dress for a special occasion and do not feel the need or might not be in a situation to buy a new one and thus borrowing a friend’s becomes an ideal proposition.

This borrowing of clothes also has many environmental benefits. Namely, the re-use of clothes, particularly expensive and often one-or-two-use formal wear. This is particularly relevant for females. Our male counterparts can wear the same suit multiple times to multiple events whereas wearing the same formal dress to two events where someone might have already seen the dress is a significant faux pas.

Thus, borrowing clothes, borrowing a friend’s dress proves to be a financially and environmental savvy solution. It can also be great fun and you get to spend time with the person you are borrowing the outfit from which is also always a plus.

To discuss the borrowed items in the photos. I am seen wearing a bright yellow woollen jumper. Admittedly I normally wear a more mustard shade of yellow. Unsurprisingly then, this jumper was something I borrowed from my sister. I like the colour and how bright and cheerful it is. I also like the cut and find it very flattering.

Over the top of this, I am wearing a green and blue patterned scarf. This scarf belongs to my Mum. She has had it for a long time, but it is a lovely colour and pattern and it is also warm. To be honest, I was wearing to hide my t-shirt. This is where I did not pack the appropriate warm-weather clothes. I thought it would be warm enough to wear a t-shirt with no jumper, but it turns out I was wrong and the jumper I brought home had worse alignment with my t-shirt, hence the need to borrow one.

But the colours of the two borrowed pieces complement each other and work well in tandem with the jeans. This outfit is very casual. It is a casual outfit perfect for a day out. This is where I want to bring in the topic of this week's blog outfits and nostalgia.

This week I want to talk about nostalgia in general. The nostalgia of places, people etc. and next week I will return to talk further about nostalgia but discussing nostalgia seen in clothes. Those pieces you’ve had for ages or that mean something special to you.

I first want to link nostalgia to the borrowing of clothes. You borrow clothes generally of people who are close to you. Close friends and family. Often the clothes you are borrowing have an associated memory with them. For example, the jumper I’m wearing I remember my sister wearing on multiple occasions and it is something she has had for ages and thus wearing it reminds me instantly of her.

These borrowed pieces might make you feel connected or reminiscent of some shared experience. In writing this it has made me remember I brought these jeans with my sister when my family came to visit me at university. Thus, clothes contain memories. That is what I want to discuss. Your clothes although in reality are pieces of stitched-together fabric come to represent more than that. They come to represent and reflect your memories and thus can become important to your self-understanding.

Memory is a fascinating thing. How and what you remember is fascinating. Why did you choose to remember this? What was it about this event that made you go I want to remember it? Why does it bring some sense of nostalgia to you?

I can’t answer these questions for you. At the most basic level, they are extremely personal questions that only you as an individual would be able to answer. But thinking about it is important. I wanted to discuss the nostalgia of the place these photos are captured in.

These photos are taken on a mini-golf (crazy golf) course about 40 minutes away from where I lived for the majority of my childhood. We would frequently go and play and when my sister asked if I’d like to go and play while I was home, my answer was of course “yes.”

I find mini-golf very nostalgic. It reminds me of my family, who have always enjoyed it and it is something we have always done. Thus, it evokes memories for me.

This capacity for places to bring about and invoke memory is a well-established fact and one many people attest to, have personal experience of and can relate to. But fewer people I feel acknowledge that clothes can do the same. I would like to try to refute this and say that clothes like places can induce nostalgia in a person.

Clothes can not only be used to reflect an individual’s personality, but they can be a marker of that personality. They can reflect and remind a person of core tenants of their personality, of what makes them them and thus play a crucial role in developing that idea of self-confidence and self-expression through fashion.

What I wanted to do this week was to discuss nostalgia in general, as a concept. I wanted to do this by looking at how borrowed clothes can invoke nostalgia. I then expanded upon this to talk about how places contain memories and thus can invoke nostalgia. From here I would like to move next week to expand upon nostalgia and to provide an example of specific clothes which to me invoke feelings of nostalgia and why this is the case.