The Evolution Of My Closet
I realized that the city, my state of my mind, and my wardrobe are interconnected.
By Zea Asis
Collage by Primcess
My closet is a series of confessions and a compendium of my deepest wishes. Everytime I open my wardrobe I imagine that I summon a spirit—a genie in a bottle or a closet nymph—reminding me of my sartorial depths and its seemingly dionysian potential. Other times, my wardrobe is a plump mild-sounding therapist ready to do the hour-long work of indulging me and my insecurities. On nights when I feel good about myself, it dizzies me with its spellwork; other times, like the morning after a big buffet dinner, it is earnest, encouraging.
Accompanying many firsts in my life, it still holds the first denim jacket I ever purchased. Over the years, it has faded to the color of the sky. But when I first bought it, it was a noctilucent, inky midnight shade of blue. At some point, I sewed colorful, quirky patches like something you would shop out of an trendy, LA-based retail office and home supply store - in an attempt to distinguish it from all other denim jackets I saw being worn by my peers. I wanted to convince people: I am not like everyone else. Over the pocket on my chest was a name tag patch that said “Hello, I’m a mermaid.” Years later, I’ve done away with these patches. Incredulously tearing away the seams with blunt scissors. Finding them a little bit embarrassing after having started fashion school. My faded denim jacket now darkened with patch-like shadows where they once were.
Then there is, of course, the black off-shoulder dress I got from Mango. Its initial intention for purchase was for a dinner date with a guy I thought would be the one. Back when I didn’t know how to kiss; the dress I personally deemed perfect for initiation; the opposite of the emblematic virginal white of lace dresses. I wore it with red lipstick and ballet flats. As we drove to the dinner place in his old Toyota Corolla, our clasped hands near the spot where the fabric kept hiking up my legs.
When I was about to turn 20, I took on the project of transforming myself into a woman. I was obsessed with womanhood the moment I started having sex with the first guy I’d ever been with and was convinced I would be doing so for the duration of our relationship. Feeling like I was being tested, I purchased a black chantilly lace bralette from an online vintage store. Its straps were the width of the body of a Q-Tip. Since I had to put it over my head to wear it, I was conscious that my hard, ungraceful body would stretch it too far and rip it. I wanted to feel in possession of the power of my own sexuality, like the type to have a sweet laugh and get side-eyed by guys in house parties. Grown-up, deliberate.
I wore it under sheer printed blouses or mesh dresses to music gigs with my boyfriend. He performed in low-budget shows for up and coming musicians, mostly for rap artists. As I stood with the crowd during and after each performance, I couldn’t help but feel that I, too, was playing a role. Do I look the part? My self-consciousness turned into a latent conceit of being watched by people clutching their beers and swaying to the music, too hammered to care. It was during those hellish moments of sweat and droning beats that I felt farthest from him and more in tune with myself—the buzz from the beer facilitating the melding of my body with strangers all around me. The sheerness of my clothes like a sloughing off of a layer of skin.
Then, there were the days filled with bucolic visions of a La Union surftown which gave birth to my two prized never-been-worn bikinis. A sunset-hued tie-dyed one-piece and crinkled black two-piece set. Also: a yellow and carmine blue reversible bucket hat from the local brand, Áraw. It features the hand-printed images of sampaguitas by the artist Paulina Paige made of fine silk and Philippine Piña fiber. These items demanded a lifestyle that lived up to its proposition: bummy yet sunny. The type of sun-toasted woman who laid a banig by the beach shore, dreamed of Luis Barragán’s architecture, and lounged under a Jacquemus Le Grand Chapeau hat. I was eager to swaddle myself in the fantasy of being on perpetual vacation, a bus away from the sound of waves. Indulging the look of a lazy vacationer was, for a time, endearing but unfaithful to my own hectic and high-strung sensibilities.
I have, in fact, been in the city for 7 years now. I was 16 when I moved in with two roommates in a studio apartment in Manila. Any vestiges of my provincial upbringing relegated to the sullen bodega of my memories. The jeepney smoke and sewer smell rising from manholes interspersed with the third-wave coffee aroma wafting in the streets have irrevocably altered my moods. A gradual overhaul of my wardrobe came as I earned a degree and got my first job as a writer. Living off of allowances in college meant I had to resign myself to my sister’s hand-me-downs or generous gifts from relatives.
Now at 23, some degree of personal curation is possible. I have turned to the repose of neutral palettes and silk bias cut midi skirts. In fact, before the start of quarantine, I wore slip skirts 3-4 times a week. I have one in pearl, topaz, onyx, sage, almost like my own collection of gems bringing with them their own energies. It brings me surprising moments of comfort when I sit and cross my legs, a softness in between my chafing thighs or feel a cold breeze hike up my calves on brisk days during my walks in Rufino Street in Makati. I pair them with my high-cut Comme des Garçons Chuck 70’s or black wedge sandals.
At the same time, I have been tending to my growing collection of blazers brazenly as if they were the mink fur coats of a mid-50s divorcée. My closet asks: what sorrow are you hiding? Useful for when I have to hide the tattoos on my arms during family dinners; concealing parts of myself perceived as mistakes. Also, a consolation: its construction is adaptable to my mercurial temperament and the city’s temperature. My desire to be smothered by its boxy material on days when I don’t feel like revealing skin superseded only by the chills that come every February. Through different jobs and switches in career paths, they have been with me.
Often, I pull them over slit dresses, my set of cami and bandeau tops. They have given birth to variations of themselves in different colors or silhouettes over time. A regimented family of well-tailored items: a double-breasted hour-glass dress with gold buttons, a staple oversized black suit from Zara, a black faux leather jacket, a colorful puff-sleeved piece from a Thailand-based brand, a cropped cornflower blue with crystal buttons resurrected from the racks of a vintage pop-up.
Utility and layering as opposed to the haphazard look of my younger years (more terrible haircuts, less cohesion) reflect my maturity in taste, but also the wisdom lent to me by the years and perhaps a manifestation of a sort of jadedness for life’s curveballs. There is a certain grace to be found in the not-scrambling, the dressing appropriately, preparedly, so your body and in turn, moments inhabited, are not fractured by inappropriate sweating or meek apologies. I like that I can take my blazers off on work days that turn into spontaneous nights of drinking with coworkers. The convenience of slip skirts having an understated sensuality fit for long hours in the office when paired with a colorblock sweater or trading cocktails with a friend I’ve reconnected with at a speak-eazy when worn with a lace cami top. A collarbone. Elbows brushing against each other.
I have been learning to quell my obsession over the standards of womanhood. I could preserve this carefully crafted image of an unsullied, self-sufficient woman in her early 20s, or make room for the truth that is less performative and more earnest improvisation: that the lock of my diamond stud earrings keeps falling off. My eyelashes often become crusted by excess mascara. My leather boots chafe the back of my ankles. I am past the stage of initiation and know that sometimes the best thing I can do for myself is to let months, years go by without searing self-scrutiny—focusing more on the actual work of becoming no stranger to this city.
Just recently, I have introduced animal prints to my wardrobe in rare moments of boldness. Acquainting my closet to pleats and patterns is its own form of experimentation, the equivalent of taking risks. Recalling the impracticality of resort wear and the understated luxury of slip skirts, I found that I existed somewhere between the serious and the sensual. Somehow, these items have helped make a home of this city for myself. My wardrobe no longer has the economy of a tourist, but the looseness and forethought of someone who has lived here for a long time. I can’t help but think that this is what growing up feels like.
During this quarantine, I bought a black and white check taffeta mini dress. My latest purchase. For now, it hangs in my closet, peerless. Its billowing sleeves remind me of the smoother and glossier sister of a prairie dress. Maybe there is something about its childlike charm that quietly reflects my state of mind now, a naive hopefulness that perhaps when the city is alive again, I can finally put on the dress. I hear it whisper like the dewy-eyed 16-year old girl I once was: what will it be like?
The accumulation of garments in my closet memorializes shifts in thinking, moments of comfort and belongingness, the whirl of the city and the lightheadedness of weekends that turn abruptly into weekdays, the magic hour of dusk revealing its patchwork of spilling traffic and pastel-haired yuppies and very-much-alive 40-year old retail malls, a whole palette of taste that took me years to acquire—the way my body and mind searched and, at times, formed vivid definition. Who am I now? Who will I be next?