I'm so tired of looking at clothes on my computer that I had to write this on my iPhone. "Fashion fatigue" in its most basic, most senseless sense is that sick feeling you can feel in the back of your eyelids if you've been consuming too much fashion on the Internet—where you go from lust to lethargy, kinda like the same way your opinion of turkey goes on Thanksgiving. I don't know if it comes from taking in an overwhelming volume of stuff (but a quick peek at my Amazon WishList bookmarklet tells me I actually want all the shit I'm seeing and not that I'm bored with it), or—OR!—if it comes from having looked at basically everything the clothing corner of the Internet has to offer right up to the end of October, 2014.
On one hand, I say, "Yeah, okay, now I can go do something else, finally," but in the darker, more overfed moments, I worry like, "Shit, I think…I think I'm done. I think I'm finally done with #menswear?" Does that ever happen to you? And then, do you feel like you might be okay with it? Like, you don't hate the idea and let that wave wash over you (pause), but when it hits (PAUSE) it feels more like liquid swords? And then, as a kind of astringent, you're back looking for a pic to surrender to the "reads @Four_Pins once" gods?
In times like that—and I had a bad one recently—I wonder if the same thing happens to people with real hobbies. Does this happen to fly fishermen? Do they suddenly sit upright, fog their retractable magnifying glass with a huff and push away the lure they were tying to go set the river on fire with? That might be one for the Googlers, but my gut says yes, yes they do.
But luckily for them, ex-fly fishermen will never have to walk down a city street where everyone is wearing fly lures, the way we have to walk down the street and see everyone in clothing. Anything from an atrocious fit to a supersonic alphet can knock you off the wagon and have you image searching knit slips on the pronto.
This F/W I thought I'd curtail my worries and rid myself of my self-diagnosed #menswear bug with a purge by fire. In essence, I saved up to buy every single grail I could afford, surely satisfying my appetite for the rest of the season. But I underestimated my swagtabolism and was hungry, nay, starving for more only a few days later.
My newest coping mechanism is to repeatedly tell myself that clothes are a stupid thing to sweat. (They are!) But then, out of habit, of course, suddenly they're awesome again. (They are!) That's right, I'm a blooming, schizo B-word who can remember her real identity only long enough to pull out the least debt-saddled credit card.
The whole thing makes about as much sense as a Lincoln commercial, but here we are anyway. My iPhone's basically out of juice (one sympathizes), so I'm gonna go outside? I think there's an outlet out there somewhere and I need to pull the trigger on some new new.
Rick Morrison is a writer living in North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter here.
