“The mounds of clothing that adorn my floor and the foot of my bed sometimes grow too large, and suddenly I am sinking into the matted mess of fabrics. On days like these I can’t help but feel that clothing, not just my clothing, but the very idea of clothing, is swallowing me up. Clothing is this immensity looming over me, yet somehow a microscopic itch in my brain, prodding me and twisting itself into knots–an irritation I accept for the temporary bliss of scratching it.
On one hand, clothing is everything romantic and beautiful in life, the poetic spirit of the pursuit of beauty for its own sake, the romanticism of selecting outfits for purely aesthetic goals, embodying ineffable things, feelings I know could never be articulated in clumsy language. For us reserved people, it’s often the only way to communicate ourselves to strangers. On the other hand, clothing is the primary site of my self-exploitation, the heart of my anxiety and neuroses; the arena where I compress my existence into a commodity, into an indistinguishable good ready for purchase.
As I look down at my outfit today, I can't help but feel there would be something more–something profound–to my day if I had worn something special, something more real. And yet, regardless of how spectacular I feel, I always see nothing but a series of products on my body, their prices, their dwindling use-values. I see the costs not just to myself, but to the people who pay its true price, the cost of cheap manufacturing and reckless waste. My garments are laden with memory, not just mine but those of the hands which pulled them through sewing machines, across factory floors, and into trucks and boats. I wonder, are my clothes nothing more than things? Are they part of my body and its experiences, or simply an imposition upon it from the outside world?”
Excerpt from Empires Over Skin (2025) by Meltdown Your Books