I am tired of hearing people say that clothes don’t matter or that “nobody actually cares what you wear” because if this were true, I wouldn’t have a job. I do not want to be annoying, but I must remind you that I have been working as a wardrobe stylist since 2014 and I can confidently tell you that clothes do, in fact, matter. Anyone who says otherwise is being dishonest. Full stop.
I find this sentiment to be not just dishonest but also condescending because it usually comes out of the mouth of a thin, conventionally attractive, and well-to-do person who is pretending that they didn’t spend two hours tearing up their closet to find something to wear that day. On very few occasions as a dark-skinned Black straight-sized woman who lives in the middle of America (that was a mouthful), I have experienced the violence of not being physically presentable. On many occasions, I have also seen firsthand the privileges that being well-dressed has allowed me.
I grew up in a family of many women. In Nigeria, like in many parts of the world outside of the Global North, it is common to see multiple generations of the same family living under one roof. I lived with my grandmother, my mother, my mother’s three sisters, and my sister, as well as family members passing through the city and sometimes people we weren’t related to. My fondest memories of growing up with so many women were of having a front-row seat to the rituals of getting dressed for work, parties, and everyday life. Most of what I know about getting dressed was passed down from the women in my family.