Should I Get Rid of My Clothes After a Divorce?

I’m lately divorced after 14 years. I’ve lived world wide and, in a month, I’m set to maneuver to Los Angeles. Through the years I’ve amassed a wardrobe that expresses each the power of the locations I lived and the lives I lived in them with the particular person I as soon as liked. However all the things in my life is downsizing. So what do I preserve? What do I shed? Learn how to make these selections? — Donatella, Brooklyn

Not lengthy after the actress Ellen Barkin divorced the billionaire Ronald Perelman when she was simply beginning to movie “Ocean’s 13,” Ms. Barkin determined to unload all the jewellery she had acquired throughout her marriage: a group of over 100 items that had been valued at greater than $15 million.

“These are simply not reminiscences I need to put on out daily,’’ she advised Ruth La Ferla, who wrote about the sale for The New York Instances.

That’s an excessive response to a divorce, but additionally an comprehensible one. Neglect Proust’s madeleines; garments are repositories of feelings, reminiscences and tales, and easily seeing them can take us sliding down the wormhole to the previous. That’s partially why we hold on to them: They comprise the emotional imprint of who we have been after we purchased them, or wore them.

That behavior is commonly seen as a very good factor. It’s what’s behind the apply of conserving a marriage costume, symbolic of that ceremony of passage. Likewise, my mother-in-law had a rose-print frock that had hung in her closet for many years — a relic from the time she met Queen Elizabeth II as a younger girl after a taking a ship throughout the ocean from Canada.

However this apply can backfire if the tales contained within the materials are sad. If, say, you see a pair of denims and bear in mind the battle you had along with your companion while you wore them, or a sure costume makes you recall some unhealthy information you acquired or a skirt brings up emotions of betrayal or entrapment. That’s why, in terms of divorce, magazines corresponding to Glamour sometimes characteristic articles like, “Getting Over a Divorce Meant Saying Goodbye to All my Beautiful Clothes.”

In your case, one of the best method could also be to easily undergo your wardrobe and see what feelings are conjured by every garment — basically play free affiliation along with your garments. Maybe do it with a pal, who can maintain up each bit whilst you say what involves thoughts. It’s a variation on Marie Kondo’s “does this carry me pleasure” method. Kind the clothes into piles (preserve, discard) in response to the sentiments they evoke. In case you can’t resolve, create a 3rd group of maybes. In spite of everything, ache does recede with time, and it’s potential {that a} shirt at present filled with angst that when upon a time additionally represented, say, exploration, would possibly someday once more.

As for the discard pile, take a web page from Ms. Barkin and take into account promoting garments in good situation on resale websites like Vestiaire or The RealReal. That method, you aren’t solely escaping unhealthy reminiscences, but additionally making the most of them and utilizing them as a option to transfer ahead into your subsequent part. Something that may’t be offered and remains to be in fine condition must be donated — simply because a bit represents one thing damaging for you doesn’t imply it could’t be a delight for another person, which in flip could also be a soul enhance for you.

And don’t consider the garments you might abandon as a sacrifice. You need to winnow down your wardrobe not simply since you are being compelled to by transferring right into a smaller house, however as a result of it’s liberating to create each literal and psychological area for a brand new you, with a brand new look, to emerge. That chance is a present you can provide to your self.

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Each week on Open Thread, Vanessa will reply a reader’s fashion-related query, which you’ll ship to her anytime through email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.