As I wrap up working as a costumer on a TV show – I started working in January, pandemic paused from mid-March through July, and we just finished filming last week - it’s hard not to get nostalgic. Ten months of time for a four months of work project is a lot. It’s bittersweet: I’m relieved to be done and healthy yet a trifling bit sad to say goodbye.

This point in time has me thinking: what is it about human nature that loves finishing a phase?

Part of me considers that we are socially conditioned to do it. School starts and ends every year. There are four seasons (or forty if you live in Calgary) that come and go every year. There is sweet satisfaction is squeezing the last bit of shampoo from a bottle. Dinner starts and dinner ends. Simply put: we love to start and finish things. Heck, last week we got to start winter and this week it feels finished.

When it comes to matters of the heart – clothing of course at the top of that list – how do we know when we are done with something? Is it a dramatic breakup (like when I declared shorts no longer a thing for me)? Or is it a slow realization that comes with time? For me those include: browns and tan coloured items, many stretch clothes when not working out, and synthetic shoes. Each of those revelations took way too long to understand that it wasn’t for me. Once I did, I was done.

When celebrities overhaul their looks - Elton, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Rhianna, The Weeknd – we see it as a rebirth of sorts. We are excited for whatever phase we’ll get to go with this new look.

Aside from the finances, why do we hold onto things that no longer serve us? I’m talking about…

Clothing that is way too small?

Clothing that is way too big?

Tattered items (aside from say a single, sentimental item from a lost loved one)?

Clothing with a bad memory attached to it?

Items stuffed at the back you had no idea were still there?

An item you were gifted that does nothing for you?

To all of this I say, get rid of it: it’s just clothes. Stay with me, would you? Now I’m not supported being a nudist. No thank you. I want you to put clothing in its place. Clothes should serve you. Clothes should help reveal the person you really are inside and out. Fashion is nothing but a bunch of fabric unless there is a body inside of it. That’s when it becomes style.

Fashion is a buffet: take what you want and simply pass by what you do not. And if you take something, taste it and learn you don’t want it, that’s fantastic. You have personal taste. Just don’t fill your plate again with the same, old, tired thing next time. Get rid of it.