Possibly defying both logic and fashion, my wardrobe is a massively random time capsule. There’s my nan Beatrice’s chocolate fake fur. Mum’s late ’60s aqua crocheted mini. My creepy first bra. The coat hanger from long-gone Block Arcade couturier Alouette that held the bridesmaid dress for my sister’s wedding.
My wedding veil (handmade by Melbourne bridal doyenne Jane Hill back when she sewed in the front room of her house) and the dressing gown our son Felix slouched around in as a teenager. My daughter Sadie’s year 11 formal dress, a yellow and black snakeskin Cue job which I wore to ring in 2019.
There are tonnes more, from pregnancy bikinis to 1990s Genki striped tops to Scanlan Theodore copper harem pants with genie-from-Aladdin energy. I love everything, even the coat hanger. Time and place and a few grass stains and a vein of Fracas perfume. And memories.
Which is why I was bedazzled (it isn’t too strong a word) by a new revelation about Anna Wintour’s own wardrobe.
Wintour spent nearly 40 years as editor-in-chief of American Vogue. She’s always and forever in style, not least as the door bitch behind the annual Met Gala and inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada’s fearsome fashionista Miranda Priestly.
Surely Wintour’s lifestyle and profile demands a walk-in robe bursting with archived treasures and current faves?
No! “You might think she has a closet full of clothes but she does not,” author Filipa Fino told The Times (UK) this week.
Yep! The high priestess of global fashion owns almost no clothes. Has no ghosts from the past. No “I wore this when …” garments.
Based on a seven-year stint at Vogue, Fino’s insider intel has been spun into a new book, Best Dressed. Close enough to her old boss to have her at her wedding, she said Wintour sees people and things as “useful” or “noise”.
Her attitude? “If there’s no purpose to it, why have it?” Every season she picks 20 looks, wears them, then gets rid of them. “Next,” says Fino. “You and I don’t replace our white T-shirts every year. Anna does.”
That lack of sentimentality and ability to detach is fascinating to someone who thinks Marie Kondo’s decluttering gospel is a God-awful anathema to a joyful life.
My one finger to Kondo includes three pregnancy tests with faded lines, tubs of loose photos of who knows what, an HSC English exam, my dead dog Maggie’s old meds and an empty bottle of Blue Grass body lotion that was on my nan Neita’s dressing table when she died in 1993.
But Wintour’s ruthless editing surfaces something that has me wondering, especially because shedding is chic. My friend Abigayle pressed jewellery on me during Friday drinks at hers: “I’m getting rid of stuff. Take it.”
It’s not a question of whether nostalgia is healthy. For many of us, being able to remember the Sounds Unlimited theme or Ciak shoes isn’t trivia. It’s orientation.
It’s more about whether we’re keeping objects or keeping our past selves on standby. Is there something slightly delusional about refusing to let a moment be over? Or is it really human?
I mean, we live in an age of obsessive archiving. Take pictures of ice-cream cones, see every minute as worth keeping, every stop on the roadie as atmospheric and thus worth 112 photos you’ll never look at again.
And yet for all that frantic keeping, something still slips. You can have every shot from a holiday and not quite remember how it felt to be there. You can follow your kids’ whole lives on your camera roll and still be surprised by how fast it went.
Maybe that’s why the coat hanger matters. The physical thing is what gets you back in the room faster than memory can.
Unless you’re Anna Wintour, who keeps almost nothing and seems completely anchored anyway.
I admire that. But I can’t help seeing the drape of a sleeve and feeling a pang for a great day.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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