Patched! ‘My rich parents hate my minimalist lifestyle - please help’
Patched advises a minimalist whose family wants them to be a flashy dresser
Patched is a members-only series where people can ask me a fashion (or fashion-adjacent) question that's bothering them, and I will reply with a short letter from an anti-capitalist perspective.
Got a question? Email me: DearPatched@proton.me
The title Patched is a reminder that at this critical time we need repair and regeneration as well as analysis. I will keep unpicking and unravelling the fashion industry but Patched makes space to explore mending - finding solutions to both personal and structural problems.
If you like Patched please forward this email, share it as a post or screenshot. Thanks!
Patched - keeping it simple, or maybe stealthy
Hi Patched,
Can you help? I don’t have a lot of stuff or clothes because I’m a minimalist. I like keeping things simple and not being tied down. Plus, I don’t like how clothes are made in factories these days. Being a minimalist also makes me happy, but my family just doesn’t get it.
My parents love having lots of money and stuff. I don’t live with them, but when I see them, they always comment on my clothes. Last time, they even sent me a bunch of new clothes, which really upset me. Are the clothes that I have simple and repetitive? Yes they are, but I take really good care of them. My parents want me to dress flashier, but I just want to be left alone. Any advice?
Anon.
Dear Anon,
A friend, who gave up drinking a few years back, recently described alcohol as ‘the only drug that when you don’t do it, people think you’re weird.’ Your question made me think the same applies to capitalism.
Marketed as this all-fulfilling system that enriches and provides endless opportunity for advancement, capitalism is promoted as being all about freedom. Yet people get so baffled, upset, angry, concerned, or outraged when other people simply want to opt out, in even a small way. At that point the freedom rhetoric vanishes.
If everything is so free, why can't you just live as you please? Capitalism is not a nice system to live under and its proponents have to work really damn hard to keep everyone in line. I've written about the fashion system employing both the carrot and the stick to make people conform – you have encountered the stick in the guise of your family. Maybe they think its best for you, or maybe they also feel social pressure. Either way this is not fun for you and it is definitely not your fault either.
Your happy existence outside of the norms of consumerist society may be a reminder to people - including these people who happen to be your parents - that they are not entirely fulfilled. Maybe they’ve worked their whole life to get all that money and stuff (probably intending to pass a chunk of it onto you) and now they are having to question if it was worth it. Within that is the huge and confusing question of what else they might have done or could do now. If they can force you to conform, then they don't have to think.
You sound like you are standing firm in the face of the pressure and I don't think you should change at all. This is your life and you have to live it in accordance with your own values.
I wonder if you have ever sat down with them and explained why you maintain a minimalist lifestyle and do not want to own lots of stuff? The clothes they bought for you need to be returned to them but first, and try to keep these two things separate so it doesn’t feel like you’re judging or blaming them for the ills of the entire garment industry, you could all sit down and watch The True Cost, or Tears In The Fabric. You could also buy them some of the books, or e-books, on this subject that are out there. Yes, I absolutely recommend my own books - Foot Work if someone is completely new to all of this. Or print out or send some articles like these ones:
- On the Atacama Desert clothing dump
- On clothing toxicity
- Or this one on heat stress in Tamil Nadu garment factories
I have no idea if explaining the reality of the garment industry will work, or inflame the situation, so here's another I just want to be left alone approach.
You use the word flashy for how they would like you to dress. Fashion pretty much exists to allow people to attach expensive objects to their bodies, and to the bodies of their spouses and children, and then parade around in public showing how rich they are. These objects can be overtly ornate, but they can also be stealthily expensive.
What if you tell them your wardrobe is inspired by very-high-net-worth individuals like Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama? Decision fatigue is the research-backed productivity theory that cutting out decisions like what to eat for breakfast or what to wear every day allows entrepreneurs to save brain power. It is why Zuckerberg wears the same grey t-shirt every day, President Obama wore either blue or grey suits, and Steve Jobs the black polo-neck. (Whether it prompts good decisions is another matter.)
Avoiding distraction makes sense for creative work as well – there’s a brilliant film director I know and she only wears one outfit in navy blue, and also a novelist who only ever wears black combat trousers and black t-shirts. So, if necessary, tell your parents that you’re avoiding decision fatigue to be better at work, or class, or to write your novel/screenplay. It might get them off your back and give them a way of explaining their suddenly-intriguing progeny at dinner parties.
Either way, live a life aligned with your ethics and protect the happiness this brings you. You are an independent human being and this is about their 'stuff' not yours.
In solidarity, Tansy.