The Journal of Wear: My wardrobe is my heart
This is the fifth entry of our running monthly series The Journal of Wear, where we document our swappers’ stories and relationships with their wardrobes in a style reminiscent of the 2000s blogging era. In a time of hyper-editorial and polished fashion content, this series centres the humanity of the wearers, captures the nuance of their relationship with their clothing pieces, and highlights how everyday clothes are incorporated into their lives.
From the bright yellow walls to the soft toy squad laid out on her bed, Qai’s room looks like a main character’s childhood bedroom in a coming-of-age film. The various post-it notes sprinkled around multiple surfaces of the room are hard to miss. One of them reads: Remember to have fun. The process needs to bring joy, then fulfilment.
Naturally, we sit on the floor, facing each other, crossed-legged. Qai leans her back against the bed. “I’m nervy,” she says quietly.
Qai is wearing a collared denim shirt with colourful floral embroidery sprinkled throughout the front. “It’s from Vintage Weekend,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, “My green trousers are from TFP.” Despite her nerves, Qai speaks with assuredness.
Swapping helped Qai expand her style horizon. With a wide variety of clothes to pick from, plus she interacts with them daily, she slowly started collecting the pieces she now owns and loves, adding more layers to her style repertoire.
“My style includes a lot of outerwear like jackets. I like loose-fitting, baggy clothes. Sometimes, when I want to feel shmexy, I wear a tank top inside the jacket. And then I will wear shorts.”
“I have three style personalities. One is all black—for when I feel like punching the wall or something. And I have very bright streetwear pieces because I like being very loud,” Qai points to the pieces hanging around in the room.
“Then, on some days, I have a look that’s a little more tamed, floral prints, earth tones…” she adds.
Qai opens up her wardrobe to reveal her collection. Immediately, I recognise some of the pieces she wears to work regularly. Watching her strut or stroll (depending on which personality she takes on that day) into the shop every morning is one of my favourite ways to start the day.
L: Qai’s wardrobe R: Qai holds the sleeves of a multi-coloured knit sweater she bought in Canada on a family vacation
Each piece represents different versions of herself. They come together cohesively and are representative of who she is now.
She pulls out an oversized denim jacket. “This is my favourite. It’s one of the first few thrifted pieces I own. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it's the feeling I get after wearing it. I feel like an art girl.”
Qai’s favourite oversized denim jacket
“I’ve always liked jackets since primary school. I think I feel protected when I wear them,” she adds.
Qai holds up a retro pink jacket on the right and a blue basketball hoodie on the left. She tells me that these are also her favourite outerwear.
The pink jacket is the piece of clothing I associate Qai with. It’s the first thing she wore when I met her for the first time in March 2021, when we both started working at The Fashion Pulpit around the same time.
I mentioned this to her, saying, “It makes me smile, it reminds me of how our friendship first began.”
“I feel the most at home [in that pink jacket],” Qai lets out a reminiscent sigh.
Qai leaves the room and walks back in with about ten dresses in her hands. “I keep my dresses in my sister’s room because I don’t have space here,” she explains.
She lays them on her bed and smiles, “I like so many of my clothes now.”
Holding up a forest green velvet maxi dress, she tells me zealously, “I got this from the most recent Playdate* pop-up. This is a funny story because when I used to manage Playdate, I set the dress aside to be included in future pop-ups. After I left Playdate, I forgot about it until I saw it again at the most recent pop-up organised by Fashion Parade. They reminded me that I’d set this aside, and I was like, ‘Of course, I like this! Because I put aside a few months ago.’”
[*Playdate is TFP’s thrifting arm. We organise quarterly pop-up thrift markets to regulate TFP’s inventory.]
Pointing to the corduroy trousers she’s wearing in the same shade of green, she ponders, “If I steer too far away from these colours, it becomes more difficult for me to feel comfortable.”
“My clothes reflect my feelings. If I feel stressed or sad, I will be more likely to wear a hoodie or an oversized jacket to feel protected. When I feel confident, there will be more mesh tops, blings, skin-showing… This is on the other side of the spectrum.”
L: Qai holds the forest green maxi dress next to her R: A close-up photo of the colours and materials of the dress and her corduroy trousers
Qai’s room is filled with her personal touches and strokes.
On the inside of her wardrobe door, I notice words of self-affirmation she’s written on post-it notes. Can you talk about this? I ask in jest.
She bursts out in her signature belly laughter. “On the record? Ok lah, can lah can lah!”
L: Post-it notes pasted on the inside of Qai’s wardrobe door R: Qai, in the mirror, and on it, two post-it notes that say, ‘Balance’ and ‘Conviction’.
“I can’t remember when I made this, but I remember the words on the right are who I want to be/what I want to do. On the left is who I am currently and what I am already doing. It gets more aspirational as we move to the right. That’s why ‘structure’ and ‘consistency’ are here because I am not those things. But I am sensitive, expressive, and a fighter.”
She continues, “So, the top bit is sports-related. The rest are who I want to be and some character traits I want to embody.”
Is there a reason why you paste this on the inside of your closet door? I ask again.
“Because I don’t want people to see!” She chuckles. “I usually do this in the heat of the moment. Then subsequently, I don’t really look at them anymore. Sometimes I cringe at myself when I see them because it’s too many emotions. I was kind of going to take it down already, because, whatever lah. Just be whoever I want to be. Just exist.”
“But this is the dream lah,” Qai gestures.
I think about how it’s perhaps similar to re-reading old diary entries, when past versions of yourself feel so distant, yet familiar. Words can only capture the state of mind of any current time when there is an urgency to write something down.
I mentioned this to her.
She nods, “This happens often. I have a journal where I write down different versions of who I want to be and what I want to do, again and again.”
It’s cringey because the permanence of a post-it display might expose too much of the heart and what exists in mind. Qai references the book on her desk, Art Matters by Neil Gaiman (2018).
She also pasted ‘Balance’ and ‘Conviction' on the mirror, I point out.
“I think ‘Conviction’ came from Kim Namjoon (a member of the Korean boy band, BTS),” Qai recalls.
Do you want to talk about how BTS has influenced your style? I ask sheepishly, for I know Qai is a huge BTS fan, and how much joy they bring into her life.
Qai chortles, “They have! There are pieces of them everywhere in my room.”
A framed collage of Jin from BTS seats prominently on her desk.
“I don’t think they influenced my style per se, but they defined the roles for me,” Qai refers to her distinct style personalities. “They all have very individual styles. J-hope has a strong street style… oversized everything. I felt like I could do the same. It’s not that I try to emulate what they have, but it makes me feel more confident. Because they've owned it, so I can own it too.”
“I feel extra happy when I wear clothes that remind me of BTS,” Qai beams.
“Jung Kook always wears black, with chains, bucket hats… One day, I tried the bucket hat look, but I was like, ‘Mmm, I am not feeling things on my head,’ she chuckles.
“Namjoon is a bit more nature-y and earthy. He has this popular TikTok sound called ‘Namjooning’. He likes to cycle and go on nature walks, so, because of that a lot of people have been doing the same, and they call it ‘Namjooning’”.
I had so many questions but they were answered by this TikTok video Qai proceeded to show me.
“He can’t drive, so he's always cycling. That’s the joke,” Qai adds, mid-giggle. “When I wear something that reminds me of BTS, my mood goes up by 20-30%,” she adds.
As I wrap up the interview, Qai contemplates, “Maybe it’s a bit too greedy to expect my wardrobe to represent me all the time. Some clothes are just not about that, and that’s okay.”
“Some things aren’t me, but I will still wear them because my dad gifted them to me. It helps that my sister and I are one year apart and she has a whole different personality and wardrobe from me. I go into her cupboard when I feel like trying new styles or need certain clothes for certain occasions, like a job interview.”
“I am thinking about going into my dad’s wardrobe next. He has so many nice shirts. And they are oversized for me, so it works.”
She tells me that she hopes to take on new style personalities in the future. Even though she does not know what that might look like, she knows she will get to know them as she moves into new seasons of life.
We ruminate over Qai’s childlike and wide-eyed connection to her clothes as she is in the nascent stages of discovering her love for the styles and pieces that work for her. As she’s coming into herself, clothes become a vehicle for her to be in touch with the world, and the world with her.
Since I’ve known her, Qai’s taken on new roles and responsibilities like becoming an aunt to her baby niece and volunteering with local climate advocacy groups. (You can see her creative work for The Fashion Pulpit, Playdate and Lepak In SG here.) Her shift, or rather, metamorphosis, is palpable and infectious.
Qai’s soul abounds for the people she loves and the causes she believes in, with a heart so kindly breaks for the world and a spirit that illuminates spunk and sparkles. Her energy translates into every space she’s in, the people she speaks to, and the artwork she creates. I hope she never stops strutting into rooms with BTS’ music playing in the background, dressed however she feels best represents herself.
Qai holds and snuggles up to her cat, Simba
About The Journal of Wear
The Journal of Wear features narrative-style writing, where we capture the wearer’s unique voice and story from their perspective and ours. Instead of a simple Q & A format, we hope to craft a narrative that depicts us entering the wearer’s wardrobe/closet/bedroom space, how we got to know about the wearer’s story of their chosen item of clothing, and how each of us felt within the experience of conversing about our clothes.
The Journal of Wear is the labour of love of Esther Koh and Xingyun Shen who first bonded over how clothing can affect and shape its wearer in an intimate way. It is an extension of The Fashion Pulpit’s existing video series: SWAP STORIES. This article is written by Xingyun. All photos in this entry are captured with an iPhone.