The Journal of Wear: A wardrobe in flux
This is the second to the last 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.
Sabrina welcomes me at the patio of her place of residence. She wears a patterned knit vest top, grey shorts, and a hairband. I made a mental note to ask if her top was swapped from The Fashion Pulpit. (It is.)
“This way,” she chirps. “This is my husband’s bedroom. We are staying here until we move into our new place later this year.”
Despite the blinds fully drawn, the bedroom is sufficiently lit by the large floor-to-ceiling windows, creating a conducive workspace.
Sabrina perches on the bed, and I sit across from her. With green tea in hand, we begin our conversation.
“Very interestingly, I’ve never had my own wardrobe,” Sabrina discloses.
“At my parent’s place, I lived in a 3-bedroom flat, and my wardrobe was split across two rooms. I had half of my clothes in one room and half in another. Now, at my husband’s place, I have half of my wardrobe here and half in my parent’s place,” she chuckles.
Referring to the clothes left at her parents’, Sabrina expresses, “I only go back home every Friday, so I seldom look at them. They are all in boxes now to save space. There are some pieces that I really like in there, but for now I live with this wardrobe,” she says, her eyes on the wardrobe she shares with her husband.
“It helps that I’ve been working from home a lot.” Sabrina’s work-from-home stint means that the need to dress to be seen is greatly reduced from last time. She tells me she used to teach at a local secondary school.
“The whole concept of ‘work clothes’ is important to me,” she explains.
“In the past, when I was teaching, I always had this mentality that I didn’t want to be a teacher who repeated her outfits. I wanted to look different, mixing and matching in different ways.”
“Kids do notice. They might think, ‘It’s this dress again.’ So I knew since going into teaching that I wanted to look fresh.”
“Now I work in the office so I don’t need that many clothes. I am very fine with these repeats-–maybe because I am not seen as much. But it will be different when I return to teach next year.”
Teaching is a job where showing up every day is compulsory. I mention this to Sabrina in total admiration for her profession.
Sabrina nods, “Yes, you have to show up. You are presenting yourself. And it somehow represents what you are, who you are, and the energy you give off.”
I nod to the realisation. As a teacher, her identity constantly shifts between being a teacher to her students and herself. This is why dressing up is important to her: To retain and hold her expression close in an environment where hefty responsibilities and long hours take precedence over everything else. How much of either identity is embedded or melded into one?
“Now that we are talking about it, fashion is quite related to the teacher’s wardrobe. We are one of the few professions with rules on how you dress.”
I agree with her and attempt to recall what my teachers wore. I now realise that seeing my teachers five days a week meant I was most privy to their personal styles, or rather, how they fashion* themselves as working professionals in a workplace filled with young people.
*Fashion is used here as a verb as a way of self-defining
She recounts tentatively. “The art teacher will have the art teacher look… I am a biology teacher, and there isn’t a look.”
“Sometimes it’s also fun to wear prints related to your subject. If I am teaching plants that day, I will dress in green. You use your whole self to teach them.”
Listening to her, Sabrina finds joy in the little quirks she injects in her style. I reckon how her students may or may not pick up on the symbols and moods Sabrina conveys through her clothes, understanding that she is as human as she is a teacher. I can’t remember if I did.
“Like this skirt from TFP, I swapped it out because it says ‘NUMBERS’. I will wear it when I return to teaching next year.”
Sabrina holds up a graphic midi skirt.
You use your whole self to teach them. This statement rings in my ears. Sabrina’s clothing choices are both attuned to her comfort and contingent on her role as a knowledge imparter.
Do you have a standardised look or a uniform? I ask, half-assuming that there is a formula she’s worked out and follows.
“I would say the flared silhouette is my standard silhouette because I don’t like how tight dresses or skirts are movement-restricting. When I walk fast my knees and legs will ache. And we walk a lot in school, so it’s important to have that room [to take large strides],” she replies.
It’s time to look at the wardrobe. Sabrina shows me an open rack where most of her go-to, work-from-home pieces are displayed for easy access.
She pulls out a floral dress with ruffled sleeves. “I really like this piece. It’s from the shop. It's my ‘I’m-running-my-errands-as-a-wife’ dress”.
L: Sabrina’s open clothes rack R: The dress Sabrina wears when she has errands to run
“Wife-fashion” is a term Sabrina used to describe what she feels best represents her current style. “Like a mature young lady look, very 淑女 (which means ladylike in Mandarin),” she said when I look at her for more clarification.
“I’ve noticed that my style shifts with me as I take on new roles and enter new phases in my life.”
Sabrina is also a dancer. When doing street dance, she dresses differently. She remarks, “It’s almost like an alter ego. I only dress this way when I go for dance class or if I have a performance.” Her alter ego’s wardrobe contains cargo pants, foldover pants*, and baggier tops that she wouldn’t typically wear in her day-to-day life.
Clothes as a vehicle to express other parts of herself. Sabrina’s love for street dance allows her to explore style options that are not typically “her”, carving out an alternative space she is transported to every time she dances. “I wish I could look like my alter ego in my daily life more, but I am not in the stage where I can look like that anymore. It’s like an alternate reality kind of thing,” she says with a hint of ruefulness.
[*A note on foldover pants - Popularised by TikTok as a microtrend, wearers raise the waistband of trousers and turn them inside out to expose the internal branding (usually the Dickies 874 trousers, which are traditionally a "male" fit) to create a sort of belt.]
She shows me another dress she swapped from The Fashion Pulpit. It’s a pastel turquoise cheongsam, with a layer of thin mesh embroidered with flowers and birds on the outside. This dream looks and feels like a summer dream.
“I wanted to wear it to a Lunar New Year work event, but I’d fallen sick,” Sabrina mentions.
Maybe one of these days, when I feel like it, I will wear it again. I kept it because I envision myself wanting to wear it.”
Sabrina shows me the “could-have-been” Lunar New Year dress
She beams, anticipating a version of her future-self wearing the dress.
Sabrina waves me to her other wardrobe space. Over here, she keeps her clothes for going-out and special occasions.
She is a seasoned clothes swapper. When she feels like a piece no longer resonates with her, easily she swaps them back into The Fashion Pulpit, sentiments seldom lingering. In some ways, Sabrina is not as sentimental about her clothes as she’d like. She tells me that there are only a few pieces she feels for, and this ‘Interview Dress’ is one of them.
L: Where Sabrina keeps her fancier dresses R: The interview dress
A straight-cut black and white midi dress from Dorothy Perkins, her mum and aunty bought this for her after she completed her Junior College studies in 2014/15. It’s one of the only black pieces she owns, Sabrina emphasises. “It’s been with me through so many interviews. I always wear it for ‘success’. It’s almost become a good luck charm of sorts,” she describes.
“I keep this for memory sake, but I will still wear it if I need to meet important people or go for another interview. If I have a daughter in the future, I will pass it onto her,” she laughs.
Listening to Sabrina as someone who feels for my clothes abundantly, I understand the different relationship dynamics we can have with our clothes. To embrace a nature of impermanence is not loving our clothes any less but understanding what they can do for us in various stages of our lives. Similarly, it’s getting to know ourselves better in the process of connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting with our clothes.
I ask Sabrina if she’s visualised what her wardrobe in her new home will look like.
She hesitates, “Not really, haha. I have not entertained that. But I want my wardrobe to be organised.”
She continues after some thought, “I don’t know if I want it to be ever-changing anymore. Right now, I don’t have a permanent wardrobe. It is more or less in flux. In my new home, there will be more permanence.”
“I hope my wardrobe can have elements that are constant, and also invoke more sentimental feelings. As it grows with me, it will also be a memorable wardrobe,” Sabrina concludes.
She raises her hand, suddenly thinking of something, and says, “Also, to have a lot of space for me to be organised.”
Wardrobes come in many forms. In Sabrina’s case, her clothes are displayed on an open rack, hung in half of her husband’s wardrobe, and folded in boxes that are inaccessible (for now). These various spatial arrangements organised by circumstance and function.
In a few months, Sabrina is moving into a new home and can begin occupying a dream wardrobe space—just in time as she returns to teach next year. It's a beautiful coincidence that The Journal of Wear captures her wardrobe now, a raw reflection of wear as functional, desirable, and in flux.
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.