People Who Dress the Same Every Day
In Appreciation of Black Clothes
My closet looks like a goth teenager's fever dream, except I'm thirty-something and the only statement I'm making is "please don't make me think about this."
Black cotton. Black wool. Black linen. Black silk. Different textures, same surrender to the obvious choice. People eventually notice. Not right away—black is boring enough to slip past casual observation—but after a few months someone always says, "Do you own anything that isn't black?" with the concerned tone usually reserved for asking about sleeping habits.
The honest answer is yes, I currently own exactly three non-black items: a grey sweater that makes me look dead, a burgundy dress I bought in a moment of weakness, and a white shirt that I wear exclusively under the black clothes. But explaining this feels like admitting to some kind of failure of imagination.
Which maybe it is?
I didn't plan to become a walking monochrome. It happened gradually, the way most personality quirks do—through a series of small surrenders to what actually works. At some point I realised that getting dressed had become frictionless. Reach into closet. Feel fabric. Put on body. Done. No decision, no negotiation with the mirror, no second-guessing whether this particular shade of blue makes me look like I'm trying too hard or not trying hard enough.
The mental relief is embarrassing to admit. It's not like I was spending hours agonising over outfit choices before. But there's this background hum of aesthetic decision-making that runs through most people's days—what to buy, what goes with what, what this combination says about who you're trying to be today. I've just... opted out. Like canceling a subscription to a magazine you never read but somehow kept paying for.
People find this either fascinating or deeply troubling.
"But don't you get bored?" they ask, as if variety in clothing were a basic psychological need, like sunlight or human contact. The question always puzzles me. Bored with what, exactly? My sweater doesn't need to entertain me. It needs to keep me warm while I think about other things.
Aren't you hot in summer?" is the inevitable follow-up, usually accompanied by someone fanning themselves dramatically. As if black cotton somehow generates more heat than blue cotton. I've stopped explaining that loose black linen in July feels exactly like loose white linen, just with less sunburn potential.
Shopping became weird in the best way. I walk into stores and ignore 90% of everything. Just drift toward the black section like a moth to a very specific, very dark flame. Salespeople don't know what to do with this. "Would you like to see this in other colours?" No, definitely not. "We have some lovely patterns this season." I'm sure you do.
When I still had cats, they had strong opinions about my wardrobe choices. They expressed them by depositing their fur with such determination on every black surface I owned. We had developed an adversarial relationship where I bought lint rollers in bulk and they treated this as a personal challenge to increase production.
The fabric literacy thing is real though. When colour disappears as a variable, you start paying attention to texture in ways that feel almost indecent. How wool pills differently than cotton. How linen wrinkles with dignity while synthetic blends wrinkle like cheap apologies. The way silk breathes versus how it lies against skin when you're nervous versus when you're calm.
This might be TMI, but there's something so sensual about really knowing how fabric behaves. Not in a weird way—in a craftsperson way. Like a carpenter who can tell hardwood from softwood by touch, or a baker who knows dough texture by instinct.
But let's be honest: part of this is definitely about being difficult. The fashion industry wants me to refresh my aesthetic identity seasonally (or with the newest influencer trends), to express my evolving selfhood through purchasing decisions. Wearing the same thing every day is a tiny act of rebellion against this manufactured restlessness. Not intentional rebellion—I'm not trying to stick it to Big Fashion—but rebellion nonetheless.
Plus it confuses people in hightly entertaining ways.
There are the helpful fashion advisors who feel personally invested in my colour rehabilitation. "You'd look stunning in a muted emerald green!" they announce with almost evangelical fervour, as if they've discovered the cure for my aesthetic affliction. Family members used to bring bright scarves as gifts. Well-meaning acquaintances suggest shopping trips to "find your palette." They speak about colour the way missionaries speak about salvation—urgent, necessary, transformative. I've learned to nod politely while mentally cataloguing their own—in judging moments for me very questionable—style choices.
Then there's the compliment confusion. People want to say something nice about what you're wearing—compliments are always better when they target something that we actively choose, like clothes, instead of complimenting genetics, like our eye colour—, but when it's always the same thing, the usual vocabulary fails them. "I love your... consistency?" "That's a really... black sweater?" "You always look so... yourself?" They cycle through half-formed compliments like they're trying to solve a linguistic puzzle with missing pieces.
Academic colleagues who pride themselves on expressive dressing (statement socks! vintage finds that signal intellectual depth!) don't seem to know how to read the black uniform. Is it minimalist chic? Depression? European sophistication? Secret ninja training? The uncertainty really seems to disturb them.
Nobody guesses my truth: I just can't be bothered.
This probably makes me sound lazy or uncreative, and maybe I am both. But what if creativity has finite bandwidth, at times at least? What if Steve Jobs wore identical turtlenecks not because he lacked aesthetic sense, but because he'd figured out how to automate decisions that didn't serve his primary thinking?
It is said that Einstein owned several identical grey suits. Apparently he said something about not wanting to waste brain power on mundane decisions. Though Einstein probably never had to field questions about whether his fashion choices indicated psychological health issues.
The thing is, wearing the same thing daily often makes you more visible, not less. People remember "the woman who always wears black" the way they remember distinctive voices or unusual names. Uniformity becomes its own signature, which defeats the whole point of disappearing into unremarkable clothing.
So now I'm accidentally conspicuous through my attempt to be inconspicuous. This feels like a metaphor for something, though I'm not sure what.
Maybe it's about the difference between being seen and being watched. Variety, I reckon, requires constant low-level performance—today I'm feeling bold (bright colours), today I'm feeling grounded (earth tones), today I'm feeling professional (whatever that means). The black uniform eliminates this daily broadcast of internal weather.
This apparently makes me either admirably authentic or suspiciously unreadable.
"But how do we know what kind of mood you're in if you're always wearing black?" someone asked recently. Try talking to me? Revolutionary concept, I know.
Interestingly enough, when everything's the same colour, the whole question of fit becomes oddly more important. Without pattern or hue to distract, the relationship between fabric and body is the entire visual conversation. Loose cotton that skims rather than clings. Wool that sits just so at the shoulders. The difference between a sweater that hugs and one that envelops.
I'm having very... very particular views on this. Nothing too tight—life's uncomfortable enough without clothes that remind you they exist every time you move. But nothing so loose it looks like you're wearing someone else's laundry either (although this, of course, could be more than a fashion statement). There's a sweet spot where fabric acknowledges your body without making announcements about it.
This is harder to achieve than it sounds. The fashion industry seems convinced that clothes should either showcase or disguise, accentuate or camouflage. But what if you want neither? What if you want clothes that let you forget you have a body while still, you know, having one?
The black uniform accidentally solves this by making fit—together with texture—the only other variable that matters. You start noticing things like how sleeve length affects the proportion of your arms, how the hem of a sweater creates or destroys your silhouette, whether a particular cut makes you feel substantial or apologetic.
Shopping for replacements has become wonderfully absurd. I walk into stores looking for the exact same black sweater I bought two years ago, like I'm restocking office supplies but for my personality. "Do you have this in... the same thing?" Seasonal transitions happen through fabric weight rather than color—cotton to wool to linen and back again, marking time through texture instead of the usual autumnal oranges and spring pastels. My closet operates on a different calendar entirely, one measured in thread count, surface feeling, and warmth rather than fashion cycles.
So, you see, it is very well possible that I've overthought a simple preference for dark colours. Maybe some people just gravitate toward visual simplicity the way others gravitate toward complexity. Maybe this isn't a meditation on choice and creativity and cognitive load—maybe it's just what happens when someone with particular sensory preferences stops pretending to care about looking interesting.
Though writing 1500 words about it suggests I do care, just in a different direction.
What started as laziness has somehow become a lifestyle philosophy, which is probably the most accidentally pretentious thing that's ever happened to me. I eliminated choice to avoid thinking about clothes, and now I spend time thinking about not thinking about clothes. The irony isn't lost on me.
The black clothes hang there, patient and uncomplicated, eliminating one small daily negotiation with possibility. Tomorrow I'll reach for cotton or wool or silk, feeling the difference in my fingers, wearing the same essential absence of decision. And my brain will be free to worry about more important things.
Like whether with this text I'm accidentally becoming a minimalist lifestyle blogger without the lifestyle or the blog following.
Mission accomplished, I guess.
Image: © Victoria Mummelthei rabbitingyears