Caring For Your Clothes

I like to care for the clothes and shoes I wear, as I am sure you probably do too as a reader of The Soft Armour Substack. But what kind of joy or satisfaction is it that I get from it? Here are a few thoughts.

Last month I rewaxed my Barbour Beaufort for the fourth time in the seven years I’ve owned it. A bit of a messy process, but I think this rewax was the best I’ve done yet. By all means nowhere near a professional factory rewax, but good enough for me.

To me, caring about my clothes and shoes is an integral part of having menswear as a hobby. I suspect it is the same if you are into cars, watches, gardening, barbequeing, miniature soldiers or whatever hobby you can have: To be able to do the fun stuff (wearing) you sometimes have to do the less fun stuff (caring).

But is it less fun doing the caring-part? I am not sure. To me, caring is dialectical to wearing: To care for your garments is necessary to be able to keep wearing them, and wearing them is the main reason they need care. And that, to me, sparks something that perhaps isn’t fun in the true meaning of the word, but definitely both meaningful and satisfying.

Caring for your clothes has both short- and long-term perspectives. Shining a pair of shoes will both make them look prestine right now but also help them last better in the long run.

There is also some form of psychological commitment in this. We put the time and effort into researching and learning - often in great, rabbit hole-like depth - about our garments. We track down that always-sold-out suede jacket or those hard-to-find-in-Europe Alden cordovan loafers, and to justify all the time and effort spend (which honestly could have been put more productively elsewhere), we have committed ourselves to taking good care of them.

Of course there is also a more rational and conscious approach to this: Spending an - often quite decent - amount of your hard-earned money on something, you want to take great care of it to be able to enjoy it for as long as possible. When I am able and fortunate enough to buy quality garments and shoes, the least I can do is take good care of them. Not by not wearing that jacket or those trousers - no, clothes are for wearing - but by caring for my clothes.

Finally, there is also something about the specific activity of taking care of your clothes, whether it is brushing off your trousers and putting them on a hanger after wear, cleaning and shining your shoes or re-waxing your wax jacket. The activity in it self becomes meaningful, you get in some sort of flow. I didn’t quite get there this time with the Barbour, but maybe next time.