I’ve always loved clothes, reading about clothes, learning about clothes. Getting dressed and thinking about what I wear, why I wear it, and why I arrange my outfits the way I do — like everything else, clothes seem as political as they are poetic to me, and you’ll never see me in a place that sells fast fashion. And when I say that I “always” loved clothes, it’s not a joke: my mother reminds me that at 2 years old, I tried to put, one on top of the other, all my sweaters and my pants until I had difficulty moving. A desire to wear together these clothes that I loved to the point of suffocation: there would surely be something to write about that.
One of my favorite fashion bloggers, Brooklynite Mandy Lee, for the New Year, posted a post on Instagram about what she considered in and what she considered out. Among what was trendy: leopard print and deviled eggs, which didn’t displease me. On his list of what was out, she wrote something that could be translated as “exploiting and commodifying valuable relationships for social media,” a little phrase that stuck with me. Perhaps because on my social networks – with a much more modest scope than his, it goes without saying – I have less and less desire to share gateways to my personal life. But even more, it was as a writer that she made me think.
How do I protect my private life while writing from my life? I have written about many people who have passed through the course of my days. I even think about continuing to do it, but I wonder more and more about the protection mechanisms to implement so as not to give too much of myself and of others who consent – or not – to be part of my texts. I think that sometimes people who read me have a feeling of clash between my books where I gave myself completely raw and my presence in person – I am nice, but I keep, as one might say, an arm’s length from strangers.
In my early twenties, I would have said “to write is to betray,” but now I don’t know. The world seems too abysmally violent for me to want to perpetuate it in my writing. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I wouldn’t want to harm anyone. Perhaps only to account for what has been silenced, hidden, oppressed and, to do this, I must talk about the protagonists in my life.
I don’t yet know how I will write this book about my family that I have wanted to write for years without betrayal, but I continue to think about it, to try to find the gentlest way to do it. And then, I like that it’s a fashion blogger who brings me these reflections on my work, me who believes a little too seriously in the power of clothes and their reach. Clothes, after all, are those layers that protect us from the world. They protect our privacy from bad weather. And maybe if I really push myself, my books can do the same; become talismans that can protect the intimacies they contain.