On Getting Dressed and Getting Coffee

Self Expression, Weak Ties, and the Routines that Keep us Human

Getting dressed

When I was somewhere around age 8 or 9– still homeschooled, living in rural Alabama, and mostly wearing thrift store clothes and hand-me-downs from my cousin – I meticulously put together an outfit I was proud of. Basing my vision off of whatever snippets of pop culture I’d been exposed to–Nickelodeon on the cable TV at my grandmother’s house, my best friend’s occasional copies of Tiger Beat–I pulled together a study in plum: purple jean shorts, a purple paisley oversized t-shirt, and a purple-hued tapestry vest. Since I didn’t go to school and I couldn’t wear jean shorts to church, the only obvious place to debut my outfit was homeschool day at the local roller skating rink. Despite my general lack of athletic ability, I was pretty good at skating, and I was excited to cruise around the rink in my fly new ‘fit. But my outfit was too avant garde for the Pelham, Alabama homeschool crowd, and I soon had my first experience of bullying. Two girls (who I envision in the bland but popular Umbros and Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts of the era) shoved me and snickered about my clothes as they whizzed by me in a fit of giggles. I don’t remember what they said, but I remember being hurt and confused. I was the one who was dressed cool, right? I had seen vests and oversized t-shirts on tv, and I’d so carefully paired each color and pattern. This was my first introduction to sartorial conformity, and while my feelings were hurt, my taste for getting dressed up had not been stifled.  

In high school I was obsessed with clothes from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Still homeschooled until 10th grade, my only audience for my clothing during my early teens was at my church. My best friend and I were mostly fearless weirdos, wearing almost costume-like outfits to youth group each week–Dr. Suess hats, matching paper caps from a 50s style diner, and whatever coveted clothing we’d been able to order from the Delia’s catalogue. But when I transitioned from homeschool to a huge public high school in 10th grade, I was a little more interested in blending in and keeping my head down. The skating rink incident had stuck with me, and in a school of around 3,000 people, I was just focused on survival at first. The ‘70s fashion resurgence of the late ‘90s was still raging, and I dressed in a mix of bell bottoms, doc martens, babydoll tees, and peasant blouses. I think the sheer terror of going to a school where I didn’t know anyone mostly overroad my excitement about finally having something to get dressed for, but I made friends quickly and found that I could comfortably wear what I wanted and be myself around my new friends, especially the theatre and art kids. I bought my first true vintage dress at an estate sale in my neighborhood senior year– a floral polyester wrap dress in a loud pattern of greens, pinks, and yellows. It would be a few years before I actually realized that I could wear vintage clothing in my daily life. I bought the dress because I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I could actually just wear old clothes every day if I wanted to. 

College brought many different phases: big hemp necklaces, more 60s and 70s silhouettes, toning down my femininity with big shapeless t-shirts and no make-up, the discovery of Urban Outfitters and indie music, and lots of thrifting. But college was also when I decided to stop pretending not to care about fashion. It was when I abandoned the facile sexism of associating clothing and fashion with vapid artificiality and embraced, instead, the joy that I derived from getting dressed. By the end, I was ready to move to a city where people wouldn’t ask me if I “had a presentation” just because I was wearing an outfit other than sweats and a t-shirt. Getting dressed felt like an act of rebellion. Sorority girls all wore the same sweats, North Face pullovers, and diamond stud earrings. Fraternity boys wore the same dirty white hats, North Face pullovers, and cargo shorts. And I wanted to wear the grown up version of my purple skating rink get-up. 

In my college dorm in corduroy pants and an ‘80s sweatshirt (2002 or 2003)

I moved to Portland the year I graduated from college, and I started working at a resale clothing store called Buffalo Exchange. This was where I realized that people could just wear vintage clothing in their day to day lives. My first week at the shop, I bought a brown and white polyester 1960s dress with a dropped waist and peter pan collar. I wore it with red 1980s pumps that I had thrifted. By the end of my first month, I was wearing vintage almost daily. My coworkers put aside 50s and  60s dresses for me when they came through, and I was assigned the dress inventory as my area of focus. Getting dressed every day was an art for everyone who worked there. I delighted in putting together outfits, and the environment was one where I felt fearless trying out the most outrageous combinations. My style changed over the years, but I’ve never stopped loving and wearing vintage clothing. 

Me in 2006, actively avoiding the first wave of low rise jeans in head to toe vintage

When I started graduate school in my mid 20s I was at home in my style. I’d discovered Brigitte Bardot and Marianne Faithfull and started getting the haircut that I still always have some variation of now. I wore full vintage outfits to class, and when it came time to choose my focus areas for my studies (there were three), I decided  that for my English literature focus I wanted to study gender and clothing in Renaissance literature. While I’d long ago done away with the notion that fashion was meaningless and superficial, it was in graduate school that I started to understand clothing not only as a means of personal expression, but as a source of power, a political statement, and an expression of gender. I learned about livery clothing as a means of control and ownership of the servant classes. I read the Hic Mulier and Haec-Vir  pamphlets (translated roughly to “manly woman” and “womanish man”) that were circulated in London in the 1600s, warning people of the dangers of women dressing in men’s clothing. There was a moral panic during this period about cross dressing, with much anxiety about what would become of women if they began to dress like men (would they feel emboldened to act like men too?). Characters in Shakespeare are forever dissembling through sartorial changes and  shifting gender with a quick costume change. Studying clothing in literature painted a clear picture of a world where clothing had always been significant, and people had always been playing with it as a form of gender expression and transgression of social norms. 

For me, getting dressed had always been fun–an act of creativity, expression, and sometimes rebellion. But now I felt that it connected me to something bigger, an important part of the human experience. Humans throughout history have been getting dressed, and depending on what they put on, they might be punished, praised, mistaken, rewarded, mocked, arrested or even killed. Clothing (and all that it can represent) is as much a part of the universal human experience as art, music, food, or friendship.

In 2013 outside the Division Stumptown with my friend Ellie, when Bardot was my muse (I’ve been a regular at this cafe on and off since 2007). 

Getting Coffee

So what does this have to do with getting coffee? Early on in lockdown during the first stay at home orders, my mom suggested that maybe I didn’t struggle too much with lockdown because all my homeschooled years prepared me for working from home. I think this is probably true. Lockdown was largely easy for me, and I felt comfortable shifting my daily routines from the office to my living room.  But as my own work from home time dragged on, I noticed another similarity to homeschooling. There was no longer any reason to get dressed. I’m one of those people who forced myself to get dressed every day anyway. I never worked in sweatpants or forewent showers or brushing my teeth. I treated every day as though I needed to get dressed for work outside of the house. Sort of. 

With the exception of people seeing my floating head and shoulders in zoom meetings, no one was going to see what I was wearing, and I quickly lost any motivation to put together outfits, something that had brought me so much joy ever since that purple paisley ensemble that so offended the mean girls of Pelham roller rink. Two months turned into two years, and I got out of the habit of even going out for coffee. I savored my slow mornings at home, and with no need to leave the house for work, going out for coffee just felt like a disruption. Yes, the cafe was still two blocks away, and yes, it was fully reopened pretty soon after the initial lockdown orders were lifted. But my routine had changed,, and the idea of showering and dressing before my first cup of coffee sounded like torture now. And so, even after I went back to campus and the world largely returned to normal, I had lost one of my most treasured rituals–going out for coffee. 

A little context on this ritual. I worked as a barista for five years, and it was a pretty formative time in life. I met my husband, I met many of my best friends, and I still make a point to drive across town and visit the cafe where I used to work and where I still know the regulars and owners and feel right at home. For much of the time I worked as a barista, I lived just around the corner, and I had coffee out every single day. It was free for me, and I didn’t even own the equipment to make coffee at home. Long after I quit being a barista and became a professor, I continued this routine. I had coffee at home on some days, but whatever neighborhood I lived in, I became a regular at the cafe, befriended the baristas and other regulars, and stopped in at least a few days a week to sit and drink coffee in the presence of others. When people move to a new city, this is unfailingly my advice for making friends: become a regular at a coffee shop. 

By the time I went back to teaching on campus in 2022, my coffee shop routine was out the window and my getting dressed routine was also shot. It wasn’t until this year that I realized the two were related. A few years ago I heard a Hidden Brain podcast about the importance of “weak ties” relationships. Psychologist and researcher Gillian Sandstrom writes about these weak ties and advocates for their importance for our social and relational health. In contrast to strong ties, which are close, long-term relationships with friends and family, weak ties are the more shallow relationships we build with people we interact with frequently, but don’t necessarily share a close friendship with. Think customers, service workers, people you ride the bus with, colleagues, and neighbors. Sandstrom argues that these relationships are just as important for well-being as strong ties, and they often play a larger role in our daily routines and social landscape. I realized that part of what I love about the experience of being a regular at a cafe is the weak ties. I love the routine of interacting for a couple of minutes with someone with whom I have a rapport, but no obligation (besides kindness) and no expectation (besides the exchange of goods, money, and banter). Sandstrom found in her research that people who have more weak tie interactions throughout their day report higher overall happiness than those with few or no weak ties. 

last fall, getting back into my coffee routine

Some time last year I started making morning coffee shop trips a priority again. Three of my pottery friends and I started meeting on Fridays at a cafe in my neighborhood, and I started stopping for coffee on my way into work two days a week. I found that on the nights I knew I was going out for coffee the next day, I was excited to wake up in the morning. I put more thought into pulling together a good outfit, and it was easier to get out of bed and dressed when I knew the day would start with gentle, friendly exchanges that reminded me of the tenderness humans show towards each other even when they have no strong ties, no obligation. I have said already that getting dressed is an act of creativity and an expression of self, but I think this aspect of clothing is especially highlighted in the context of weak ties. Part of the appeal of any creative or generative act is sharing it with others. Most people who make art, cook good food, or play music, get some joy– even some primal connection to the universal human experience– by sharing those creative acts with others. Of course you can cook an elaborate and beautiful meal for yourself and enjoy it, but there’s a reason that most people find more satisfaction out of sharing it with others. They are proud of their work, yes. But they are also allowing others to see some part of themselves that is important to them, that allows them to be known a little even by those who may not really know them. And I think clothing serves this purpose for me. As an extension of myself and my identity, clothing serves an especially important role in public spaces where my primary relationships are weak ties. In a space where people don’t know me deeply, I get to share some small part of myself through this material expression of who I am and how I’m feeling that day.

Despite what feels like a world on fire every day, despite the fact that I loathe the winter months in Portland, I am happier than usual this winter. As I fall asleep at night, I try to think about the small joys of getting dressed, greeting the old man with the cute puppy as we wait in line for coffee, chatting with the barista about books, and observing all the other humans who are showing up for each other in these small ways.

 

References and related reading

Hic Mulier Pamphlets (1620)

Hidden Brain: Relationships 2.0 The Power of Tiny Interactions

Social Interactions and Well Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties by Gilliam M. Sandstrom and Elizabeth W. Dunn

Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory by Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass