For the first time in six years, I have closets.
At the Brooklyn apartment I just moved out of, all available evidence points to them just screwing up the blueprint. My bedroom was twice the height of a normal bedroom, and there's no reason why they shouldn't have extended the other bedroom, a flight of stairs up, over my room. There was a secret, unfinished space above the kitchen, accessible by vent, which we only discovered five years into our residence thanks to a beeping smoke detector. And there wasn't a single closet anywhere in the apartment. I kept my clothes in a bulky wardrobe assembled out of canvas and poles: hangers in the middle, other stuff sorted into compartments on either side. I stuffed as much as I could into that thing, and by the end I think the only thing keeping it from falling over was that it was wedged between two sturdy pieces of furniture.
Moving to my new spot in Queens, I was excited to store my clothes in a place that didn't constantly carry the threat of structural failure. But the thing about changing apartments is that it forces you to reckon with the physical mass of the things you own. When I first moved within New York City, all of my stuff fit inside my dad's SUV. When I moved into my last place, it required two trips. This time—probably the last occasion I'll ever move without a dedicated van of some sort—it took three. Some of this is because I now actually own real furniture, but I can't deny that my clothes collection has grown astronomically over the last several years. As I organized outfits in my new bedroom—and reluctantly resigned certain pieces to boxes under the bed—I had the chance to listen to the stories they told, about me then and about me now.
My clothes-buying journey essentially started about a decade ago, when I finally gave up on trying to act like a boy. I have a certain sentimental affection for the pieces I ordered online during that early era, picking out purchases through guesswork, blind optimism, or a simple desire to not be noticed: tri-colored and striped shirts, cheap polyester that would quickly start to smell, a particularly versatile blazer, and a black dress with roses on it that remains my very favorite thing I still own today. This dress isn't baggy, but it's comfortable enough to have served through a puberty's worth of changes to my body, and it works for basically any occasion. Among other things, it was my go-to first-date dress, all the way through to my current relationship.
This is my best advice for anyone who doesn't feel great about the clothes they currently own: Find one thing—just one—that makes you like the way you look, think about the adjectives that describe it, and seek out other pieces of clothing those adjectives describe. With this dress, I learned that I like how I look in black, and that I liked floral print, and that I liked the comfort of being able to easily put something on without feeling squeezed or stretched anywhere. I liked that it was unmistakably femme yet didn't really call attention to itself, or me. I found more dresses with a similar fit, and these gradually replaced a lot of the t-shirt–and–jeans combos in my regular rotation.
Not that one dress solved all my problems. As I continued to discover my body for essentially the first time, I went through so many phases whose lingering impacts weighed me down on this last move. There was the phase where I'd cut the sides off of bulky men's shirts and show a sports bra underneath, because I wanted to be butch. There was the halter top phase, because I wanted to look like a woman who went clubbing. There was the pink phase, because I wanted to look girly. There was the button-up phase, the romper phase, the bodysuit phase, the baseball cap phase, and the impractical dresses phase, too.
I don't regret these. I was experimenting, making missteps even as I picked up more lessons that could guide my way forward. I started appreciating the value of trying things on in a store—even if it's hard for me not to fixate on all the clothes I can't fit into—because even if you don't buy anything, that information about sizing and your body and various styles will be useful in the future. Very gradually, I figured out that I would save a lot of money if I set specific dates when I'd be allowed to make online purchases, bookmarking things in the meantime instead of buying instantly. I absorbed, begrudgingly, that just because something looks good on a model doesn't mean it will look good on me. I grew out of my distaste for taking pictures of myself and studying my appearance. I learned to graciously accept help when it was offered in good faith.
I was discovering something first like acceptance—"I'll be grateful in the long term that I got the larger size"—and then maybe something like a corollary to that earlier bit of advice: Buy clothes for the parts of your body that you like, not the parts of your body you want to change. My main roster of clothes today—lots of cute dresses, some colder-weather ensembles, a few wild cards—all connect to something I've genuinely grown to like about my physical self, whether it's my legs, my curves, or something ineffable about the way the colors work with my hair and face. This is why I think of being trans, for all its challenges, as ultimately a blessing. It forces you to pursue your favorite possible version of yourself.
I never think about my clothes more than when I'm attending a wedding, because it's the best time for celebratory self-expression. For the two I have coming up soon, I've got a few different options: basically my very best and nicest floral dresses. I associate them with good memories from the recent past, like a particularly fun birthday party, or a trip to the U.S. Open, or just being out and about on a nice day in the city. And it's thrilling to realize that I have so many of these positive connections with my clothes, because it replaces the old anxieties they used to symbolize. When I first bought that one black-with-roses dress, I thought it would take a body I really didn't like and hide away its flaws. Whatever I wear tomorrow, or next week, or next month, will take a body I've grown to more or less love, and show off the things I think make it worth showing off.
