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The first thrift store I remember going to as a child was called Amvets. It was a warehouse-like space that sat between the alley of an apartment complex, a trailer park and a gas station. I’d spend hours under the rows of industrial fluorescent lights playing with the plastic toys that lined the left wall, or I’d hide behind the cheap bridal gowns, hugging a bushel of taffeta until my arms stung. When I was a teenager, in the early 2010s, I’d get stoned and scour the racks of 2000s McBling, ’90s austerity and ’80s excess looking for an oversize flannel to wear with platform Creepers and high-waisted Levi cutoffs that I’d embellish with silver studs I bought in bulk from Michaels. I’d take languid breaks on a cracked leather couch in the furniture section as if it were my personal living room, sipping a venti white-chocolate mocha and staring into space until my brain felt coated in a warm glaze. I can still smell the dust.
There was technically nothing sacred about a place like Amvets, or my hometown, really — which in my day was overrun by lifted trucks and affectionately nicknamed Tweaker City. And yet, spending hours in this specific thrift store is the first time I remember ever truly feeling in touch with myself. I’d walk out of those doors, my eyes adjusting to the sun, and feel a blinding sense of clarity. I found something special among a pile of other people’s discards, among the chaos, and to my brain that translated into a glowing miracle.
It’s something I chased for years. Throughout my teens and 20s, I collected so much vintage that it became part of my personality: old mall brands like Express, Forever 21 and Wet Seal; fake designer accessories like the wannabe Galliano-era Dior crossbody bag with plastic peeling off the shoulder strap; and, much later, real designer pieces. I felt accomplished and even superior knowing the skirt I was wearing didn’t come easy. I dedicated time, energy and discernment and, in turn, was rewarded by a cosmic force smiling down on me with grace.
It was sometime in my late 20s that I felt a shift, repulsed by my collection of what I had increasingly decided was just a bunch of s— I needed out of my house. My brain, my body and my life were changing, inching toward something that felt like growing up, or growing out of. And my closet was developing muscle and its own consciousness with each passing moment and each throwaway thrift find. I didn’t recognize myself in it the way I once did. Most times when I’d get ready to go out, my clothes would end up in a menacing mountain on my bed. It felt like a physical manifestation of the multiple crises I was having while trying to get dressed (the crises I thought were just about the clothes — if I could fix my closet, I thought, they’d go away). There were pairs of jeans I bought 10 years ago when I was unhealthy that didn’t fit me anymore. So much faux snakeskin and fishnet. And why was every single shirt that I owned see-through? I’d return home from a night out to perform the familiar humiliation ritual of picking up, folding, hanging and stuffing clothes back into the insufficient storage space I had in my studio apartment, which fit everything only when 25% of it was in the hamper.
The words began to flicker in my brain like a neon sign that buzzes at the beginning of a long night: “Burn it all down.” The only way to move forward, I was convinced, was to clear out my closet so intensely that I could start over completely. Ever since I was small, I’ve had these crazed moments of urgency overtake me that I could feel in my teeth. They almost always anchored on this idea of a blank slate, running away or gaining control. I remember very clearly feeling like I was going to combust one day when I was 10 or 11 because the phrase “I can’t live an average life” beamed into my brain and played on a loop. I cried to my mom when she got home from work that I needed to do something huge — and timing was crucial — now, to ensure that didn’t happen. Her response was along the lines of, “Girl, chill.” But I can’t remember a time when my instincts weren’t screaming at me like that. The options were: All or nothing. Black or white. Too much or not enough.
It’s only now that I can connect the dots, realizing that this time it probably had something to do with turning 30 soon. Everything I owned felt like it was meant for a teenager. The clothing held versions of myself I didn’t want to remember anymore: When I was 19 and reckless, spending whatever disposable income I had at the American Apparel Factory Store on Alameda; or 21 and a vegan with a large collection of healing crystals and a patchwork sweater I wore on repeat; or 25 and unbearably lonely, trying to dress professionally but looking more like a whimsigoth in cosplay; or 27 and dissociated, my uniform that of a sporty club kid, very ’90s Berlin. My closet became less of a project and more of a projection. Transference at its finest.
Cleanliness is, allegedly, next to godliness, a phrase that has been attributed to 18th century evangelist and founder of the Methodist Church John Wesley, but it is thrown around as purposefully as a Bible verse, often being mistaken for one. It’s an idea that has existed in most cultures and religions for millennia — glorifying cleaning as a spiritual act or the precursor to a spiritual act. It‘s most front of mind at exactly this time of year: spring. Spring cleaning has roots in Nowruz, or Persian New Year, which lands on the first day of the season. The long-standing tradition of khaneh tekani (“shaking down the house”) is a time when carpets are washed and walls are scrubbed, offering a promise of renewal or staving off evil. The astrological calendar also begins in spring, with Aries, my sun sign and what is known as the child of the zodiac. The spirit of Aries is brash and youthful, confidently stumbling into life without a playbook. An embodiment of, “Everything is new and nothing can hurt me.” Or, in my case, “If everything is new, nothing can hurt me.” It’s tempting to harness that energy into blowing your entire life up.
The only way to move forward, I was convinced, was to clear out my closet so intensely that I could start over completely.
Minimalism’s allure is such that when the canvas is decluttered, you’ll be able to hear and see yourself better. Designers such as Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Calvin Klein and Mrs. Prada seemed to know this in the ’90s, rendering an entire stylistic decade into a kind of sexy blank slate. Minimalist artists Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella and Donald Judd seemed to know this, captivating us with the addicting lucidity of their stark lines, colors and shapes. Japanese expert organizer and author Marie Kondo knew and preached this in a way that defined the 2010s and its obsession with efficiency. She was inspired by the Japanese Shinto religion, which teaches that objects have spirits and must be respected as such. In her 2010 book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” Kondo chillingly put it this way: “The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.” For Kondo, what to get rid of and what to keep boiled down to a self-interrogation that was, on the surface, instinctual: “Does it spark joy?” I started the process in earnest sometime around 29, taking long moments of staring at my open closet like they do in the movies. I ignored the creeping suspicion that the question — “Does it spark joy?” — was too simplistic a guiding principle for me.
At the beginning, there was nothing intentional about my process. I had entered a kind of demon mode, manically grabbing things off hangers and throwing them on the floor. I began filling up bags in three categories: things to give away, things to sell, things to store — which included items I didn’t necessarily want to wear but that I romanticized might be illustrative of my youth in the museum of my life one day. (Yes, I am a Leo rising.) Still, I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want them around, reminding me of myself. There was an immediate psychic relief in this action, something I should have been wary of — true psychic relief is never that fast — but I was just focused on what I thought I needed to survive: to feel free of myself, to not look at myself at all.
In tandem, my sole purpose became building a closet that felt like it was meant for a grown-up — who this grown-up was, I had zero idea, but she was at a point in her life when she yearned to feel the heft of designer fabrics. That much was clear. My thrifting compulsion became a “finding vintage designer online for cheap” compulsion, a skill that felt natural and exciting. Something to obsess and possess me. I’d lie in the dark, typing “vintage Junya Watanabe skirt” into my Depop search bar and scroll until my eyes felt like they were made of sandpaper. It took me 15 years to get in this mess, but I was determined to get out of it as soon as yesterday. In my estimation, every five Y2K polyblend tops that I got rid of earned me one beautiful silk Prada blouse I scored from a lowball bid on EBay. This process of purging and acquiring became all I talked about. When someone asked me how I was, I’d answer, “I’m cleaning out my closet.” It was an intense preoccupation that was fighting against a creeping realization, one that was becoming crystalline with each old piece gotten rid of and with each new item welcomed: You can never really run away. I tried, and all I kept doing was running into myself. Over and over and over. Every corner I turned, there I was, smirking.
When someone asked me how I was, I’d answer, with “I’m cleaning out my closet.” It was an intense preoccupation that was fighting against a creeping realization, one that was becoming crystalline with each old piece gotten rid of, and with each new item welcomed: You can never really run away.
The pieces I bought felt oddly familiar or, rather, reflective. I couldn’t shake the see-through tops (Jean Paul Gaultier blouse off Depop), or the ascetic black boots (patent-leather Dries Van Noten knee-highs off the RealReal), or the clanging hardware (embellished Wales Bonner slacks from a sample sale). All my phases and influences were there too: raver, goth-lite, sporty, hood and hippie. In 1994, Jon Kabat-Zinn published the book “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” which became a staple in the self-help pantheon. Its title was the new phrase that played on a loop in my head. The fabrics may have gotten an upgrade, the clothes were now archival instead of just old, but in every purchase I saw all the versions of myself that ever existed.
People who complained that their world was over at 30 were losers, I had decided a long time ago, with lives that were probably uninteresting to begin with. Sometime in my late teens, I dedicated myself to choosing small paths of unconventionality as a personal rebellion, as much as capitalism and social conditioning would allow. It was a privilege, and I knew it. Most women in my family had already gotten married, had multiple children and might have even been divorced by my age. But I was actively choosing a new direction, and I thought that would save me.
The identities we conjure up are like prayers. A big part of it is making a decision about the way you want to live and willing into an entire way of being around it. My sermon — which I would deliver sloppily in the smoking section at parties, annoyingly self-satisfied and convinced that I had figured it all out — became this: If you’re cool now, you’re cool forever. Getting older? No big deal, but only if you’re cool. Somehow, though, when you’re not even looking, existential dread finds its way in. It has a key to the backdoor or, better yet, has lived inside your house all along, trying to burn it all down instead of sitting with the discomfort that your life might be changing.
And then, in early January, L.A. actually started burning. At least two dozen people died, and over 40,000 acres of homes were destroyed. Archives and generational memory banks in Altadena and the Palisades were lost completely and forever. At the same time, my four-year relationship ended. The combination of personal and collective grief flattened me. I felt that everything I loved was disintegrating, and I was heartbroken in a way that mimicked physical illness. The work I was doing in my closet didn’t matter anymore — not only because I wore the same gray Raiders hoodie and black sweatpants for weeks straight but because these events came with the epiphany that I was stuck in a misguided loop that only something this cataclysmic could snap me out of. Even thinking the phrase “burn it all down” felt disrespectful at this point — to my own memories and those of others, and all the ones we shared together. Everything now was ephemera, snapshots of precious moments and people that were a part of who I was. I wanted to remember everything.
Somehow, though, when you’re not even looking, existential dread finds its way in. It has a key to the backdoor or, better yet, has lived inside your house all along, trying to burn it all down instead of sitting with the discomfort that your life might be changing.
On New Year’s Eve — a week after my breakup and a week before the fires started — my mom came over and helped me do something I had planned all week but no longer had the will to go through with alone: deep clean my entire apartment. Together, we mopped the floors, emptied the cabinets of half-eaten bags of pasta and threw away Tupperware with missing tops. Then I did the only thing I really could do then, which was get back into bed. My mom went to the store and, upon her return, pulled something out of a black plastic bag that she set down on my glass coffee table. My eyes focused. She proceeded to light the biggest Virgin Mary candle I’d ever seen in my life. Without exaggeration, this candle was the size of three exhaust pipes put together. So comically large that all I could think was, “You know s— is bad when you need a candle this big.” Jumbo Mary burned for six days straight, morning and night. When I’d wake up breathless and sad from a dream where I was with my ex and the cats on the yellow couch, I’d see an orb of light flickering in the ceiling, washing the room in a smoldering orange glow. I felt that for those six days, the candle itself was purifying me of any shame, anger, sadness, grief or disillusionment. But the flame was small and contained, only burning away what needed to go and keeping everything else intact.
I often thought the best thing you can do for yourself is to know, and accept, when a certain part of your life is over. When the story you’ve been telling yourself for years has run its course. When you’re ready to retire the mesh tops, or at least buy the archival designer version (Helmut Lang, 1999). Joan Didion wrote it most famously: “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” But I saw the end, Joan. How could I not? There was a new season approaching, a breakup that gave me a moderate-to-severe identity crisis, the most devastating environmental catastrophe the city I loved had ever endured, and a very clear milestone (30) that was barreling toward me with the same velocity that I was barreling toward it. It was so symbolic, in fact, that it bordered on corny. I just thought I could fix it, or avoid the pain of it all together, by cleaning my closet.
I wasn’t wrong to clear out things that didn’t fit my life anymore or make space for the new; it’s just that I wanted to get rid of myself in the process. Burning it all down is not how you live a life or convince yourself to go on. Pretending that a fresh start is a good thing, or even possible, isn’t growing up. Every day, I became less convinced by complete purification as a means of enlightenment, and more interested in curation, transmutation and integration. I started to embrace that every experience, photo booth strip, warehouse, city block, platform boot and faux fur jacket as a part of me forever, whether it still physically existed in my life, closet or L.A. at all.
What started to resurface were the times when I felt truly and enduringly at peace, the way lifestyle minimalism promises you’re supposed to feel when you’ve gotten rid of everything in your house that doesn’t serve a purpose, or when the pile of tote bags taking up real estate in your dresser disappears. (A feeling that in those instances never actually lasted.) Apart from Amvets, the closest I ever got to that sensation was walking out of a dark dance floor after hours spent there, curly hair stained with the smell of Capris and an invisible film of sweat caked onto my skin. It’s where I feel closest to God and to myself, where regeneration feels not only possible but promised. Both Amvets and the rave felt like coming home — which was far from Kim Kardashian’s jump-scare-y minimalist mansion and more like the layers, textures and jewel tones of Anaïs Nin’s Silver Lake sanctum.
During the month of my 30th birthday, I stare at my open closet again, just like they do in the movies. It’s sharply edited now. I’ve released many things that no longer fit me physically or psychologically, but their essence remains and the parts of myself they represented are still honored and evident throughout, resulting in something slimmer but more interconnected. It’s nowhere near a capsule wardrobe, but it’s madness contained. Me, concentrated. Every piece is either thoughtfully chosen or intentionally kept from a past life, things I plan to have forever and hopefully one day pass down to someone very lucky. There’s the Vivienne Westwood men’s plaid shirt with a long, pointed collar that I got from a vintage fair and is the best version of any flannel I could’ve hoped to find back in my thrifting days. The rock-studded Prada purse I got on Poshmark and feels like a callback to my hardware-obsessed teens. The clown-toed Martine Rose loafer heels that I got on mega-sale on Farfetch and represent all my alt-kid dreams come true.
My most cherished item is a brandless vintage cerulean hoodie I’ve had since I was 18. It has a constellation of green and pink rhinestones all over, against bursts of bright red stitching. It’s falling apart — there are holes in the fabric, and the zipper has been broken forever. I’ve had it for a decade, and it surely lived a long life before me. But when I wear it, I feel her: that version of myself I was so insistent on forgetting. Her beauty, her love and her chaos.
Maybe the most grown-up thing of all is acceptance. Accepting that no matter how many closet clean-outs you do, spiritually, you may just be a messy b—.
