In Praise of Wearing a Dress Again and Again

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/style/our-hero-tiffany-haddish.html

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There is something seriously wonky about a world where a famous person wearing the same outfit more than once is exciting news.

Ever since Tiffany Haddish appeared in her white halter-neck Alexander McQueen dress at the MTV Movie & TV Awards last weekend for the fourth time — fourth time! — after wearing it in July 2017 at the premiere of “Girl’s Trip,” then the following November when she hosted “Saturday Night Live,” and then to present at the Oscars in March, and it became something of a cause célèbre, I can’t stop thinking about it.

The same thing happens every time that another celebrity known for shopping her closet, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, appears in a look she has previously worn. It could be the yellow Alexander McQueen coatdress she wore to her daughter’s christening in 2015, at Trooping the Colour in 2016 and during a trip to Belgium in 2017; or the beaded Jenny Packham gown she wore in 2016 to a gala for the East Anglia Children’s hospices and in 2011 to the ARK 10th Anniversary Gala Dinner. Among many others.

Every time they do it, we throw up our hands in excitement. Yet what we should really be asking ourselves is: Why this is the exception rather than the rule?

In our culture of disposability and influencers, wearing something in public more than once is often perceived as a sign, somehow, of failure: of not being rich enough, or powerful enough, or desirable enough, to continually acquire things. We avidly check Instagram and street style (even though we know how manufactured it is) to see What Boldface Names Are Wearing Now! and the Top 10 Best Looks! — all of it feeding our seemingly unending need for the new and different.

This is what drives stylists to demand clothes straight from the runway for their clients, before they even reach stores, and what spurred the see now/buy now moment a few years ago, when brands decided they were losing out on market share because consumers simply could not wait for whatever appeared on said runway or on said celebrity to hit the shop floor.

And it is what made fast fashion into such a phenomenon (it started out as affordable style for all, a laudable goal, but was quickly transformed into quick-hit purchasing addiction).

It is what is powering the rental market, which allows the experience of a new dress without the guilt, and what is causing the sudden trend among our favorite clotheshorses, including Kendall Jenner, Kardashian Co. and Chloë Sevigny, to sell off chunks of their closets.

It’s all spun as entertainment: visual candy, a celebration of design, an example for us all to get ideas about how to dress. Innocent fun. But it is also creating a glut of overstock (H&M’s $4.3 billion of unsold clothes, anyone?) and undermining the local industry of countries swamped by secondhand donations made to allay the guilt of purchase. And it is skewing our value system in a way that isn’t good for anyone.

There’s some talk about “men get to wear the same tux over and over again, why shouldn’t we.” Michelle Obama made that point at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2017, when she said her husband had worn one tuxedo all eight years he was in the White House, but she couldn’t do the same thing because “people take pictures of the shoes I wear, the bracelets, the necklace.”

That’s true, but I also think the issue is about more than gender equality.

Ms. Haddish may have joked about it on “S.N.L.,” when she said, “I feel like I should be able to wear what I want, when I want, however many times I want, as long as I Febreze it,” but the point is a serious one.

It’s about valuing an investment.

It’s about the fact, as Ms. Haddish told W magazine, that her approximately $4,000 dress was the equivalent of “a down payment on a car, that’s a medical bill. So, even though everyone says I shouldn’t wear the dress in public again, I’m wearing it.”

It’s about the fact she actually bought her dress herself, as opposed to borrowing it, or being contractually obliged to wear it, as so many celebrities do and are on the red carpet. I think the last time I remember an actress copping to purchasing her own dress was in 2016 when Bryce Dallas Howard announced she had bought her Golden Globes Jenny Packham (size 6!) from Neiman Marcus.

And when you buy something yourself, especially when it is an expensive something, it has value it doesn’t necessarily have when it isn’t directly linked to your own labor and bank balance. You have usually weighed the pros and cons, sacrificed a bit, had an internal debate, and then made a decision.

In celebrating her purchase and how it makes her feel, and in wearing it over and over, Ms. Haddish (and the Duchess of Cambridge, for that matter) is modeling a different kind of value system — one we used to have but seem to have forgotten. One that appreciates the work that goes into a really wonderful garment, says it is worth the investment, especially if you amortize it over many wears and aren’t afraid to admit it.

And it’s about time.

Because this kind of revisionist (or old-fashioned) thinking is in everyone’s interest, brand and consumer alike. It says one well-considered garment is worth 10 here-today-recycled tomorrow equivalents, and can be priced accordingly. It puts a premium on time and quality. It holds both sides of the equation to a higher standard.

We should value our clothes. They are part of our identity. We should think about them. We should take care of them. They should protect us. They should make us feel secure. They should contain memories. Not all of them, to be fair. But a lot of them.

Maybe that sounds like a load of sanctimonious hooey, but it seems to me that the applause greeting Ms. Haddish’s choices should be a sign. Wear it again, Sam.