Vintage clothes: a balm for my perfectionism

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Photo of a person browsing colourful clothes on wooden hangers in a wardrobe, highlighting diverse patterns and textures.

I’m a perfectionist, and it’s not cute. I get stuck in an anxious loop thinking I’ve said the wrong thing; I put off tasks because, try as I might, I struggle to accept the idea that perfect is so often the enemy of good; a ladder in my tights drives me to distraction. My perfectionism feels like an embarrassing character flaw.

I also love fashion, and, in recent years, I’ve developed a love of vintage clothes. I’ve always been drawn to the styles of the past, and moving to a bigger city gave me access to a wealth of vintage shops.

Being a vintage-loving perfectionist has its challenges. Flaws are inescapable: loose threads, tugged seams, a faint discolouration. While wearing a 1930s bias-cut dress to a wedding, I noticed a tear near the hem. Was I responsible for that hole? Or did another woman’s high heel pierce the fabric on a different dance floor 90 years earlier? It was impossible to know, and somehow that uncertainty let me off the hook. Instead of worrying about whether I’d caused the damage, I decided to delight in the idea that I’d given the dress another great night out, and twirled my way back onto the dance floor. That kind of thought process doesn’t come naturally to me, but every encounter with a vintage item gives me a chance to practise accepting the discomfort of imperfection.

Each piece of clothing has a story, and it’s often the flaws that tell these stories. By wearing them, I become a part of their story too. In turn, I’m reminded that life leaves its marks on us all. Nothing stays perfect. We can’t undo our mistakes; we can only move forward, wearing the traces of all we’ve experienced – in clothes that feel more and more like our own.

by Freya Howarth

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To read more about the relationship between our clothes and ourselves, I recommend the book Dressed (2019) by Shahidha Bari, as well as her Aeon Essay on the philosophy of clothes, ‘What Do Clothes Say’ (2016).

For advice on managing unhealthy perfectionism, check out Margaret Rutherford’s Psyche Guide ‘How to Get Over “Never Good Enough”’ (2020).

NOTE TO SELFATTACHMENT AND PARENTING

Who’s responsible for your attachment style?

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A child in a white dress clinging to a woman’s hand, hiding her face in the woman’s pink shawl, outdoors.

Photo by Tamara Govedarovic/Unsplash

If you’ve heard about attachment styles – the ways we tend to relate to others in close relationships – you might have been told that it comes down to how our parents treated us. According to classic attachment theory, those of us lucky enough to receive plenty of warmth and support from our early caregivers develop a ‘secure’ model of relationships: we continue to trust close others to be there for us and feel comfortable depending on them. Those who don’t receive such support may develop ‘insecure’ models – becoming anxious about losing people, or averse to getting too attached.

Yet these models are not ‘set in stone’, contemporary attachment researchers say; we update them based on novel relationship experiences. That is, it’s not all about mom’s responsiveness to your needs. Other kinds of bonds matter, too.

Supporting this view, the research psychologist Keely Dugan and her colleagues analysed data on hundreds of people, provided by their parents, observers, and the participants themselves as they aged to around 30. As expected, people’s experiences with their mothers in childhood were correlated with how secure they felt in multiple kinds of relationships as adults. But the quality of other early relationships was predictive as well. For instance, having more positive experiences with friends in childhood was associated with feeling more secure in romantic relationships as an adult.

These results had me thinking about my own attachments in unexpected ways. Not just about how parental warmth might have equipped me to feel safe relying on others, but how my friends from childhood (some of whom I’m still close with) may have served as attachment figures themselves. Did learning – year after year, hangout after sleepover after band practice – to feel safe with my pals help set me on a course toward a happy marriage? I’m sure they’d love to take credit for that, and perhaps they deserve some.

by Matt Huston

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To learn more about attachment styles, what they mean for you, and how you might change yours, check out the Psyche Guide ‘How to Be More Secure in Your Relationships’ (2022), by Graham Johnston and Matt Wotton.

The psychologist and attachment researcher R Chris Fraley, one of the co-authors of the research mentioned here, provides a handy overview of attachment theory on his website.

NOTE TO SELFPERSONALITY

Try everything twice

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Photo of people around a fire holding drinks, with a warm glow lighting the scene at night.

Ross Sneddon/Unsplash

Starting in college, I adopted a new life motto: ‘Try everything twice, because the first time could be a fluke.’ I knew I needed a change. My teenage self had been stubborn and overly certain about the world. That version of me liked what they liked, and that was that. But as I entered adulthood, I started to see how my rigidity was hurting me. By dismissing people, opportunities and experiences out of hand, I was missing out.

So I started giving everything chances – at least two. I applied this to different foods, workout classes, styles of dress, and even dates. I revisited a study group that I’d avoided after our first session together (because they seemed awkward and too quiet), and soon got to know them as a witty and thoughtful group of friends. Saying ‘yes’ at least twice to different social events and party scenes helped me figure out what I truly enjoy.

Over time, this practice, I suspect, even changed my personality, strengthening my tolerance for things I would’ve previously written off and giving me a newfound curiosity. As someone who writes about psychology, I came to understand this change in terms of openness to experience: a dimension of personality that includes inquisitiveness, willingness to entertain new ideas, imagination, and adventurousness. There is no doubt in my mind that changing this personality trait – which, research shows, is indeed possible to do – has made me a happier person.

But I’m also a better person now, I think. Since my first impressions now carry less weight, I’m more generous in my assessments of people, and way more likely to chat with someone I don’t know well. Teenage me would be baffled by how many more sources of joy and delight you can find if you just give things a chance to grow on you. Sometimes all it takes is a second try.

by Hannah Seo

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Openness to experience isn’t the only personality trait that can shift over time. If you’d like to become more outgoing – and learn more about the science of personality change – check out the Psyche Guide ‘How to Come Out of Your Shell’ (2021) by Christian Jarrett.

Olga Khazan of The Atlantic conducted her own personal experiment into altering her traits, which she recounts in the story ‘I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality’ (2022).

My motto encouraged me to persist in getting to know unfamiliar people. If you could use some additional encouragement to put yourself out there, try the Psyche Guide ‘How to Chat With Almost Anyone’ (2025) by Michael Yeomans.

NOTE TO SELFMIND-BODY INTERACTIONS

So what if Nike’s neuro shoes are a placebo?

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Photo of red and grey trainers levitating, showcasing textured soles with orange accents on a light background.

©Nike

Nike has just released its first ever range of ‘mind-altering’ shoes. Its glitzy marketing campaign features a chief science officer, brain scan results and dramatic music. The shoes, which have an array of bobbles (sorry, ‘nodes’) on their soles, promise to help connect your body with your brain and tune you in to the present moment. I’m sceptical about the scientific claims, but I’m impressed by the storytelling.

In medicine, it’s well known that positive expectations about an intervention, even an inert one, can produce real physiological benefits – this is the placebo effect. As the neuroscientist and placebo expert Fabrizio Benedetti explained in his paper ‘Placebos and Movies: What Do They Have in Common?’ (2021) , it is the therapeutic rituals around a placebo treatment that magnify its effects. White coats, needles, pill colours, authoritative reassurance – all these factors can trigger associations that contribute to a patient’s belief that a treatment will work.

I’m reminded of Nathan Hill’s satirical novel Wellness (2023), in which the psychologist Elizabeth starts out investigating products that make dubious claims, but comes to realise the effects are real even if they’re purely a placebo. The key to their success is the ‘story surrounding the thing’, she observes; later, she becomes a consultant for multinational corporations, helping them to craft convincing fictions.

I suspect this is exactly what Nike has done with its new range of shoes. They’ve created an elaborate, compelling narrative tailored for an athletic audience looking to gain an edge: a ‘Mind Science Department’ staffed with neuroscientists who have developed shoes that ‘disengage the default mode network’ and engage the ‘sensorimotor network of the brain’. Is any of it real? The remarkable thing about the placebo effect – and Nike’s canny marketing exploits this fully – is that it doesn’t really matter.

by Christian Jarrett

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Even knowing that these new shoes might be relying on a placebo effect probably won’t dull any benefits. Research suggests that so-called open-label placebos – in which patients are told they are receiving a placebo – are still effective, as explained in this Psyche Idea by Darwin A Guevarra and Kari A Leibowitz. (And regardless, the Nike Mind 001 ‘pregame mules’ do look awfully comfy!)

There is a long tradition of marketing teams exploiting the allure of neuroscience to sell products. Why not wear your Nike Mind mules while sipping on a glass of NeuroSonic?

NOTE TO SELFOCD

Forever compelled

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Woman in historical dress washing her hands with water poured by a child from a jug, with onlookers in an ornate interior setting.

Detail from Interior with a Woman Washing her Hands (1675) by Eglon van der Neer. Courtesy the Mauritshuis, the Hague, the Netherlands

Having a history with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), I’ve long found it fascinating and, in a way, reassuring to read about the disorder’s many guises. The anxious thoughts and compulsive responses to them follow a common script, but the specifics vary. What seems horrible to one person with OCD, such as using a restroom without extensively washing their hands, might seem innocuous to the next person, who’s preoccupied by something completely different (such as worrying and repeatedly testing whether doors are locked, or having ‘bad thoughts’ and scrutinising what they mean). Reflecting on this merry-go-round of fears tells you something about the true nature of your specific, seemingly terrible fear.

A book I recently read showed me another dimension of this multiplicity – stretching it backward in time. In portions of Can’t Just Stop: An Investigation of Compulsions (2017), the late science journalist Sharon Begley surveys compulsions of the past. Based on rare historical accounts, she writes, it seems that ‘until the late seventeenth century, [compulsions] were seen as evidence of Satan’s hand and addressed by clergymen.’ Some of them featured the scrupulosity that still appears in many OCD cases today – for example, compulsively praying, fearing you’ve not done it right.

But other variants emerged in the record. A Renaissance-era physician described a patient who felt compelled to wash her clothes after touching things. Later, Begley writes, changes such as the spread of household stoves encouraged compulsive checking (eg, checking and rechecking whether you left the stovetop or oven on, a well-recognised pattern today). In what sounds a lot like an OCD compulsion, the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson would reportedly touch each lamppost as he walked down the street, ensuring he didn’t miss any. The disorder took on new faces, and the explanations for it evolved. But its insidious power appears to be age-old.

by Matt Huston

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For an excellent, concise description of OCD and ‘scrupulosity’ in particular, read Jesse Summers’s Psyche Idea ‘Why Won’t the Sin Wash Away? When Thinking Ethically Goes Awry’ (2020).

Nick Wignall’s Psyche Guide on ‘How to Deal With Troubling Thoughts’ (2020) offers advice for handling the intrusive, unwanted thoughts that are a common feature of OCD.

The International OCD Foundation lists many of the common types of obsessions and compulsions and has a series of articles on subtypes of OCD.

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