A Letter to (and from) a Maximalist

Details: hand-me-down sweatshirt, vintage Wrangler jeans, Le Tricoteur hat and Nike trainers.

It is very difficult to condense an individual's personal style into a single outfit, but I'm (fairly) sure that most people could do it. (What would yours be? Let me know in the comments!)

But what can be done for the eclectic, flaky folk that just can't settle?

It's me!

I'll tell you what can be done. We shall reinvent, refine and distill ourselves into a vast, unwieldy wardrobes that takes up half a room (or at least mine does). We cannot settle because we are never in stasis. We are different every single day. And that's absolutely A-OK.

We don't need a 'personal uniform' or a 'capsule wardrobe' because we cannot be contained in such terms. We are too (excessively) expressive and want to take up space in a world where only concise is nice and only 'small' and 'thin' and 'tiny' are acceptable extracts of the expansive dictionary we choose to ignore.

Me again! Ft. part of my crazy green and orange room!

We're not always practical: we could never pack all of our belongings into a single suitcase, but we are extravagant, daring to invert consumerist culture, to harbour collections of things that make US happy rather than buying mindlessly in an attempt to satisfy those around us. The newest phone, the 'It Bag' means nothing to us; only (in my case) 400 books by the age of 23 and a plethora of different novelty teapots will do.

At the ripe old age of whenever-I-die, I will feel triumphant to do so amongst piles of clothes I was intending to wear, next to stacks of books I never managed to finish and in a house where every art-clad wall invokes a sense of deep satisfaction that drives my affliction forward.

Details: vintage leather jacket (I got it secondhand), Monki trousers, vintage Paul Smith shirt, Miss Selfridge hat and Dr Marten shoes.

We are the maximalists. I am pleased to be one myself.

Are you?

Thank you for reading!

Instagram: @jumper.dweller

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