My Closet Is Full, but I Still Have Nothing to Wear.
An African Girl’s Meditation on Clothes, Culture, and the Weight of Choice.
There is a peculiar grief in having too many clothes and still feeling like you have nothing to wear. It is a quiet kind of grief, the type that hides itself in the mundane: in zippers that don’t quite close, in fabrics that no longer feel like you, in the long pause between reaching for a blouse and putting it back again.
My closet is full of colors, patterns, old loves, abandoned trends. Clothes I bought when I thought I was becoming someone new. Clothes I held onto because I was afraid to let go of someone I once was. Some still carry the scent of perfume I no longer wear. Some remind me of a younger, brasher version of myself who believed she had to wear tight jeans to be taken seriously.
Fashion, for women especially African women, is never just fashion. It is performance. It is armor. It is prayer. It is politics. Sometimes it is memory. In every fold of Ankara, there is history. In every lace aso-ebi, there is obligation. There are expectations sewn invisibly into every hem, what a girl should wear to church, to a wedding, to visit her in-laws. What she must never wear. What she is too bold to wear. What she is too old for. What she is not yet ready for.
And so, my closet becomes a negotiation. Not just with fabric, but with my past selves and my imagined futures. Each hanger holds a version of me I’ve tried on, the modest girl, the part girl, the minimalist, the maximalist, the rebel in borrowed clothes, the daughter who wanted to make her mother proud. I stand before them like a mediator at a peace talk, trying to reconcile expectations with instincts.
The older I get, the more I realize this dilemma isn’t about a lack of options. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s the overabundance of selves I’ve gathered along the way, every era, every mood, every reinvention all folded into cotton and silk and denim and lace. And now, I’m tasked with choosing. With dressing not for something far more elusive: comfort. Clarity. Ease. The quiet thrill of feeling like myself without explanation or apology.
Because the real challenge isn’t deciding what to wear.
It’s deciding who to be, and then letting your clothes rise to meet her.