Relay Column: "Soft Clothing – Attire as Care –"（garden）

People wear clothes every day.
Regardless of interest in dressing up, wearing clothes is a choice.

I like wearing clothes.
I wear a variety of clothes every day.
The clothes I wear are chosen based on the season, weather, purpose of going out, who I spend time with, and my mood.
At this time, I am the one making the choice of clothes, and it appears that my mind and body command the clothes.

However, it is also true that the clothes I choose and put on myself shape my mood.
I am always filled with a sense of wonder when I get pulled by my own clothes.

Simple synthetic clothes as a product. Clothes that straighten my back, as a form of armor. I look straight ahead, pull my chin in, and walk with a slightly stern expression. I stand in a corner of the train. The world is the enemy.
Worn out and faded, baggy clothes. Clothes that forgive my decadence, as a form of indulgence. Somehow I feel relaxed, my walking pace is slow. I sit comfortably in the train. The world leaves me alone.
As colorful as flowers and flowing like water. Clothes that color me and convey joy to others, as a gift for you and me. I walk as if I'm dancing. I occupy a spot by the window in the train and gaze at the sky. The world is my neighbor.

Clothes transform the way my body exists, change my mood, and transform my interpretation of the world.
The clothes I wear make me big and small, kind and stern, strong and weak.
Then, where do my favorite clothes, my most beloved clothes, take me?

Clothes made by hand, clothes made of delicate materials, clothes that have passed through time to reach me.
Decorations that have no function, cloth that floats away from the body, the trace of the tiny unravelling that was carefully mended.
Clothes that require my love to make, to handle, to wear.
I love such soft clothes.

Seasoned linen, smooth silk, soft cotton, fluffy knit. They hone my skin.
A dragging hem, sleeves that hide the fingertips, generously gathered pleats. They blur my boundaries.
Really small buttons in a row, overlapping lace, colorful embroidery, fluffy tied ribbons. They finesse my eyes and hands.

When I wear soft clothes. It is when I am most vulnerable, most fragile.
Weakness, fragility. The threshold of sensitivity is lowered. The folds of my world that takes in the world become their thinnest.

When I am fully wrapped in soft clothes, I feel disconnected from the world and feel the distance between the world and where I reside.
Soft and fragile clothes pull me back to a soft and fragile existence.

Wearing soft clothes, it is an incredibly defenceless and vulnerable state.
All my armour and bravado are stripped away, and I am exposed to the world.
Others, the world, are unknown creatures.
I fear the world, I tremble in the face of the world.

Still, I like soft clothes.
Because when I see the most terrifying colors of the world, I also see the most beautiful colors.

While I am afraid of the flood of information, the poisonous cityscape, and the hustle and bustle of people rushing about without any margin, I find comfort in being my soft self.
In the midst of this world that feels like a raging river trying to swallow me up, feeling my soft and fragile self that seems about to be knocked down, it is also a way of reaffirming that I have not yet worn myself out in this sick place.
Being soft and vulnerable.
I think that is the utmost care for myself, who must live in armor.

I make clothes.
Clothes for my most vulnerable, most fragile self.
If I could make such soft clothes, what beautiful world would I see?

People wear clothes every day.
Regardless of interest in dressing up, wearing clothes is a choice.
Choosing clothes that suit my heart, being shaped by them, is what it means to dress as a human. Could it play a bigger role in self-care than we realize?
Dressing up as an aspirational self is good. It's also good to arm yourself according to the situation. Or, it's good to dress as camouflage to blend into the world.
At the same time, it would be nice if there were clothes to care for oneself, and I would be glad if so.
Cute and cool, fashionable and dowdy – value judgments, and different standards like TPO – in a different horizon, could not the idea of dressing as care give a gentle depth to our clothing life?