Relay Column: The Closet as a Church (Hinako Kagawa)

Do you like clothes? I absolutely adore them.

Dressing up can be fun, and at times, it can be stressful. I think it's because you are judged by society based on what you choose to wear. It's fun because someone is watching, and it's stressful because someone is watching. Despite this, why do people love clothes and the act of dressing up so much?

I went to an all-girls school during my middle and high school years. There was no uniform rule so everyone wore what they liked, but even in a space only with girls, there was something like gender, and everyone expressed that through their clothing. It could be something fixed or slightly different each day. It went beyond mere freedom of dress; it was about deciding and expressing on your own how you intend to interact with others and how you want to be treated as a gender, which could change daily. At this girls’ school, there was no specific need to explain one’s gender identity; being a woman or a man, or oscillating between a boyish girl and a girly boy was not that hard.

Entering university and stepping into 'society', the biggest shock was finding my gender suddenly fixed as female, without the freedom to move freely. No matter what I wore, I was always 'a woman', which had nothing to do with my personality. And from that, I learned about the discrimination and privileges I would face. How rough is that! I loved clothes from the start, so gaining the freedom to buy whatever I wanted in college was a joy. However, the norms of clothing required in college seemed like a massive machine devised to categorize diverse individual gender identities into 'male/female' for breeding purposes. It was like the final stage of a school education program that killed personal expression through uniforms. At one point, I stood in front of my closet for about two hours, unsure of what to wear to university. I felt the gaze of others so strongly that I lost sight of myself. From then on, choosing and wearing clothes became an act of searching for who I am.

Expressing your personality through your choice of garb is, fundamentally, not very well understood. It's considered best to stick to the social minimum of what's deemed sensible in clothing. Why think beyond the norm, why bother dressing up in a considered way? When questioned by people who do not love clothes why you cherish them, how would you respond? For instance, you could say that clothes act as weapons or talismans, protecting those who wear them. But beyond that, having a closet full of clothes you actively chose is about affirming the time you spent and, at a deeper level, affirming yourself. Knowing what you like, spending time gathering these items, having them near you so you can always be who you want to be—although not fully guaranteed by society, these are still rights you can fairly freely exercise.

I still don't fully understand who I am. And within society, living as something neither entirely male nor female is incredibly challenging. For such individuals, fashion and the love of clothes serve as one form of salvation.