December is approaching and I’m dreaming of that divine outfit that I don’t have but would love to wear to all those upcoming parties. I’m one of those people who try on a hundred outfits and say in frustration: I have nothing to wear. Eternally dissatisfied with blouses, skirts, pants and dresses that pile up hanging, folded, rolled up, forgotten; a bank account that bleeds to the rhythm of that addiction to “nice” clothes. Like any vice, we never get what we want, and when we think we’ve found the ideal style, it turns out that the fabric is one of those that stinks after two hours of scratching your skin; or that the back is too wide, or the length is too long, or short; or the color, the shape, the fall give away what is promised in the mirror in the drawing room. Or we see that “unique” blouse on the neighbor that we wouldn’t want to be (or look like) or dead.

Clothes, that intimate item on the skin that absorbs our heat and smells, transmits, whether we like it or not, what we are or would like to be. Uniform (overt or covert) of a school, company or social group; I dress to belong to the club of the rich, the alternative, the environmentalist, the fashionista. Dressing up is dressing up, no longer as a pirate, queen or tick (there are so many dreams from childhood), but as young, sexy, successful, sporty and caring. Dressing is communicating to the world not only about your favorite color and style, but also about your financial status. I’m lying, the clothes are ideal for pretending. As old as time, there are strategies for social ascension, one of them: dressing the rich. The famous novel by the Swiss Gottfried Keller Clothes make a man (1874) talks about a tailor who is elegantly dressed so people think he is a count. Shy, he fails to deny the misunderstanding and ends up falling in love with the daughter of an aristocrat. Eventually, they get married and with his wife’s money, he establishes a haute couture workshop whose earnings make him, indeed, a rich man. It’s another story about Chulla Romero and Flores, who weaves the strategy of his social ascent with forethought and mischief. His last name and other people’s clothes are useful for that. The Gentleman in a Borrowed Tailcoat is the title with which this great novel by the Ecuadorian Jorge Icaza was published in German. They say that habit does not make a monk and that a monkey even if dressed in silk remains cute, and the truth is that expensive clothes do not make us rich (in fact, they usually make us poor), nor do beautiful clothes make us beautiful, but Oh, looks do not deceive only: he dazzles.

And yet, clothes are not just looks, they are a caress, a scratch on the skin. Who doesn’t remember being young and in love: hugging, smelling, using a loved one’s clothes as a charm to summon their presence? The mother who puts her sweaty t-shirt in her child’s crib to intoxicate him with her aroma of love and protection, the wife who hangs her husband’s clothes and smiles at the thought of his ugly underwear!, the grandfather who clings to his ties to an office that no longer exists. And clothes are not only worn: they feel, smell, live. Each garment is, should be, a story to be discovered, a story to be written. (OR)