#171: Other people’s sweatshirts
What is it about them?
On the question of what you envy, I’d forgive you the predictable answers: other people’s apartments, careers, lifestyles, bank accounts. But today I urge you to examine, within yourself, an envy more specific: that of other people’s sweatshirts. Softness, thickness, color, cut—these are just a few of the qualities other people’s sweatshirts have seemingly perfected. The same qualities, I suspect, your own collection is lacking. How is this possible, you may wonder, if we’re all “other people” to someone else?
I write this from the inside of Avi’s Operation Ivy hoodie. He’s had it since high school, and it’s superior to anything I’ve ever bought. Thick but floppy, faded with the neck cut out. One time, he told me I could have it, but I refused to accept it, lest its excellence be spoiled. Last week, when my editor Mallory told me my mediocre sweatshirt was perfect, I suspected contagion. She asked where I got it. I told her it was an old freebie from a furniture brand (of obscure origin—as good-to-someone-else sweatshirts so often are). She said she loved the shade of blue and the drop-hem of the shoulder, neither of which I’d appreciated or even noticed. But of course I hadn’t; to me, the sweatshirt wasn’t other people’s, but mine.
On a hunch, I started asking friends if they related to the idea that other people’s sweatshirts often looked better—cozier, more flattering, more special—than their own. The results were unequivocal:
Kelly: Absolutely yes
Harling: Hahahaha actually yes
Mom: Omg 100%! This is a crazy question because I thought it was just me
Cat: HAHAHA yes. White whale
Danny: Haha. Yeah
Susan: I always feel this way but about sweaters, not sweatshirts
Andy: Everyone else’s sweatshirts look better. 100%. I know objectively I’m fine in my sweatshirt BUT everyone else’s looks better
Elizabeth: Yes of course. Unless it’s new or $$$, always better on another
Amelia: Wow. 100000000000 percent yes
Michelle: I relate deeply.
Only two friends I asked unambiguously disagreed. Alicia, a true minimalist who shops in the careful, precise way I’m always saying I’m going to start doing, believes she’s already found the best sweatshirt (Yzy Gap, purchased via Grailed, although she’s not proud) and therefore doesn’t pine for other people’s sweatshirts. Crystal, a true maximalist whose style is so singular it’s hard to imagine she’s ever imitated anyone, replied: “No. I am a sweatshirt connoisseur and think I have peak sweatshirt style lol.” Her best sweatshirts are a “vintage ratty one from the 70s” and a green one she “got from a guy in LA.”
Did I immediately look up the resale price of the Yzy Gap sweatshirt on StockX despite the fact that I was asking this question to reveal a deeper truth about unfillable voids? Of course I did.
Though it may seem unassuming as an object of desire, there’s a lot to love about the sweatshirt. It has a humble shape, a forthright utility, a generous way of swimming around the body then holding steady at the wrist. It’s never too precious, never too serious—it isn’t placed on its wearer, but thrown. When no longer needed, it can be tied around the waist, chest, or neck and look pleasant in a different way. Too casual to be stuffy, too useful to be sloppy, the sweatshirt is, fundamentally, the garment of the people. Which raises the question of why I feel its spoils are distributed so undemocratically.
The coveting of other people’s sweatshirts is a philosophical conundrum, not a rational one. Crystal and Alicia have something the rest of us don’t, but it’s not the right sweatshirt. I suspect it’s self-knowledge. Which is to say, the rest of us are searching for something that can’t be sold. We want patience, discernment, satiety. Instead, we look for the perfect t-shirt, the perfect jeans, the perfect wool coat. As David Lynch once put it, as recently quoted in Jonah Weiner’s pants opus, “I never found a pair of pants that I just love. If they’re not right, which they never are, it’s a sadness.” He said it: They never are.
And yet, to love another’s sweatshirt doesn’t feel so bad. Actually, it feels kind of good. Not nearly as existentially threatening as envying someone’s job or wealth or jeans, all of which could potentially require a lifestyle overhaul. Instead, it feels a little like experiencing hunger in your own kitchen. The solution is right there! Oftentimes, it costs no more than a nice meal out.
The potential eggs you on: Some sweatshirts really are better than others. Structured but soft, roomy but secure. (Thin, polyester sweatshirts are an insult.) Unlike pants, they fit most bodies as designed. The search, then, doesn’t feel futile, necessarily—most of my sweatshirts are heavenly to wear, and, of course, before sullied by the fact of my ownership, were once perfect too. And yet that’s exactly the problem. The relative scratchability of this itch only stands to highlight how silly it is that we still can’t scratch it. What we have here is not a shopping problem, but something much deeper. Something psycho-social. The very fuel on which America runs!
To reckon with other people’s sweatshirts, then, we must first reckon with desire itself—with our propensity to seek in others what we must seek within: comfort, solace, security. A certain sturdiness around the neck. And then, more fundamentally, we must acknowledge the flaw in our longing from the very beginning: Other people’s sweatshirts can never be ours.
My favorite article I read last week was “Why Are Pants So Big (Again)?” by Jonah Weiner for The New York Times. So fun to read a writer in their element. Last Friday’s 15 things also included my two new favorite bags (one $9 tote and the ideal not-actually-a-diaper bag), the perfect essay to read if you’re stuck in a rut, the music video that inspired multiple commenters to cut their hair off, and more. The rec of the week was yoga mats that are nice to use, don’t collect dust, and hold up for years. Unprecedented consensus in the comments!
I’ll see you on Tuesday for Part 2 of Baby Gossip to find out whether Harling, Crystal, and I bonded with our babies right away (lol at this cliffhanger).
Have a nice Sunday,
Haley