For Sale: Relics of a Bygone Age

How my latest Vinted selling spree has made me reflect on my pre-parenting life

My mind’s like the inside of a pinball machine. I think I know where I’m going with a thought, then PING! Off my attention flies somewhere else. When I saw the light bulb scene in Malcolm in the Middle for the first time, instead of laughing I just thought, Holy shit, that’s me!

Case in point was today. I’ve just finished a work call, and I glance over at my gaming PC. I’ve been meaning to clean it out for a while; I stuck a shitload of fans on it when I built it, so they’ve all accumulated a layer of dust that’s become somewhat unsightly.

I start to take the case apart, when I realise some of the cleaning bits I need are in the garage. When I get there, I rummage underneath my workstation when I find a box of old video games that I was planning on selling (another half-finished task). I’m having a spurt of energy. So, fuck it: let’s bring them in and get them sold.

Nostalgia overwhelms me, and I can’t help but dig through these old games that I brought home from my mum and dad’s house a year or so ago. Seriously, there’s some old games in there. Some are even for the original Game Boy, so obviously I spend a bit of time just revelling in the 90s-ness of it all.

As I’m rummaging through this box, I come across a graphics card from an old PC. Again, I’d been meaning to sell it for ages. Again, I get distracted. I pull out my phone and open Vinted—an app in the UK for buying and selling second-hand clothes and electronics. I snap some pictures and get it listed, along with a couple of other computer bits I had lying around, waiting to be given a new home.

Whilst I’ve got the app open, I see lots of people selling old clothes. So then yet again I get distracted, stomp over to my wardrobe and start pulling out stuff that was taking up space: shit I’d been meaning to get rid of for years, but never got around to.

This nostalgia trip didn’t take me as far back in time as the one with the Game Boy games did, but make no mistake, these clothes were from a lifetime ago—before kids.

Come take my hand, as I show you three relics of a bygone age.

The Winter Drinking Jacket

I dubbed this in my mind the Winter Drinking Jacket, as I’d invariably wear it out to pubs and nights out when the temperature dropped. It became a staple of my going out attire. It felt pretty smart, but it was so comfy—which remains an essential aspect of any piece of clothing I own, even more so in parenthood.

But alas, my regular drinking days are done. Not that I judge those who still make weekly trips to their local drinking emporiums an immovable part of their calendars, parents or otherwise—but that kind of culture just doesn’t vibe with me anymore.

To me, there’s something sad about bustling pubs and clubs on Friday and Saturday nights now. It’s as if the people who make a habit of going out out on the regular have forgotten why they’re there; it’s just a reflex.

Just thinking about the days where I’d count myself among those people reminded me of the times where I’d wonder about my purpose in life. Was I just to drift from night out to night out forever? Not that it takes becoming a parent to discover purpose—nor should being a parent become someone’s primary identity—but for me it sure helped give me a starting point.

Aside from that, I still like this jacket. But it has to go for the second reason: it doesn’t fit me anymore. All those beers have well and truly caught up with me. It’s a Small, for fuck sake. Not a chance I’m getting in that now.

The Young Professional Overcoat

This one, to be honest, gives me the ick.

Years ago, I worked a very stiff office job with very stiff colleagues. Company policy never dictated any dress code, but I saw the people I worked with on my first day, and I thought I needed to upgrade my wardrobe if I was ever going to fit in and get ahead.

My line manager was the main catalyst for it. He was a good boss, no doubt—but he was a dedicated student of sartorialism. Immaculate suits, a range of different cuff links—the lot. The bastard even ironed his ties.

I even remember on a Christmas do, people were talking about his dress sense, and he admitted to not even owning a pair of jeans. He wore trousers all the time. As much as I tried to play his little understudy in the office fashion department, I was never going to live up to that. And truth be told, I didn’t want to. But I felt as though I at least had to try.

Becoming a parent made me reassess a lot of facets of my life, my career being one of them. No longer was it viable for me to spend 10 hours a day either in the office, or commuting to and from it. I tried it for a few months, and it was clear a change was desperately needed if I was going to be the present dad I knew I wanted to be.

I switched career paths. I chose a more creative career that allowed for more flexibility and less performative dressing. It was a lot to learn and there was a steep learning curve, but I never regretted being able to spend more time at home, watching my daughter grow up in the flesh instead of having to see it through pictures and videos on my phone.

Office days still happen from time to time, but now I wear what I want. And it’s not this coat.

The Leather Bomber Jacket

Stop laughing.

Seriously though, let’s file this one under ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’

Historically, I’ve always had a love-and-hate relationship with fashion, and my wardrobe in particular. For years as a child and teenager, I’d have clothes bought for me mostly, so I’d wear them without question. I was never minded to think about what I actually wanted to wear. I just thought of clothes as something that were just there, in your wardrobe, to wear so you didn’t have to step out of the house naked.

Fast forward to early adulthood, and suddenly I’m on my own. I’m in university and I’ve moved out, so the birthday and Christmas shipments of new clothes had started to dry up. I needed new clobber, and I needed to seek it out and buy it myself.

I’ve written before about how we go through a bit of an identity crisis when we become parents—but I also think it’s true of people who’ve just stepped into the adult world. The teenage years are way harder than I think a lot of people recognise and remember, and part of that is the pressure and expectation that you’ll somehow magically figure out who you are and what you want to be by the time you leave school.

Many don’t, and I count myself as one of those people.

Fashion is no small part of that. It’s not vain to think about the way we dress and present ourselves to the world, because it speaks to who we are inside a lot of the time too. If you haven’t figured out who you are on the inside yet, then it’s trickier to know what exterior you want to show the world.

So without having figured that out yet, I followed trends. I followed what I saw other people wearing. Whether it vibed with me or not on a deeper level become irrelevant—I had to keep up. I had to look as though I was put together like a person who had themselves figured out, even if I didn’t.

I think that’s what was behind the decision to buy and wear the leather bomber. It wasn’t me—it never was. But I didn’t know who that was yet—so this, among other things, were the stand-in facade that people saw when they looked at me.

It’s not the job of parenthood to tell you who you are. That’s a burden I’d never want to put on my kids. But for me personally, it served as the foundations for becoming comfortable with who I was, and what I wanted from life. It gave me a platform for my morals, what was important to me and what I wanted the world to see in me. In the years that have followed, things have built from there.

I no longer do things or try to look a certain way to fit in with an expectation of what I think others think I should be. I don’t blame myself for having being pressured into doing many things to fit in—one of them being buying a leather jacket. But I’m finally at a place where I do things purely because they fit with my character—because I understand who and what that is more now than at any other point in my life.

Sure, I might still buy something as outlandish as this. But if I do now, it’s because I want to.

What does your wardrobe say about you?

As you will have gathered by now, I’m no fashionista. But there is something to be said in the way we present ourselves to the world and how our clothes make us feel—both before and after becoming parents.

What about you? Do you need a clear-out of your pre-parenting clothes as well? Has your attitude towards clothing and fashion changed at all since becoming a parent?

Previously on Some Other Dad