What would your creative self love to wear?
Last week my husband, Akram, and I went on a date browsing Broadway Market. After picking out new glasses for him and picking up cozy wool socks for us and our daughter, we decided to head home for a cup of hot cocoa.
Catherine Tough’s stall at Broadway Market (image: @broadwaymarket)
Then, an item in a shop window caught my eye. ‘No’, I told myself. ‘I don’t need any more clothes. And what’s the point in looking if I’m not buying anything?’ I kept walking.
But two stores down I stopped. Another voice said, ‘Go back.’
I’ve been working on reclaiming my creativity long enough to know to listen to the insistence of my intuition.
I turned to Akram and we headed back to the store.
The window display that caught my eye at Retrouve in Broadway Market. (image @retrouvevintage)
I admit a part of me felt uncomfortable asking the shopkeeper to take the coat off the mannequin. The conditioning to optimize for others’ convenience is much quieter than it used to be, but it’s still there. I simply said “hello” to that part and made my request to the friendly woman who was happy to oblige.
Trying on this Egyptian* handwoven, hand-embroidered vintage coat felt amazing, magical even. But it wasn’t cheap and my rational cost-benefit assessment said I would never wear it enough to justify the price.
But Akram got a glimmer in his eye. ‘I want to get it for you. You need something to wear for your future storytelling self’. (As an aside, seeing and validating someone else's creative potential like this is a beautiful and sacred act).
For context, I have a deep passion for traditional oral storytelling. I love nothing more than storytelling events, festivals and courses. The night before our wedding I shared a Palestinian story with our guests called “Women’s Wiles Beat Men’s Wiles”. When I designed my psychology of creativity course for UCL I was sure to invite my talented friend, Hannah, to share some storytelling magic.
I don’t plan on becoming a professional storyteller anytime soon. But my creative self is certain that sharing traditional tales will be part of my future. I guess I identify as an aspiring storyteller. So “storyteller” is one of, what Prof. Herminia Ibarra would call, my possible or provisional selves.
Buying this coat became a commitment to my creativity and to that specific possible self. Making space for it in our home somehow helps me to make space for hope in my heart that the vision will come to pass. It concretizes a dream that would otherwise remain abstract and ephemeral.
It also fortifies the creative self. A necessary task so it can be strong enough to stand up to the rational voice with its endless list of reasons why the creative path is not practical or prudent or possible.
In a recent interview, Joseph Gordon-Levitt shared how his brother’s first step toward reclaiming his creativity was wearing “weird loud socks that didn’t match.” Similarly, one of the women I interviewed for my PhD research shared that her decision to wear a pink sweater in her male-dominated workplace was a symbolic act of reclaiming her creativity.
What’s one way you could honor your creative self by dressing the part?
* The tag said it was Egyptian, but the handwoven cotton looked more like the gabi I saw in Ethiopia than anything I’d seen in my time in Egypt. Any textile expert out there who could clarify?