Getting Dumped this Holiday Season? Dress For Recovery.

The holiday season is a zone of attrition through which a whole lot of people get dumped by their significant others. In a post from earlier today, Alice Pfeiffer of The Guardian says not to fret. There are ways to get through this tough time. One avenue is through fashion. Pfeiffer’s piece offers advice on how to dress your way through a tough breakup. She quotes Coco Chanel, who seems to always appear when fashion theory gets brought up:

“If you are sad, if you are heartbroken, make yourself up, dress up, add more lipstick and attack.”

Pfeiffer’s piece includes recommendations for what to wear for each post-split milestone: the first night on the town, the first time you see your ex again, the mutual friend’s birthday, etc. The advice stems from the idea that how you dress affects how you feel, that presenting yourself in a certain way will steer you through emotional trials. It’s an interesting read, especially for Pfeiffer’s historical examples that feature some of fashion’s most iconic figures. Chanel, for example, engineered a style change as an effort to radically rethink her relationship with the male gaze:

“In the case of Isabella Blow, her humorous hats were a distraction from her painful separation from Tim Willis; for Marilyn Monroe, who first appeared in sleek black clothing after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio, it allowed her to move away from her cheerful pin-up image.”

Whether this is right up your alley or if you question whether post-split fashion is a “big idea,” I recommend reading Pfeiffer’s piece and letting us know what you think in the comments below. Is there a power to how you present yourself an can that power help you gain leverage in situations like these? I think there’s something to this. What say you?