I tore through my room like a fiend, craving my partner’s taste. I couldn’t say exactly what that scent was, only that he—we’ll call him X—had one when he was mine. After five times up, X and I had parted only some months previously. The possibility of a lingering cologne didn’t feel unrealistic. On the coating rack, I discovered X’s solitary- breasted wool overcoat, which was sleeved behind layers of outerwear. I brought its covering to my head, the fabric was warm, and its materials scentless, but I tried it on. Large and boxy, it felt more powerful than my little, drop- make version. I turned this method and that in front of the picture, hands in his bare hands. I styled it with heeled boots and sneakers, with a shoulder bag and without, with the neck down and up, revealing a handsome chrome underside—this coat was stupendously flexible!
I’ve been wearing X’s cover nearly every day since, abnormally reaching for it when I go to work events, media banquets, and business parties. I haven’t seen him since he moved out eight months ago, but I still live in the home we built together—between the walls and the cabinets he painted, the furniture he assembled, the photos he took, the dimmer switches he installed, amidst his shoes, his books, and his mail. I live with a spirit.
Jelani Rice, Courtesy of Sophie Yun Mancini
I’m seeing somebody new today. One morning after he had slid on my wide sweater, we were going down the floor. It belonged to a massive rugby player I used to love in college, and I lightly explained its enormous size. He went back upstairs and changed. Did he respond? Or was it some eerie Talented Mr. Ripley riding through people’s skins unconcerned by the souls they again contained, the pathological one? I made the decision to conduct a poll and talk with other women who had their own stories to share about how to reclaim their partner’s clothes.
Nina Renata Aron, the author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love, keeps two garments from her ex: A Necros ( ‘ 80s hardcore punk band ) T- shirt and a sweatshirt that says “You are dead” on the front and “Los Angeles Straight Edge” on the back. They’re from a partner with whom, she deadpans to me, “I had such a tumultuous marriage, I had to create a complete guide about it”. She used to love his scent, also. “I would pomade his mane and fluster it constantly,” he said. It wasn’t even his. I purchased the product he used after I went shopping. Along with the rest of his possessions, her current partner assisted her in destroying the pomade (save the sweatshirt and shirt). Her ex-boyfriend was an addiction, and she thought she owed it to him to keep an eye on his property until he recovered. Times passed. He was not coming to get anything. “My new partner, a few times, gently suggested,’ If you’re willing to get rid of this thing, I’ll enable you,’ and suddenly we did”.
Nina Renata Aron is credited with providing the picture.
It brings me to a talk I had with the innovative man I’m seeing. Late one night, I told him, toned- eyed, that I was living in a haunted home. A few days after, he thudded onto my door with a bouquet of flowers and potted plants in his arms. “I’m bringing in new living”, he said.
When talking with Aron, another intriguing concept surfaced: co- seeking cred. Wearing the clothes implies that this ex-girlfriend had some of the power and flair that anyone who knows about punk background can attest to. It parallels writer Chaconne Martin- Berkowicz’s dark cashmere sweater, taken from her first significant partner. It embodied a particular style that I was adopting. Zeke’s clothes taste was superior to mine. I admired that in him.” The sweater set the stage for her cosmetic development. Zeke always had my back when I was putting up an clothing. Through him, I learned to determine what looks good and what doesn’t for my body.
While Martin- Berkowicz’s father shared his taste and earth with her, Aron’s kept her out. For her, it’s satisfying to make a claim to a class that excluded her. “I often felt excluded from those punk lines. He possessed considerable authority among those people, so I believe I was now determined to alter the interpretation to reflect my own. I was like, ‘This doesn’t belong to those assholes. This belongs to me now.'”
X always let me in, leaving me alone. What I wanted to learn from him were qualities that felt like God’s gift. He was fine at anything, hyper- able and deft in a manner that felt extraordinary. Cool and stoic, he had a quiet silence exemplified by the sound of his words. Like spills of nice honey, it always went above a whisper. When I invited him to a mega-star actor’s group, the influencer congratulated him on his appearances, including the health of his hair and skin, as cameras flashed around him. “If we take a picture collectively”? the professional asked, between adoration. Although it was more of a fun display than anything else, it would have caused me to feel a little uneasy if I had been the subject of such attention. X appeared to have just taken a siesta and was awakened.
While I’m modest and half- Eastern, X is 6’2 “and Norwegian. I think his appearance, his white, and his large maleness made me feel more justified entering specific areas. As I reported on a story across Lake Como, he took me along. Hotel staff would heartily greet him with my last name:” Mr. Mancini! Welcome! They assumed that he was the journalist coming to visit. And why not? His very build—broad- shouldered and lean, with this unerringly straight tread—radiated authority and elegance. The sky was the limit when it came to his athleticism (skilled in everything from snowboarding to riding motorcycles ). Well, not even. A skydiver, he most recently got his pilot’s license. Then there was the herculean control. The corner of this monolithic wardrobe slipped and fell directly on his toe while we were carrying furniture once. Flushing red with pain, X didn’t make a sound, rather, he lifted it back up. “Keep going,” he breathed, bleeding. I was horrified. I was awed.
courtesy of Chaconne Martin- Berkowicz
Our biggest difference: X was never scared, not of the world nor of his own mind. I was considering the dangers of dying, the possibility of accidentally stab me in the eye with a knife while chopping, tripping on a curb, and how awful it would be to be raped at any given time. At any given moment, X seemed to be thinking of concepts that structure podcasts—things like innovation, the future of AI, or fusion energy. X embodied everything I needed and wanted.
“These relationships do reveal to us our own deeply- held beliefs, about who we are and the supremacy of certain qualities,” Aron reflects. The idea has made me question the dichotomy I’ve created between X and me: his superiority, my inferiority. I am aware of an internalized racism and sexism. And yet, I wear his coat and daydream about the transference that might occur, if it were real. What if I, too, could be scared of nothing? An invulnerable machine? I’m not referring to identifying with trendy organizations or styles. I’m talking about his human makeup. What if we could leech the lifeblood we most desired, like vampires?
This idea of subsuming arises in how some women style their ex’s clothes—a signifying of male provenance, yet encased within ultra- femme juxtapositions. “I once wore it with tights and booties and this sparkly mini dress,” says Martin- Berkowicz of her large, black sweater. Model and DJ Gilly Chan would pair her ex’s oversized, plaid vintage blazer, from a jazz musician 10 years her senior, with “a tight top or a fancy dress. ” “Aron only wears her large sweatshirt with a long floral number,” she says. He provided a large selection of clothing that most likely would have fit me better. But these things are almost like putting on the fur of an animal you killed, she says, referring to the thefts of a war you survived. It resembles borrowing masculinity a little fancier. It’s eating it and regurgitating a remixed version.
Chan was “20 or 21” when she dated the older musician. “In retrospect, he was probably fleeing from many internal demons, and being with a younger person made things worse for him.” When she recalls his plaid blazer, cigarettes smell and martinis taste come to mind. She preserved it as a souvenir of this no longer-existent version of me. “Another woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, also uses her ex’s clothing as a proof point. Her ex- husband’s T- shirts serve as evidence that the eight- year marriage was real”. I was dumped and defrauded. When a bad relationship happens, you protect yourself by not remembering. The T-shirts provide proof that she did not simply delete eight years of her life.
Independent creative director Joelle McKenna says, “If I had something of his, I would keep it like a family heirloom,” despite not having anything from her most formative relationship with a man named Paul. I stayed away from it because I wanted to be buried with it. “Wryly smirking at her own melodrama, her sentiment is nonetheless earnest. What she does keep are her “gifts ungiven”: a stamp with a whistle on it (her nickname for him was “P Whistle”), an 1800s copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack, phrases, writing, movies—all items accumulated toward the end of the relationship that she then lost her chance to give. He’s married now, and she wants him to be happy and free. Despite inheriting no material things, she treasures her intangibles. “My sense of humor, trust in the good of humanity, and feeling like there’s magic in the world was informed by that relationship. Paul was a minimalist. He had nothing, and gave me everything.”
Courtesy of Joelle McKenna
The thing about killing someone you love is that, in death, they become saints. We idealize them. “It’s easier to miss someone than love someone,” journalist Eliza Dumais says to me over dinner. With that in mind, and recalling McKenna’s description of Paul, I hear myself describing X—more myth than man. I can’t recall the conversation I had with the new guy I’m seeing. He was Superman,” I said, instantly regretting my word choice.
Michelle Ochs, the creative director of Hervé Léger, is markedly joyful about her ex’s collared shirts—a time machine back to the electric start of her career in New York. “It reminds me of optimism,” she describes. The world was open. He was beginning his career as a financial analyst. I was starting in mine. I remember the energy of the city, getting ready together in the morning, leaving together. She responds, “I’m curious if she still considers the shirts to be his. Without a beat, she laughs, “They’re mine! It’s become part of my narrative. It’s my story that he was in.” Ochs sums it up the best: “You need the time.” While almost every woman outlines the importance of breathing room with their ex’s things, Ochs sums it up. You need the space between to grow into who you are and reflect back.
Sitting with this, I admit I started wearing my ex’s coat too soon. It seems as though he’s just been on a very long business trip because I’ve had no interaction with him as a man who’s no longer mine. Perhaps it’s why I haven’t gotten rid of his other stuff. In this other life, he’s still coming home. However, people never return to where you left them. They move on. The appearance of a beautiful girl on his otherwise quiet Instagram stories serves as the most stark reminder of this.
Sloane Crosley, who most recently authored the memoir Grief Is for People, makes me chuckle at how un- tortured she is on the topic of her ex’s clothes: “I’m not that weepy about the item! A long-sleeve baseball T-shirt from a worker for The Criterion Collection is the subject of the inquiry. Their softball team was called ‘The True Foes,'” she shares. The graphic: “A sketch of an angry anthropomorphized ball. She claims to have no memory of how it came from or that it was given to me. It’s just here.” She lightheartedly questions its ownership: “Is it’ mine’? Or has it just been unwittingly a decade or two on loan? Who can say? ” She’s still friends with the ex in question.
Jelani Rice, Courtesy of Sophie Yun Mancini
A few weeks later, I sit beside chef Camille Becerra at another dinner. We discuss the significance of memoir, or the act of returning to things we’re not meant to do so. At the very least, “she muses, glowing in the candlelight”, it’ll help somebody else. “A few of my closest friends ended their relationships this year, a few more recently than I did. I’d love to say time heals all, and happiness erases sadness, but I’ve come to find the happier I feel in my new relationship, the deeper my grief grows for the man I left behind. Like when you realize a door has been locked for a while but no longer opens.”
I bought a new coat recently, off the street. The day was blindingly sunny, crisp, and cold. Amidst racks of vintage styles, I spotted a brown fur. “Mink,” the salesman explained. It shimmered richly in the afternoon light, like an oil spill. I brushed its sleeve to my cheek, goosebumping at the supple, silky texture. It felt like me in its darkness, its drama, the mild taboo of its material, and the fact that someone probably died in it. Possibly all the best things are haunted. That might be the way of life. McCenna inquires about how she occasionally converses with Paul’s memory, and if I ever have a conversation with X. The fact that they’re not physically together is irrelevant. Her question gives my story context— I’ve been communing. Ghosts will always pass us. Soon, I hope, I can learn to live with mine.