Ruhee Dewji

Retro #16: August

September???!!?!

Normally I’m the person who can’t wait for summer to end so I can stop being so sweaty and enjoy my favourite season (fall), but this year I feel like I blinked in May and it was suddenly September. I don’t know how we got here … I’ve only been to three baseball games! I’m not ready!

This month I started getting more comfortable with thrifting and vintage shopping, finally. I’ve always struggled with some amount of Body Stuff like a good millennial woman, which makes thinking about clothing a real ordeal, and the current climate is not helping. But I’ve been trying to get more comfortable with just trying a bunch of stuff on, with the understanding that most of it won’t work—that’s just how it goes. I’m lucky to have some great vintage places not too far from me (shoutout to Good Market where I’ve found a ton of favourites) and a great thrift store across the street. Getting into the habit of just checking stuff out is really helpful: the more you do it, the less it feels like each individual piece of clothing matters at all, and you get a bit more of an idea of what to skip on the rack and what’s worth a look.

Recent favourite finds include:

Looking at this list: the 90s are back.

Related to this, I feel like I have too many clothes but don’t really love them and never know what I want to wear. At the suggestion of Kristen, who is a lot more stylish than me, I’ve started using Indyx (a wardrobe tracking app). Even though I picked this up of my own volition, and with the hope that it would help me figure out how I wanted to dress, I really resisted it at first—I don’t see myself as a stylish or fashionable person, and the idea of “creating outfits” with my ~40 band shirts (unfortunately, I counted) felt completely absurd. But figuring out what I do now and whether I like it is the only real path to figuring out what I want to do in the future.

I track what I’ve worn most days, usually by selecting individual items instead of putting them into an outfit, which makes it impossible to see a visual representation of a month. It just looks like I wore only a pair of socks one day and only a purse the next…

A screenshot of the Indyx wardrobe tracking app, showing the month of August in a calendar view. Most days have a single item of clothing shown, like a pair of socks or a purse.

The usage stats are still useful this way, but next month I will try to put more things together so I can see the overall trends, even if it feels silly to me to call “band shirt and one of four pairs of shorts” an “outfit”.

Even like this, though, I’m pretty sure the combination of seeing what I have and learning to recognize what I like will be transformative. I’m hoping it will make it easier to part with clothes I hate (since finding new ones is less onerous now!) and make it easier to try new combinations (because I can look at everything in the app whenever I want). I’ll report back next month on whether I’ve truly entered my fashion era.

This month I also got to record some group vocals and sax tracks for Skye Wallace’s new album at Matt Mays’ Lost Mile Barn. This was absolutely magical—everything sounds 5x more beautiful in that space, and it’s hard to beat the vibe of dogs and toddlers running around in the field outside. Skye’s new album sounds incredible and I can’t wait to hear the finished product. I feel so lucky to have been included in such great company!

A bunch of people milling around the floor of a wooden barn with a big mic set up

And, Survival Club (my band!) got to play one of Toronto’s coolest DIY venues, The Flat Top. It’s a rooftop of a house in East York run by some absolutely wonderful people, and even though it rained a lot during the day it was dry the entire time … until we played the last song of the night, a cover of “Come Clean” by Hilary Duff (“let the rain fall down”… haha… whoops). The other bands were all fantastic, Mandatory Overtime did a bonkers cover of “Take On Me,” and everyone was so supportive and nice to each other—DIY venues forever.

Marlowe took some great photos of us, check the rest out on instagram!!!

Two shots of the band Survival Club playing at night on an outdoor rooftop with a big crowd in front

Other stuff that happened: