I Wore Only My Father’s Clothes For Seven Days

Instead of trying to fill your dad’s shoes, try filling in his clothes for a change.

Dad’s wardrobe challenge

Photo courtesy : Yagya Sachdeva/The Quint

Camera : Abhishek Ranjan, Vatsala Singh, Mukul Bhandari, Yagya Sachdeva, Rajkumari
Editor : Prashant Chauhan
Producer : Yagya Sachdeva, Vatsala Singh

Hi, I’m Yagya and I’m a shopaholic.

To the naked eye, my life might look like a Dr Phil’s episode in the making but hold on, before you label my lifestyle problematic,it’s fixable.

And like any other Indian kid, I turned to my parents, well..err in this case, a parent, to fix my life for me.

Who better than my minimalist dad to help me in this crisis? Throwing some of my clothes away to teach myself the valuable lesson of minimalism would’ve been too easy. So I just pushed it a little further (and by little, I mean a lot) and decided to dress like my minimalist dad for seven days.

YEP. You know, like a detox.

Only more painful.

Meet Sunil Sachdeva, The Minimalist

My dad at homePhoto Courtesy : The Quint

My dad’s the male version of Marie Kondo. He’s organised, he’s disciplined, he’s simple. Me, on the other hand, not so much. I was getting overwhelmed with the amount of clothes, bags, shoes, etc that I had. I was constantly surrounded by clutter.
I was never getting to places on time, because I could never decide what to wear.

I needed help.

So for seven days, I took the dare of wearing only my dad’s clothes and also live my life sans the makeup (ouch!), the beauty products, and the body butters of the world.

'Cause my dad is simple. (TSK!)

Needless to say it was an eventful week, filled with learning and epiphanies and much needed realisations. I wore his polo T-shirts, his white and blue crisp shirts, his pants and even a rather old kurta.

I went from “why are these jeans so ugly” to “these shirts are probably growing on me”. I wore his clothes to the office, to the mall, hell even to the club!

It opened my eyes to a world where nobody cares about how you look.

Flashback Time...

In high schoolPhoto Courtesy : Yagya Sachdeva/Facebook

Growing up, I was always extremely confident but in high school I grew extremely self conscious.

Puberty made things, let’s say, a bit complicated. I would exaggerate even the tiniest of blemishes as flaws.

“Is my hair looking good?”

“Maybe I should wear kajal?”

“Should I not wear glasses?”

I wish someone told my 16-year-old self that the adult me would be wearing her dad’s clothes for a week.

Like they say, “it’s all in your head.”

Gyaan Prapti...

After seven days of this challenge, I realised that my attachment to my “stuff” stems from these very insecurities. I am not saying that other women or men who hoard are insecure. This is my personal account. Also, being a shopaholic has nothing to do with loving to shop. Those are two completely different things.

My biggest take back from this seven day “trial” (yes, pun intended) is to not feel anxious or stressed about the so-called OOTD.

I have gained the ability to open my closet and not sigh, to be happy with what’s in it and to celebrate it. For these rather important lessons, I can’t thank my dad enough.

Although he seriously needs to go shopping, the man’s got no clothes!

Just kidding.