Turning Yourself Inside Out
Clothing as dressing for your highest self.
I talk to my future self through clothing. And recently, during meditation, I realized that when I meet a higher version of myself, I can usually recognize her by what she’s wearing.
A few weeks ago I remembered a meditation from 2021, when I had only recently learned about these practices, and for the first time, I met what I understood to be my highest self.
She was wearing draping white fabric. She had short hair. She was very peaceful.
And I’m laughing thinking about it because in many ways I am her now.
In the years since, so much of my life has moved in that direction. The clothes I’m drawn to. The way I want to live. The things I’ve stripped away. Even the way I think about the body and what we put on it. She had been a glimpse of a life I hadn’t consciously chosen yet. And then, in a strange way, I spent the next five years choosing it.
I think clothing matters in this process of becoming.
Getting dressed is a kind of rehearsal. We play with versions of ourselves all the time without necessarily calling it that. We put on something and suddenly stand a little differently, move differently, and feel more like ourselves—or perhaps more like the person we’re meant to be.
There’s a reason your reaction to clothing is often immediate. You see something and your body says yes or no before your mind has time to construct an argument. I don’t think we need to explain why we like what we like. Style can be intuitive in a way that language isn’t. It can reveal something about us before we’ve consciously understood it.
For me, fashion has never been particularly interesting as a way to keep up with what’s happening around me. I’m much more interested in what it reveals about what’s happening within me. Which brings me back to that woman in white.
I don’t think she was giving me a literal uniform to wear for the rest of my life. She was giving me a feeling to recognize. Peace. Simplicity. Presence.
Sovereign Studios came from wanting to bring that feeling into ordinary life.
Because meditation is not really separate from the rest of the day. The person you meet on the cushion has to eventually get up, get dressed, answer emails, walk outside, make dinner, have difficult conversations, go to work. She has to live somewhere. So what would it look like to dress for her?
Wear what makes you feel powerful, and sometimes, wear what makes you feel like the person you haven’t become yet.
Not to perform some perfected version of yourself, but to give your body a reminder of where you’re going. Wear what makes you feel powerful, and sometimes, wear what makes you feel like the person you haven’t become yet.
All my love,
Anushka