If you've been reading The Standard for a while, then you already know how I feel about drift, and why it's one of the few things that honestly scares me. (See The Standard: My Greatest Fear, 12 May 2026.)
Drift rarely announces itself. It doesn't arrive all at once. It whispers. "You've had a long day." "You'll do it tomorrow." "It doesn't matter today." One compromise becomes two. Two become a week. A week quietly becomes a new standard. That's what frightens me. Nobody tells a child that clothing is a language. You learn it anyway.
Before the poverty, before the religious cult, there was a fairly normal middle-class life. I was considered "chubby" by 1960s standards. By today's standards, I'd have been a perfectly normal kid. But labels have consequences. My clothes came from a men's store while my brother and sister shopped in department stores. Their choices seemed endless. Mine were navy blue, charcoal grey and brown. That was my colour palette.
I learned early that if my shirt matched my pants, I looked a little more like everyone else. At the time I wasn't thinking about style. I was thinking about acceptance. I was bullied, and I wanted it to stop. If I could control how I looked, perhaps I could control, in some small way, how people saw me before I'd said a word. I didn't know it then, but I was learning about signals.
That instinct never left. It simply became quieter... and more intentional. After forty years working for houses like Tiffany & Co., Hermès and Neiman Marcus, I came to understand that presentation isn't about impressing people. It's about intention. Not one piece of clothing I own is accidental. Not because I'm trying to impress anyone.Because I've learned that the small standards are often the ones that stop bigger compromises from creeping in.
That's why I don't negotiate with myself. Not over what I wear. Not over training.Not over the promises I make to myself. Because drift rarely begins with a life-changing decision. It begins with one small compromise that quietly asks for another.
People often quote Karl Lagerfeld's famous line: "Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants."
I never thought he was just talking about pants. I didn't have a word for what he actually meant. I do now.
He was talking about drift.
