It was never about the clothes

When I was just starting with NEON PALM, I did a survey, and I asked more than 200 women what they wanted from NEON PALM.

And honestly, I thought they’d tell me about clothes. I thought they’d give me their wish list around fit, fabric, color, and honestly, pockets LOL (if you haven’t heard me ramble about pockets, here you go).

But they didn’t talk about any of that. In fact, they didn’t talk about clothes at all.

Instead, what came back was pure exhaustion.

“I just want comfort, ease, and fewer decisions.”

“I want to wake up and have more time for myself.”

“I make endless decisions throughout the day. I’d love one thing I don’t have to think about.”

Again and again, the same thing came through: I am tired of deciding.

And when I read those quotes from all of these amazing women, I felt them in my bones. Because I am right there with her.

There are days when I’m working, parenting, building, texting someone back three days late, remembering the appointment I almost forgot, trying to move my body, trying to eat something decent, trying to keep up with the world.

I mean, I’m packing it in, micromanaging my day down to minutes. Trying to actually find minutes in the day to get through more on the to-do list.

And somehow the thing that can break you is standing in front of your closet at 6:40 in the morning thinking: what am I wearing?

And bam. I’m crying like a baby, head in my hands, wondering what I am doing with my life.

After giving it a lot of thought, I have two theories about why this feels so relentless.

The first is that we know women tend to run the invisible operating system of everything around us. The household. The calendar. The group chat. The dentist appointment. The thing we’re almost out of. The birthday gift nobody has bought yet. The work event that somehow needs an owner. It never really ends. And that in itself is enough to break us.

But then add in the second theory, which is that women were sold choice as freedom, and a lot of the time “all of these choices” we now have are really more of an invisible load we get to carry through an already packed day.

We have more options than ever. More tabs. More drops. More things to compare. More tiny decisions disguised as abundance.

Meanwhile, some very famous men figured out the wardrobe version of this years ago. Steve Jobs had the black turtleneck. Barack Obama talked about limiting suit choices. Mark Zuckerberg had the gray T-shirt. The point was always the same: save your brain for bigger things.

And the funny part is when men do it, we call it focus. But when women want the same freedom, we somehow still expect ourselves to curate, coordinate, accessorize, refresh.

Men got a productivity hack. Women got another job.

Which is why I keep coming back to this: Minimalism isn’t aesthetic, it’s strategic.

We need one thing that works hard. Like really hard. We deserve fewer decisions. We want less friction. And not because having less is somehow morally superior, but because attention is finite. And life is exhausting.

There I said it, I admitted it. I am tired. Like really damn tired.

And maybe, just maybe, the best things in our lives might be the things that ask the least of us.

So that’s what I mean when I say make room.

Not just fewer things, but more room for everything else.

Cheers to building beautiful things,
Joanna