In the liminal period between Christmas and New Years this year, I came home to Arizona while my husband flew to spend a few days of the break with friends. Moved after about 36 hours of solitude by incredible boredom, I downloaded the Indyx app. It allows you to have some approximation of the Clueless closet computer on your phone, to take pictures of your clothes, remove the background, and put them together in little outfits. The reason that no one I know personally or online has claimed to use one of these apps is that cataloguing your entire wardrobe, down to earrings and scrunchies, is no trivial task. The technology has gotten better — and really, it should not be THAT hard to remove a background — but I don’t consider myself to have an above average-sized wardrobe and I definitely did not finish before New Years Day.
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Taking pictures of every clothing item you own does help you to reckon with the pieces in your wardrobe. What are the workhorses, the basics and staples that are high quality that you’re maybe not taking advantage of enough? What pieces have stuck around since high school and what qualities do they have that give them lasting power? What one-off items really don’t match with anything else in your wardrobe and therefore make you disinclined to reach for them? While I don’t know if I can recommend such a time-consuming cataloguing exercise, now that it’s done, I have found it helpful. If anything, it can help prevent the rising panic of being increasingly late for a dinner reservation on your third outfit, one of the worst feelings in the world. In an app at least you don’t have to do the emotional labor of putting on and taking off clothes!
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I get so irritated at the phrase “shop in your closet!” Obviously, yes, we should always be getting the most wear possible out of the things we buy. But the whole point and excitement of shopping is that it is novel!! I will be the first to bravely stand up and say that it’s more exciting to look at all the new, pretty things out there than it is to look with guilt upon the skirt in my closet that I’m not really wearing and don’t know how to style. Shopping in my closet may be free, but I don’t think we should kid ourselves that it’s all that exciting. I’m looking at all of you who were making cottage cheese into ice cream — eating cottage cheese ice cream is fine if you genuinely enjoy it, but let’s not pretend it’s a 1:1 substitute.
So with the freedom that comes with being honest with ourselves, let us step forward into the breach. I decided to challenge myself this week to exclusively wear clothes that I bought over a year ago. I have a recency bias where I wear newer items to the point of being bored with them, which then makes me feel like I have nothing to wear, leading me to buy more new clothes. That means, however, that I am ignoring the vast majority of my wardrobe. Creativity requires constraints, and sometimes to break out of a slump it’s good to self-impose some silly little constraints. Maybe not shockingly, it was kind of difficult, particularly because I had a few secondhand purchases come in that I was dying to immediately implement in my wardrobe. On the other hand, the items I was drawn to to wear this week do have different qualities to them that give them lasting power in my wardrobe, which I will try to detail below.
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Monday
Loft sweater tank (thrifted), Everlane cropped jeans (Poshmark), thrifted rayon-linen blend button up, Target sandals that I bought last year in an emergency when the ones I bought for my wedding weekend got lost in the mail
Okay, so one look at my purple feet (POTS reveal) could tell you that orange is not in my color palette. I mainly just adore how cute the oranges are, and so I keep this sweater tank around despite the fact that it is difficult to find outfits that work with it. If you were to filter in my Indyx app by color, you would see that some majority percentage of my wardrobe is blue. People always told me blue looked good with my eyes and it stuck. So maybe orange is not my color per se, but I learned from this outfit that I should pair this top and these shoes with other blue items (color theory!) to get the most wear out of them. These super comfortable, perfectly fitting no stretch jeans and this button up have been in my wardrobe for at least 5 years at this point and they are classics for me. I immediately gravitate towards them when I want to pack versatile and put-together outfits for trips, but I think I should really be using them more in my everyday outfits as well to balance my less versatile pieces.
Tuesday
Gap ~blouse~, Eddie Bauer jeans that are now shorts, Target pleather flip flops, all thrifted
I only have four pairs of shorts that I consider wear-outable, i.e. not pajama or workout shorts. I’ve had these since high school I think? If it ain’t broke… I also bought the top from Anna Banana’s in Boone, NC, but have only worn it a few times because every time I try it on I really like it but I never know what to wear it with. With the Gap x Doen collab being out maybe I can take some Little House on the Prairie inspo from that.
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Wednesday
Target t-shirt, vintage viscose-type dress, Boston birks
In the Regency Era, memorialized by Jane Austen movies and *sigh* Bridgerton, Ancient Greece served as the inspiration for everything from the white, muslin-y empire waisted dresses to hairstyles to interior decorating (they were still doing trend cycles back then, but just on a thousands-of-years timescale). Because thick petticoats and structural skirt elements were temporarily abandoned during this brief 10-15 year period, women would often slightly dampen the flimsy fabric of their gowns so that the shape of their legs could be seen more easily. If you’re thinking “wow, that sounds like slutty (non-derogatory) behavior” — it was! That’s what the shape (and ever-present static electricity) of this dress reminds me of when I wear it.
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Thursday
Banana Republic Merino sweater, J. Crew skirt I altered in HS (both thrifted) Nisolo sandals that I DYED last summer because I was finally brave enough to admit to myself the mustard-y brown color they were originally was not a good color
I really did not try with the accessories this week so sorry if you’re bored at this point, but experimenting with accessories is what summer is for. Consider this my resolution to do better in the future. I love how feminine and flouncy this skirt is, it’s a lilac color with blue and pink stripes and a little gather in the front, but not so much gathering as to make it twee. The Nisolo shoes were a classic “I probably would not buy these again but they were expensive so I have to wear them now” — and I have. But dyeing them last summer was the best choice I’ve made and I actually like wearing them now! It’s not a consistent dye job if you look up close (good from far but far from good, as my boss in the costume shop in college would say) and there is glitter permanently embedded in the inner sole because I wore them to go wedding dress shopping, but it’s close enough for government work and the sparkles are a reminder of a really fun day.
It was refreshing to remind myself that I do actually like the clothes I have, for any number of reasons, and do have things to wear! What a relief! And typically the items I’ve kept around for a while have some kind of personal value that has stood the test of time. Recognizing those cherished attributes of the clothes you have to put on every day can help you get more wears out of the things you do have, which I think contributes to both personal style and sustainability.
Thank you for reading and let me know what you think in the comments!! I plan to spend the long weekend finally seeing Challengers, rotting in the sun in my backyard, maybe finishing Clash of Kings, and hopefully making progress on my quilt. Have a lovely weekend wherever you are and eat something off the grill :) xoxo