My Wardrobe, Myself

I started the practice of keeping an outfit journal almost ten years ago as one way of addressing an ongoing style rut. Since that time, I have periodically returned to this practice to help increase my awareness of what does and doesn’t work for my personal style. This awareness helps me to create better outfits, and it also assists me in planning my future purchases.

As I jot down my thoughts in each day’s entry (which includes an itemized list of what I wore, where I wore it, my thoughts on the outfit, and a rating on a scale of one to ten), I receive some powerful “aha moments.” But it’s when I go back and review several months’ entries that I gain the most insights. As the warm weather season is finally drawing to a close where I live, I decided to reflect upon what I wore over the past four or so months to see what I might learn.

Today’s post is part one in a two-part series, in which I encapsulate my key lessons from dressing for summer and fall 2023. I’ll look at what my favorite outfits had in common, as well as what didn’t work in my lesser-loved looks. Then in part two, I’ll review some additional lessons that I learned from reviewing my summer and fall outfit journal entries. I’ll also list out the action items that I’ve outlined based upon the comments I made regarding my warm weather looks.

What Worked in My Warm Weather Outfits

Let’s begin on a high note and look at what my favorite ensembles had in common. These are outfits that I rated most highly, usually either a nine or a ten on a scale of one to ten.

Black and Silver for the Win

My favorite outfits all had black as the main neutral. While I also wear other neutrals (most notably navy), I was happiest when my outfits were grounded in black. In fact, some of my most loved ensembles consisted of two black pieces with one bright or printed item, which I feel is a simple and elegant look. As for my jewelry, I prefer silver pieces that incorporate black in some way, either with onyx stones or black leather or fabric components.

I’m sure it’s not surprising that many of my favorite garments and jewelry pieces are black. Interestingly, this hasn’t changed either with age or after transitioning to my natural hair color. That said, I probably don’t need more black clothing items or accessories, as I already own a large number of them. I need to just focus on wearing and loving what I already have until I need to replace a worn-out item or if I happen upon something I love that’s dramatically different from my existing pieces.

Winning Outfit Formulas

I mentioned the “two black pieces with one bright or print” outfit formula, but I noticed a few others that worked well for me, too:

• I enjoy wearing printed pants with solid tops, or vice versa.
• I also enjoy having one brightly-colored item or one printed item in an outfit. This is true regardless of whether or not the main neutral of the look is black.

If I’m going to wear light or bright pieces, I prefer to have them be on the top half of my body. Two exceptions to this general guideline are a pair of purple cropped pants and a pair of light-wash cropped jeans that I enjoy wearing. However, I usually like to wear dark neutral items on my lower half (often black, navy, or dark-wash denim), and the printed pants, skirts, or dresses that I wear tend to be grounded in black.

• I liked my pants outfits a lot better than the dress and skirt looks that I wore this summer.

For the most part, my dress and skirt outfits felt more conservative and “dressy,” so I started reserving those ensembles for wearing to church. Although I don’t need to dress up for the informal church that I attend, I don’t feel out of place stepping up the formality of my outfits in that environment. However, I don’t have many dresses and skirts that I love at this point, and I mostly stick to wearing pants these days. I’ll cover my current issues with dresses and skirts below in the section on what’s not working.

I Prefer Three-Piece Ensembles

My outfits that included a third piece were invariably rated higher than those that consisted of just two items. There are many reasons why such looks scored higher in my esteem, including better proportions (I’ll get to that topic later), more visual interest, feeling more put-together, and having increased coverage (which often helps with my emotional comfort).

Unfortunately, many summer days are too warm for wearing a third piece, so I had to stick with wearing just a top and a pair of pants (or less often, a skirt or dress) those times. In such instances, I felt more “complete” when I incorporated a necklace into the ensemble. A scarf would have also worked, but it’s generally too warm for even a lightweight scarf on summer days. I’m going to concentrate more on wearing scarves in the winter and spring months, when it tends to be much cooler (although there can be a lot of unseasonably warm days). Of course, I usually wear a third piece then, too, so my cool weather outfits are overall far less challenging for me.

My Favorite Fits and Silhouettes

I tend to stay fairly consistent in terms of the silhouettes I wear and how I like my clothes to fit. I like for most of my garments to be fitted but not tight. This is basically true for everything that I wear, whether it be tops, pants, dresses, skirts, or toppers. I haven’t gotten on board with the more recent trends of wide-leg pants, boxy tops, and billowy dresses and skirts just yet – and I may never embrace them. I’ve tried such pieces on, but I haven’t felt attractive or fab. I don’t like my clothes to be snug-fitting, either, but I do like what I consider to be a “streamlined” fit.

I usually wear knit pieces with some stretch to the fabric (which helps things stay in place better), but I prefer woven pants for the structure that they provide for my larger bottom half. Part of why I love Athleta pants so much is because they specialize in “stretch wovens,” which include a good amount of Spandex. The fact that almost all Athleta styles are offered in tall sizes (they offer petite and plus sizing, too) has contributed to my loyalty to that brand. A big bonus is that they have many “city pants” that don’t look like athleisure pieces at all.

The More “Favorites” in an Outfit, the Better

As I reviewed my outfit journal from the past four months, I highlighted which pieces in each ensemble were among my favorites. Not surprisingly, I found that the more “favorites” were included in an outfit, the more likely that look ended up being scored as an “8” or higher. However, just one fussy or substandard item could easily sink what might have otherwise been a stellar outfit.

I usually write in my outfit journal before I change into my at-home clothing. That way, if I single out a given garment as either ruining or downgrading a look, I’m able to easily try to swap in another item that might work better. While it used to be pants that gave me the most trouble and led to my disliking a lot of my outfits, it’s more likely these days that my top is the “troublemaker.” But fortunately, my outfit journal notes show that I usually have at least one or two alternate pieces on hand that I can swap in to create a higher-rated look the next time around.

What Didn’t Work So Well in My Summer and Fall Looks

Now let’s look at what didn’t work so well in my warm weather outfits, and what some of my lower-rated ensembles had in common. I already mentioned a few problems in the section above while discussing my “wins,” but I want to delve deeper here.

Problematic Tops

As I stated in the previous section, my tops have been more problematic for me lately than my pants. The quality of knit pieces has declined in recent years, but I have such difficulty finding woven tops that fit me well that I continue to stick with knits. My outfit journal has helped me to pinpoint what some of the problems are with my tops, beyond the questionable quality that’s hard for any of us to fully avoid in this modern “fast fashion” era.

Here are some of the issues that I’ve noticed with my tops:

• Tops that don’t include any elastane or Spandex in the fabrication tend to stretch out and become shapeless rather quickly. Conversely, tops that include even a small amount of Spandex in the mix are usually less fussy and stay in place better. Unfortunately, I found myself owning quite a few tops this summer that were not stretchy and were indeed fussy. That was a big reason why I let go of a relatively large number of tops during my recent closet audit (which I’ll share more about soon).
• Low scoop-necks and low V-necks don’t look good with my proportions. I have a short torso, which leads to a lot of tops being too low-cut on me – and why I often need to shorten the straps on sleeveless tops and dresses. While I don’t plan on buying tops with low scoop or low V necklines in the future, I’ve been able to “rescue” some of the ones I have by filling in the neckline with a short pendant or necklace. The necklace helps to lessen the “too low-cut” effect by covering up some of the expanse of skin the low neckline creates.
• Many tops are either too short or too long. The current styles of tops tend to be too short for my personal preference. Even though I’m short-waisted, I’m still tall and need more fabric at the hemline than what tends to be available. Unfortunately, however, many of the longer tops on offer can be too long, as they stop right at the widest point of my body, which is my lower hip area (I have an X body shape per Imogen Lamport’s system). So, I need to find that “Goldilocks sweet spot” for top length, which has become increasingly difficult, especially since many of the current top silhouettes are not to my liking, leaving me with fewer choices.

Less-Than-Ideal Proportions

I wrote an entire post on this issue, so I won’t belabor the point too much here. But I had a lot of comments in my outfit journal about bad proportions on my two-piece ensembles. When I wore pants with a top, I didn’t achieve “the golden ratio” of one-third to two-thirds and instead was somewhere in between that and a look that pretty much cut me in half.

I was able to mitigate this effect by wearing a small heel (which I like to do anyway) and having low contrast between my top and pants. When both my top and my pants were the same or a similar color, the “cutting in half” effect of a longer top was much less obvious. Wearing heels visually lengthened the line of the bottom half of my body, making it look closer to the two-thirds benchmark.

I also tried wearing tops with a twist-hem (I showed a few examples in this August post), but I didn’t love those as much as I thought I might. I think I either need looser-fitting versions of such tops, or I just need to try the “rubber band trick” with some of my non-twisted tops to shorten them and add visual interest. Unfortunately, when I wore the twist-hem tops that I bought this summer, I thought they were too tight and too long to create the flattering look that I was after.

I’m going to try the twist-hem tops with full-length pants to see if that looks better, but I didn’t like the way they looked with my cropped summer pants. They also didn’t look good with a cardigan or jacket layered over them, so they have limited utility in my closet. Fortunately, they weren’t expensive, but I probably should have just bought one and waited to see if I was happy with it before I purchased additional versions. Buying “multiples” remains one of the shopping behaviors that I need to watch out for.

When I add a third piece to my top and pant outfits, the proportions are a lot better, as most of my toppers are long (I love a good long cardigan or duster). So, I either need to get past some of my body image issues (easier said than done!) and wear shorter tops, or I need to just let go of trying to have “golden ratio” proportions with my hot day ensembles. We’ll see how it goes next summer, but at least I have more awareness of why some of my warm weather looks work better than others. Some of the “action items” that I’ll share in part two of this series should also help me to create more highly-rated outfits in summer 2024.

Dress and Skirt Issues

Other than feeling like many of my dress and skirt outfits look too conservative or dressy, I also found myself not liking some of the pieces that I enjoyed wearing in previous years. I put a few of my dresses into my “holding zone” box, as I either didn’t reach for them at all or took them off before wearing them out of my house. It was also kind of a “Goldilocks” problem, in that the dress was either too loose or too clingy and maybe also too short or too long. I found myself not wanting to settle for dresses that didn’t hit the “sweet spot” in terms of fit and length. We’ll see how I feel when I revisit all my dresses when the warm weather rolls around again.

Another issue I had with dress and skirt outfits was that I no longer liked the toppers that I used to pair with them. The tie-cardigans that I own feel “fussy” and often too short as well. Most of them also have what’s supposed to be three-quarter-length sleeves, but they are more like two-thirds-length sleeves on my long arms, which isn’t ideal.

I could see myself still liking tie-cardigans that are a few inches longer in the sleeves and in the overall length, but I also want to explore wearing alternate types of toppers with my dresses and skirts. Depending upon the dress or skirt in question, some of the toppers that I already own (particularly the longer dusters) might work well. But I could also see myself purchasing one or two new third-pieces to pair with my skirts and dresses next summer once I get a better idea of what might work best.

Conclusion – and Your Thoughts?

So, as you can see, I learned a great deal from reviewing the past four months of outfit journal entries. There are still more lessons that I can recount, but that will have to wait for part two, which I plan to post in about a week. In that installment, I’ll share additional “aha moments” I had that didn’t fit into the “what worked” and “what didn’t work” categories. I’ll also list out the handful of wardrobe tasks I came up with after reading through my comments on my various warm weather outfits. Stay tuned…

Now I invite you to weigh in with any comments or questions you have after reading through this post. Feel free to also share what you’ve learned about your own outfits this year, whether or not you keep an outfit journal. If you enjoy reading these types of posts, you can check out the ones I did on Recovering Shopaholic from 2014 through 2016. Comments are closed on those posts, but you’re welcome to share your thoughts in this essay’s comment section if you’d like.

In the coming weeks, I plan to review my outfit journal entries from last winter and spring, and I’ll do another post or series on what I learn from that experience. Since the cool weather season is just beginning, it’s the prime time for me to improve upon my outfits and overall style for this time of year. I don’t struggle as much with my ensembles when it’s colder out, as there are more opportunities for layering and creating better proportions and more interesting looks that way. But even so, there’s always room for learning and improvement, so I look forward to more lessons learned and sharing them here on the blog.