This past Sunday was my birthday, on which I turned fifty-five. The time sure does go by fast! I guess I need to incorporate more novelty into my life, as I wrote about in this 2019 post. The pandemic has resulted in a lot of “sameness” in many of our lives, that’s for sure… I’ll soon publish an essay outlining my feelings about my milestone birthday (the “speed limit” birthday, as my dad called it), but I thought I’d do a fun and lighthearted wardrobe-related post this week.
I decided to select my fifty-five favorite warm weather closet items and share photos and some thoughts about those pieces. This “collection” is mostly hypothetical in nature, as I still plan to wear other items this summer as well. However, I’ve often found that even just the process of making selections can teach us a lot about our wardrobes and how they are or aren’t working for us. This exercise was no different, and I learned quite a bit through the exercise of choosing my items.
As I often like to do, I conducted a bit of analysis about my selections, including colors and item types. While I share some of my analysis in today’s post, I reserve the rest of it for a “part two” that I’ll publish next week. In that follow-on post, I’ll expand upon my reasons for choosing the pieces in my “fifty-five collection” and also summarize what I learned from doing this exercise.
Included in my warm weather “capsule” are clothes, shoes, and purses. I decided to leave jewelry out this time around because even though I’ve pared that area of my wardrobe down considerably in recent years, I’d probably still need fifteen or more slots for those items alone. I may do a later post about my favorite jewelry pieces, though, as I really value the style boost those items add to my outfits.
In a few months, I’ll also share my fifty-five favorite cool weather closet items. I’m sure there will be some overlap between the two groups, as I’m fortunate to live in a temperate climate and don’t need completely different wardrobes for various times of the year. As I’ve mentioned previously, we really only have two seasons where I live: summer and “not summer” (which is more like spring or fall weather in most other locales). There are also quite a few unseasonably cool or hot days here throughout the year, so I like to keep my entire wardrobe hanging up in my closet at all times, although I do reorganize things to keep the current season’s items front and center as much as possible.
My Wardrobe, Myself 