I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday season! Before we close the books on the year 2023, I’d like to get in one last post… This will be the first in a series of essays recapping this past year in regards to my wardrobe, shopping, style, and life at large. I’m going to start out with a sort of “state of the wardrobe address,” in which I’ll share some highlights of how I’m feeling about my clothes, my closet, and how I’ve been dressing over the past twelve months.
As we round out the year, how are you feeling about your wardrobe?
What I’m Happy with in My Wardrobe
I’d like to begin with the positives, those aspects of my wardrobe that I’m happy about as I sit here at the dawn of a new year. I always like to consider what I’m grateful for – in both my wardrobe and my life, and there really are a lot of blessings to count. This post is only about my wardrobe, but I have a lot to be grateful for in my life at large, too (which is perhaps a topic for another day).
The Good – My Closet Audit
Back in October, I decided to embark upon an extensive closet audit. I began by going through my two holding zone boxes. You may recall that I expanded from one to two holding zone boxes following my weight loss last year. I didn’t want to purge anything too hastily, as I’ve experienced a lot of weight fluctuations over the years, so I held on to all the garments that I could see myself wearing again if they were to fit me.
The holiday season has officially begun, for better or for worse. I hope all my readers in the United States enjoyed some quality time (and delicious food) with family and friends over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Instead of perusing Cyber Monday offerings this afternoon and being tempted by the many “deals” on offer, I’m opting instead to write this blog post.
It’s far too easy to go overboard and buy things we don’t need this time of year, as the temptation of seemingly continuous sales lurks around every corner, whether it be in person or on our computers and phones. I’m still far from perfect in terms of my shopping, but I hope that by turning more of my focus inward to what I have and what I’ve learned, I can get through the often frenzied “shopping season” without incurring too much financial damage.
Today’s essay is part two in my series on lessons from my summer and fall outfit journal. In my last post, I wrote about what did and didn’t work in terms of my warm weather ensembles. Today, I’ll share some additional lessons from my outfit journal entries that didn’t fall under those categories. I’ll also reveal a series of action items that I derived from my commentary on the looks I wore from June through November. Some of those tasks will apply to the current cool weather season, while others will help prepare me to dress truer to my personal style aesthetic next summer, as well as maximize my physical and emotional comfort levels in what I wear.
Some of my wardrobe-related tasks will likely be the topics of future blog posts, especially those that relate to my 2023 wardrobe and style “bucket list” (see part two HERE), which is certain to carry over into 2024. It’s hard to believe there’s just one month left in the year! Time definitely moves faster as we get older (so I’ll have to do more to increase the novelty in my life). Even more reason why we shouldn’t wear outfits that are uncomfortable, fussy, or boring!
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.
What have you learned about your wardrobe and style this year?
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.
In my last post, I shared how I used my recent travel wardrobe as a foundation to create a hypothetical summer Project 333 capsule. I always find it helpful to create Project 333 and other such capsules, even if I’m not going to actually limit myself to only wearing those items. We learn a lot about how well our wardrobe is or isn’t working for us when we try to limit ourselves to fewer pieces, either out of necessity (for travel) or as an experiment (like Project 333).
In today’s essay, I recap the insights I gained through dressing with less on my trip and putting together my hypothetical Project 333 summer wardrobe. If you want to see the actual pieces in the capsule, you can revisit my last post, which includes lots of photos of the clothes, shoes, and accessories that make up my core warm weather collection.
However, the items themselves aren’t really what’s important to today’s discussion. Today’s essay is more about the way I feel about my wardrobe, shopping, and style at large, and how I hope those feelings will impact my future decisions.
On Capsules, “Multiples,” and Perfectionism
One issue that I noticed while compiling my capsule wardrobe is that I have multiple items in my closet that serve a similar purpose. I’ve realized this before, but I’m even more aware of it now. Two examples of the “multiples” issue are black pants and black cardigans. Because I wear these two categories of items regularly, it makes sense to own more than one of each. However, I really don’t need as many as I currently own. When it comes to deciding which pair of black pants or which black cardigan to pack for a trip or include in a capsule, I often struggle to decide because many of my pieces are good but not necessarily great.
In late August, I took a weeklong trip to visit my family and celebrate my dad’s eightieth birthday. As usual, I agonized over what to pack – and as usual, I probably packed too much. I just don’t travel often enough to become adept at packing a small capsule that fits into a carry-on bag, plus it’s harder to do that when one has a larger wardrobe (“the paradox of choice” is real!). However, I was happy with my travel capsule and rated all my outfits at an eight or higher, so I would say that my packing was successful this time around.
This isn’t going to be a “what I packed for my trip” post, though. I’ve done multiple such posts on this blog and on Recovering Shopaholic, however, and you’re welcome to check those out. I never espouse to be any sort of packing expert, but I have found it helpful to debrief what I packed after the fact and evaluate how well it served my needs. Today’s post will be different because it occurred to me after my recent trip that my travel capsule would be a great start to a summer Project 333 wardrobe. So, I took some time to build a hypothetical Project 333 capsule beginning with my travel items, and I share the items I selected and why below.
I say this capsule is hypothetical because I’m not going to dive into wearing it right now. While the temperatures in my area are still in the seventies and likely will be for a few more weeks, the warm weather season is almost over. Soon I’ll need to pull out my jeans, long-sleeved tops, and warm sweaters and jackets. But there’s still value in doing this exercise now because it helped me to identify my summer wardrobe “workhorses” and what isn’t working so well for me. This will hopefully help me to prepare for getting dressed in summer 2024.
I’ll keep this hypothetical capsule collection on hand, and I might opt to do an actual summer Project 333 next year. I might also do a “build as you go” Project 333 for the cool weather season, as that’s a lower stress approach to the challenge that can still teach us a lot about how workable – or not – our wardrobes are.
The Starting Point – My Travel Capsule
Since my travel capsule was the starting point for my hypothetical summer Project 333, I want to start off by sharing it. While some of you might think that I packed too many tops, pants, and toppers for a weeklong trip, I’m happy to report that I wore almost everything – and many pieces were worn twice.
My Wardrobe, Myself 