DISCLAIMER: This is a very long blog post about clothes. I still think it’s worth reading (and writing). We all have to wear clothes, after all. Except babies. But we dress them anyway because it’s so much fun for us adults. But I digress.
I haven’t posted deep thoughts in a while. Mostly because I’ve been busy, seemingly lacking time and experiences which prompt deep thoughts. Or perhaps I’ve just been lazy about thinking and didn’t want to admit it.
Being exposed to an idea sometimes causes this cosmic shift in me. These are the kinds of things I love to blog about. Writing it out helps cement this huge event that I want to stick and become part of my be-ing-ness.
Shallow as seems, my recent cosmic shift involves fashion. If I will be truthful, it doesn’t involve fashion, it is entirely about fashion.
Kendi is a woman in her twenties lucky enough to have amazing fashion sense, the looks of a model, a husband who is a professional photographer, and a wind machine. Her fashion blog contains photos of what she wears every day. I’ve glanced at about fifteen other fashion bloggers doing the same thing, and to be honest, all the others just look weird. About ninety percent of the time. Kendi looks stunning and super-cute about 98% of the time, and weird about 2% of the time. Even then, she still looks great, it’s just the outfit vibes I’m not feeling.
Once a year, she does something she invented called a 30-day remix. She selects thirty wardrobe items, including blouses, jackets, skirts, pants, and shoes. She leaves accessories like belts, scarves, and jewelry out of the thirty-piece limit. Then she wears those thirty items for thirty days, assembling them into different outfits each day.
Looking through her most recent remix, I was startled to have this thought, “This girl has SO many clothes!” (Not that I’m one to talk, but just sayin’). She was so good at remixing these thirty pieces I could have sworn she was wearing something new every day.
Here’s where my cosmic shift thinking began.
My wardrobe seems so boring next to hers. Despite the fact that my walk-in-closet is full of my clothes, shoes, scarves, belts, and more, with my husband’s clothes requisitioned to approximately a two-foot by two-foot square. Despite the other fact that my out-of-season (light summer or heavy winter) apparel fills up half the closet of my sister who is gone away to college. (I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do when she comes home for the summer).
With so many clothes, why do I feel like my wardrobe is tiny and boring?
I don’t remix.
And why don’t I remix?
I have a DEATHLY fear of morning wardrobe madness. What is that you say?
It begins with a morning when nothing – nothing – in your closet fits right, looks right, or goes with anything else in your closet, and certainly doesn’t fit the mood you are in today. So you decide to try something new. You grab a shirt you love that you hardly ever wear because….it doesn’t go with anything. But you love it, and you’re in the mood to wear it, so it WILL be worn today.
It ends with a morning where your bedroom is destroyed by a clothes bomb filled with shoe shrapnel. You only have time for lipstick, your hair is half-fixed, you’re wearing your trusty black suit with a plain white blouse, black pumps, and no jewelry, and you are late to work (or in my case, you miss the bus).
Please tell me you know the feeling.
I am in such dread of wardrobe hell breaking loose that I don’t remix.
When I purchase a new wardrobe item, the very first day I wear it is inevitably a wardrobe madness day. After that, the new item and I can be friendly with each other again, because I have figured out how to wear it, and which pair of plain black slacks in my closet it pairs with.
The result is three new darling sweater sets – solid lime green, solid majenta with crystal buttons, and solid navy with a silk navy corsage – that end up boring. They all match my grey slacks. So that’s how I wear them. Three new outfits. Three sweater sets paired with one pair of grey slacks. The navy set also matches my brown slacks, and the green set also matches black slacks. The majenta set looks great with blue jeans, but I can’t wear that to work. So that’s five work outfits and one casual. Great, but not exciting. And once they work, I just keep wearing them the same way. With the same shoes and the same matching jewelry.
Boring.
But I avoid wardrobe hell, so all is well. (hehee)
Kendi has changed all that. Since viewing about fifty days of her blog all in one sitting, I am a changed woman. I have remixed about four days out of five since then (it’s been almost a month) AND I have done it in about ten minutes flat each morning. Yes, I am amazing.
I’ll give you my summary of things I learned from her after a tiny bit more back story.
When I was a little girl (think elementary school), my wardrobe madness was an epidemic threatening to invade massive amounts of time dedicated to chores or school. My mom and I didn’t know then what I know as an adult, that I am allergic to polyester clothing. It makes my skin itch, and very cheap polyesters can give me a rash. So add “itchy” to the list of issues I might have with my wardrobe in the morning, and you have total chaos. On top of my blossoming fashion sense, I had (and still have sometimes) severe indecision issues.
Getting dressed each morning was both completely exhilarating and completely traumatic. One afternoon, when I couldn’t’ find my favorite black leotard I wanted to wear to ballet class, and refused to wear the other black leotards in my drawer, my mom threatened to leave without me. When I ignored her warning and subsequently heard the car starting up in the driveway, I ran outside naked. I have no idea why I thought that would help, I just didn’t want to get left behind! Like a good mother, she rushed me inside, dressed me herself, and we all left together.
After months of my seven or eight year old self spending waaay too much time getting dressed, my mom had enough. She told me I could pick out seven outfits, and I would have to wear those seven outfits for a month. I cried, I pleaded, I begged, I promised I would do better. She wouldn’t hear it. Five outfits for school days, one outfit for Saturday playing, and one dress for Sundays. I picked a white, cotton, ruffly dress because I hoped I could wear a different colored ribbon around the waist each Sunday, and perhaps no one would notice I wore the SAME DRESS for FOUR WEEKS in a row.
Only my fellow fashion-conscious readers, or parents of an indecisive, fashion-conscious eight year old, will understand how severely traumatic and humiliating the ensuing month was for me. Especially Sunday. I was homeschooled, so really only my family would see my week day outfits repeated for a month. But Sunday? When I saw friends and peers? It was too much. My mom’s compassionate nature gave in to my idea of a different colored ribbon sash on my white dress each week, which was a small comfort. But regardless, that month was painful.
My mother’s plan must have scarred me for life – in a good way – because in the twenty something years since then, I only have wardrobe insanity on the day of a very important event, or when getting acquainted with a new wardrobe item. The rest of the days, I am dressed in five minutes, and out the door thirty to forty minutes after I wake up in the morning.
So how can I suddenly remix a new outfit four to five days a week, and avoid the madness?
There are many ways in which you can’t pin Kendi’s style down. So don’t assume the following list is how she dresses all the time. It’s just a handful of things I observed from her overall style that I have found helpful in remixing my own wardrobe.
Neutral shoes go with nearly everything. I used to stick with just brown and black heels for work. But from Kendi I learned that nude, beige, taupe, and pale grey go amazingly well with almost any outfit. Surprisingly, I own a few pairs in these hues, I just wasn’t using them enough. (Thankfully, a few more pairs will help my closet even more!).
Belts can take an outfit from “That’s fine” to “Wow” in about two seconds. Surprisingly, I also own several nice belts, and was hardly using them. Because I used them to hold pants up. But I don’t like pants with belt loops, so I don’t own many. And because most of my belts fit around my waist, while most of my pants fit around my hips. But Kendi wears belts over blouses, sweaters, and dresses, under blazers and jackets, and more. She wears them to cinch her waistline under a billowing blouse, or slung low over her hips for an accent. Belts are “in” right now, but I had never figured out how to wear them. This weekend, thrift-store shopping, or “thrifting” as they call it now, got me five belts for ten dollars - Score. In my new outfit remixing, I’ve worn a belt about every other day. Belts are the new black.
Match your belt to your shoes to pull the rest of the outfit together. Regardless of the color composition of the rest of the outfit, matching belt and shoes can take it from “eh” to “that works.” Today I’m wearing a skirt that is navy with little dots of white, yellow, and teal. I’m wearing a teal blouse and a navy blazer. The outfit looks great, but I was stumped for shoes. My navy shoes weren’t the right look for the outfit, and they’re uncomfortable. So I pulled my favorite chocolate brown shoes out, and buckled a matching leather belt over my blouse, under my blazer. A chunky brown necklace completed the outfit. I think I want to wear this outfit tomorrow too.
Multi-colored patterns pull together several other solid pieces. I tend to be simple in the color department. I prefer solid colors in reliable shapes. If I could afford it, you’d see a lot of Lands End Canvas in my closet. But remixing needs items to pull solid colors together. I usually shy away from patterns when I’m clothes shopping, because they seem bold and brassy, or because patterns are more trendy, so they often look bad after one or two seasons. I like my clothes to last a long time so I can collect them all. But I’m needing some pattern pieces to make more outfits with the solid pieces I own.
Skirts are a great place to find multi-colored patterns. In remixing my wardrobe the first three weeks after viewing Kendi’s blog, I mostly remixed when wearing skirts. When I analyzed why, it was because my skirts have more patterns, or embroidery, or some design with several colors. Thankfully, skirts are one of the easiest items to find thrifting, and they often fit even if they’re not exactly your size. My thrifting adventure this weekend yielded five skirts for about five dollars each that will remix with at least half my wardrobe, I promise.
Thrifting yields unique, fun pieces. I already knew this, but it was a good reminder. If you’re in need of several simple, solid tees or tanks to go underneath other layers, don’t go thrifting. Those pieces are hard to find, and usually faded or pilling. Go thrifting for items like skirts, blazers, dresses, and belts. You’ll find unusual or designer items that are so darling and unique people keep asking where you got them from. (Side note, don’t buy thrift items that require alternations or repair to be usable. Unless you are the kind of person who sews every day, or you have a tailor you regularly take items to, they will sit in your closet until you re-donate them. I speak from experience.)
Layer. That’s a verb, not an adjective, so it is a grammatically-correct one-word sentence. I tend to do this anyway, because I live in a city where it can go from forty degrees when I leave home for work, to ninety degrees in the afternoon when I’m standing in the sun waiting for the bus. There is no un-layered outfit that can stand this. Layers can include so many things….jacket over blouse, sweater over tank, blouse over tee, vest (screaming because I despise vests) over dress, belt over anything, scarf over anything. The trendy long necklaces are like another layer too, (and at Forever 21, they average five dollars each). For church on Sundays, where I go from a balmy eighty degrees outside to a frigid sixty five degrees inside, I usually wear three to four layers (tank, then tee, then sweater, then down jacket). Layering adds visual interest as well as temperature flexibility (temperature flexibility? Yes, I made that up.).
I’ll let you know when I think of more. Or you can let me know if you think of more after you visit Kendi’s blog. So exciting!
You know that feeling when you pull together an outfit, and fall in love? It’s totally cute, totally comfortable, and totally you? So you want to keep wearing it every day? That’s how remixing – Kendi style – has made me feel almost every day of the week.
It’s like those dreams I have about every six months, where I’m getting dressed for work and discover my entire wardrobe has been replaced by someone else’s kick-butt wardrobe that totally fits me. And I just keep going through the clothes, overwhelmed by what to pick because it’s just so amazing.