Strategies to Avoid Being “Out of Style”

Most women, I believe, care little about keeping up with every passing fad.  What we DON’T want is to be “out” of style, right?  Recently I’ve been ruminating on two common strategies:

One:  Buy only timeless styles.

Two:  Buy new styles that really work for you.

As you can see, these two approaches are not dichotomous, but can easily be combined into a blend specific to your own idiom.

Two additional thoughts that I have written about in the past:

One other thought concerning timeless styles:  we have, in our household wardrobe-building philosophy, a concept I call “the permanent wardrobe”.  Even true wardrobe classics cycle to a degree; that is, there is an ebb and flow to their popularity.  Since I don’t know which way is “ebb” and which is “flow”, allow me to suggest simply that a classic piece which is also flattering and in good condition is a good candidate for exception to the “if you haven’t worn it in a year” rule. 

3 thoughts on “Strategies to Avoid Being “Out of Style””

  1. hmmm. There’s a silhouette, proportion, details problem. You don’t wear a lot
    of print but there’s sure a print problem, though a plain striped shirt is probably safe.
    I can see, though, that if a garment takes a back seat to showcasing you, it might not be noticed as even glaringly out of style. I would think this involves an absence of flapping fabric. 🙂

    I think of clothing as a collection of ideas so I’m susceptible to wanting to incorporate new ideas and often have to tell myself to view it as I would a gallery exhibit, admire and pass on. I certainly, though, reject the “in a year” rule. And if you’re a busy person you turn around and Look, the eighties are back already. 🙂 I didn’t have any of that, anyway, though, the first go round. I think this brings up the worse problem of say, wanting a dress and purely hating everything on offer for years on end.

  2. Actually, I have been warming up to mixing prints. For sure it can’t always be done, but the simple color palette helps. 🙂 But maybe that’s not what you meant. Maybe you meant the problem of saving stuff for the next cycle; for example, if I had saved my stuff from the 80s and pulled it out to wear it now. Not a good idea!

    I had saved my ski pants from the 70s. When we discovered them, they fit all of us, they were super cool, and we needed them, but they were useless because the foam had all crumbled!

    I love the idea of clothing as a collection of ideas! May I adopt the concept? 🙂

  3. Now maybe it’s because I didn’t wear the 80’s stuff but it honestly all looks the
    same to me. I’ve always mixed prints. I like doing it more tonally, a lower contrast
    level, and I consider a tweed, for example, a print. I think mixing prints gives a lot
    of texture, especially if lower contrast. I understand that vintage sellers have an
    expression “devil dust” to describe fabrics delaminating. Supposedly very
    unhealthy particles.

    I’ve been reading a fascinating book about habitual shopping. It’s not the usual
    thing about credit cards and debt, none of which ever applies to me. It’s by a
    therapist/yoga teacher. She has some radical ideas (compared to all the repetitive
    stuff that’s out there). She says to never get rid of the garment that’s unworn for
    a year, 5 years, 10 years. She says (loosely paraphrasing) that it represents an
    unintegrated part of yourself. Serves a purpose, something like a placeholder.
    Attention Shoppers: the women’s guide to enlightenment through shopping. By
    Eve Eliot. You can read a fair amount through Google books, which often suffices for me, but I’m glad I went ahead and ordered it.

    And sure thing, you can use the concept.

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