Do you enjoy getting dressed? Or, like me, do you just enjoy being appropriately dressed?
In his TEDx presentation, The Habits of Highly Boring People, business student Chris Sauve shares strategies for automating the decisions you don’t like to make, thereby freeing time and energy to focus on doing what you love:
1) make the same choice every time. (Example: Steve Jobs and others who always wear the same thing.)
2) let someone else choose. (Like the celebrities who use a personal stylist. Or the hero, who lets me choose most of his clothes.)
Some people enjoy composing outfits. Hey, I have even heard of people who enjoy cooking as a creative outlet! But the point of my culinary efforts has always been eating well with minimum effort; the goal of my blogging is a streamlined wardrobe planning process.
Curating a functional and attractive (is that redundant?) wardrobe is a time-consuming task. If you don’t love the art of dressing, why not simplify this spring? Unless you are willing to delegate. 😉
You ask the best (hardest) questions! I’m still trying to recover from your announcement that you only have 46 inches (garments).
I get a lot of pleasure from having an outfit I create come together. On the other hand, when I had to pack for a conference a few years ago, I like to pack extra light and I took 2 dresses plus the one I wore. One ponte skirt and short sleeve silk knit stripe top. One tropical print rayon skirt and floaty oversize featherweight silk tee. On reflection, that sounds like a lot for several days but I wore it all. It was a summer heat wave – that I endured already at home and was no different where I traveled plus the hotel air conditioning was not up to snuff. So maybe not being able to feel comfortable caused the outfit changing.
I always think that dresses are the solution to what to wear, feel that I don’t have “enough” and yet rarely choose to wear what I have. Maybe on account of not owning pleasing dresses for cold weather. You had suggested to me a sweater dress and it happened that I got one passed along to me and have worn that and loved it.
I always envied women who complained how their mother or mother-in-law would continually gift them with clothing. So maybe I would enjoy being able to have someone else choose the clothing but I would definitely second guess a stylist – the “how” of something being put together – even if I were a red carpet bound actress who had already experienced past successes with it.
In my much younger years, I definitely had significantly fewer pieces of clothing and tended to wear things over and over to the point where they were sometimes referred to as “my uniform.” For example, in my 20’s I found 3 print fitted topped peasant style maxi dresses. Black, green and orange. All with similar size and distribution of print, though different prints. I wore these continually at home. I had added a 4th that was lighter blush pink with a ditsier print and never wore that unless the others were in the laundry.
I have been sensing a style change. I participate in a years long unofficial clothing swap. My friend is the hub of all this and many women she knows funnel their castoffs through her. I go over there at irregular intervals when she has a new “shipment” in. Since there is a certain consistency regarding type of garments or prints, much of it is stuff I wouldn’t consider but I usually find between 1 – 4 garments to take home and try. The irony or puzzle is that many of my favorite and most worn pieces come from these batches and I am aware that I would have passed over them in a store. Some pieces, of course, do get tried on and then sent back. I try them initially at her house but it is dimly lit and with no good full length mirrors. So this is my version, I guess, of receiving gifts of garments with styles foreign to me that I wouldn’t have chosen myself – delegated! 😀
I recently got, from a forum member, a faux weathered faux leather thin drape front jacket in a whiskey color that suits my hair with light beige faux shearling. Loved it immediately and felt thoroughly myself. The woman who had to buy 2 in order to have the store let her have one in their twofer sale, looks utterly cool and urban hip in hers and I look like California boho casual, like I’m looking for a beach bonfire. One thing I love about it is that I can wear a figure skimming top underneath and because of the unbuttoned openness, it does give glimpses of my figure. I had been admiring Kim Kardashian photos of a thick furry teddy bear coat worn open over form fitting clothing.
So I started thinking about the rod full of blazers (and other third piece toppers) that I have and rarely wear but can’t bring myself to get rid of, other than perhaps one or a couple at a time. Why do I have them and am so drawn to them? Blazers/jackets are the first rack I look at in a thrift store while everyone else is making a beeline for the jewelry. I guess I could postpone that and take my time since no one seems to want them. 😀 Anyway, what I like is the potential of the soft caressing only partly encasing effect plus most of the blazers fit me extraordinarily well and show off my figure. Yet I balk against what a fashion writer called the look of being headed to a meeting of the disciplinary committee. So I am testing out the comfort of the idea that the figure I am showing off is one that inheres to me and doesn’t reside on a hanger and therefore perhaps the best way of avoiding looking stuffy in a tailored good quality jacket is to avoid the tailored good quality jacket itself.
I was thinking how brilliant you were to choose dresses for traveling light; then I realized I do much the same thing as you: think dresses are the perfect easy solution and then not wear them much. I also have been noticing that I have alot (relative to my space) of blazers that haven’t been seeing much action. I think part of the reason may be that my go-to winter coat is precisely fitted, meaning that the blazer won’t fit under it.
Recently I have had a couple of serendipitous occasions of my daughters giving me clothes that were given to them but suit me better! In both instances, the givers were friend/coworkers ladies in my age range. It wasn’t that the clothes looked old to either of my girls, just that they looked exactly like something I would wear. And they were right! 🙂
This idea of automation, though, I am really chewing on that. More to come, I am sure! I am also watching Lisa Eldridge videos 😉