Morning after morning, I stand in front of my closet murmuring that familiar adage, “closet full of clothes…nothing to wear.” A bona-fide clotheshorse, raised to be so by my similarly appointed mother, my closet, since my consumerist coming-of-age, has become stuffed, stacked and sullied by items I love, items I cannot live without and items whose existence I am totally unaware of. An unintelligible mix of vintage, contemporary, timeless, of-the-minute and throwaway garments, my wardrobe has become positively unmanageable. Similarly, my personal style has fallen victim to my insatiable drive to consume. Morning after morning, instead of approaching my closet with a healthy creative drive to utilize, ransack and wear out the bevy of materials at hand, I long for my next purchase and seek temporary fulfillment in my most recent. It is an unhealthy cycle of lust and discontent that has become impossible to break and, perhaps more concretely, has dealt a devastating blow to my bank account over the years.
In late July, I began the massive undertaking of packing up my closet for the big move to Brooklyn. Faced with the reality of my borderline hoarding and on the verge of giving it all away in a fit of desire to just start anew, I experienced a moment of supreme clarity when I realized that my own fashion sensibility (if one could be gleaned from the mishmash that is my closet) had met the season’s editorial aesthetic at a sartorial fork in the road. The taste for ladylike vintage skirts, khaki and camel hues, faded indigo denim everything and classically-tailored shirts was showing up in fall look books and spilling out of my closet! At this fork, I had the choice to continue on my well-trodden path of sartorial insanity or to take the high road toward style enlightenment.
I chose the high road.
With the overarching vow to not buy any new garments for the entirety of the impending fall/winter season (approximately six months during which I will not buy nor will I purge), I will mine my closet instead of the gleaming show rooms of SOHO for fresh looks.
I will recombine, reinvent and repurpose my wardrobe in order to unearth my personal style.
Now, this is not a challenge in the vein of current "shopping diets" or uniform projects (see NYTimes.com)--I have a LOT to work with in terms of sheer volume and variety, thus daily posts will not seem fashionably anemic. Rather, this blog will serve to chronicle my search for reason, rationalize my struggle to find complacency in my fortune and survey my personal style evolution over the next six months.
These are the terms of the project:
1. No new purchases for the entirety of this project (6 months, fingers crossed)
2. No identical outfit repeats
3. I can only use clothing items from my own collection
4. I must post 5 out of the 7 days of the week
5. No closet purges, no regrets
Wish me luck.
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