Cutting to the chase here with the outfit photo, because I have a lot to catch up on today.
My Wool& Sierra dress remains my most-worn dress, and I think my overall most-worn ITEM of 2022 so far. I did not sleep in her last night, but I did get up and put her on first thing this morning, with my Xero Oswegos, to give my Xero sandals a rest.
And I gotta say: I love this dress. I don't find the gray boring at all. It's just nice and versatile and easy. I love the swing shape. I love the length. I always feel graceful in this dress, but also active, strong, and ready for pretty much anything. I have walked and hiked in this dress, cooked in this dress, cleaned house and gardened in this dress, given poetry readings in this dress, gone to parties and plays and church in this dress. I have worn this dress with cardigans, blazers, t-shirts under, t-shirts tied over, pullover sweaters, leggings, tights, boots, Birkenstocks, hiking boots . . . It's truly the best dress ever.
And today, out walking in this dress, I was kind of hot.
It wasn't bad. I'm not bathed in sweat. Long sleeves would have been a little much, but the sleeveless cut and the swing mean that you do get a good bit of air flow, which is helpful. BUT the feel of this dress is a little sweater-like: not a heavy sweater, but still, a sweater. I chose to wear her today really as a kind of test, as the mornings continue to heat up. And I can see how, although she remains a favorite, I might not wear her as much over the next few months as I've worn her up to now.
I do plan to wear her Sunday for Pentecost, for the reason that I have a scarf with some red in it that will look good with her. Thinking about that makes me realize how much I've under-utilized my scarves this year. I have a fair collection of them, and I really like them all, but I haven't worn them. And I'm really not sure why. Looking back, I LIKE the outfits where I've thought to put on a scarf: here, for example. And here. And here. I've enjoyed revisiting the clean-neckline-with-cardigan look which has been a constant for me, but I'd really like to push myself to remember those scarves and add them, even in the summer (among other things, they do make nice belts).
Another thing I've been noticing in my wardrobe tracker is how little wear I've gotten out of my relatively extensive collection of shirts. A lot of that I attribute to the fact that I wear dresses 95% of the time. Now, there are shirts I like and sometimes wear with dresses, and shirts I like on their own, even though I reach for them relatively seldom --- this J. Jill flowy tunic, seen here with the long cardigan which I fear fits a little too much like a bathrobe, falls into that category. I've had that top for some years now: five or six, at least. I love the color, the neckline, the softness of it. I don't wear it often, but I still don't want to get rid of it, because sometimes it is exactly what I do want to wear.
I fundamentally don't understand the urge to get rid of things you like. You experience this impulse because you feel, for whatever reason, that you don't deserve to own those things --- that's the vibe I get sometimes from conversations about minimalist wardrobes. I promise I won't get started on that again, except to say (again) that I think it's okay to have something you don't wear often. If it would feel like a loss to get rid of it, then don't. "I don't reach for it much" isn't really a non-justification for your possession of some item. "I don't like it" would be an actual reason not to keep it. But for heaven's sake, don't feel you have to punish yourself, or give items you really like the axe, because you're not, I don't know, proving their value to you by using or wearing them constantly --- or because you think you've crossed some completely arbitrary line into "having too much," and maybe other people will think you're shallow and materialistic or something.
If I were that worried about being thought shallow and materialistic, I wouldn't be blogging about clothes. I'd be doing Something More Serious. But I do think material culture matters. We are embodied. We are given a world of things, in all their colors and forms, which we experience through our senses --- and we're supposed to be delighting in that, not suffering from some kind of quasi-religious scrupulosity about whether we've gone overboard in some aspect of our delight. I mean, we can be disordered in our attachments to things, though only I can really discern whether I'm a hoarder or not (NB: I am not a hoarder). But we can suffer from a kind of materialist anorexia, too. And I said I wasn't going to go on about that, but anyway, I'm here to tell you: if you like the clothes, keep the clothes. Keeping the clothes doesn't make you a worse person, or a better one. It just means you have things you like, and there's nothing in the whole freaking world wrong with that.
But really, I'm not a hoarder. My closet doesn't have clutter. It's a lot easier to justify not getting rid of things when you have already whittled your collection down a great deal. I've purged things that don't fit, or don't fit right. It's been a LONG time since I had anything in a color I don't love and look good in. I've purged a lot of things I just had, because when I went shopping with something in mind, the thing I had in mind wasn't there, but something else was, and I bought it, even though it wasn't at all what I was looking for. For a long time I called this serendipity. I don't call it that anymore. To a great extent I've also purged items in synthetic fabrics, keeping a few things either because I have a specific purpose for them, which they fulfill --- like the one black dress I own for choral situations --- or because, like my rose-brown jumpsuit, they're just things I like (see above).
So now, as I'm not really buying anything new (minus the dress and shoes I actually did just buy, for targeted and very considered reasons), I'm largely at the fine-tuning stage. I'm watching my shirt inventory at the moment and paying attention to what I really like and why. If I really like something I already own, even if I don't strictly need it, that's a reason to keep it. I really like this duck-egg-blue collarless shirt, for example. I don't wear it that often, but sometimes it's exactly what I want to wear. Also, it's just a nice shirt: all cotton, delicious color, lovely details. Of course, I've had some objectively nice shirts that I didn't wear that much, and realized I didn't like all that much. I never felt that great in them, for whatever reason. Just being a nice shirt isn't a reason for a shirt to stay in my wardrobe. But a nice shirt that I do really like: YES. Ditto this lace-yoke blouse. Sometimes I just want exactly this: something with some exquisite feminine detail. Do I want that all the time? Nope. And this blouse feels kind of fragile. I'm a little careful with it. But I like it. Ergo, it stays.
All this really probably means is that I don't need to buy more shirts for a long, long, LONG time. Like, note to self: this part of the no-buy thing is the part to take seriously. My needs here are met. I HAVE ENOUGH.
And with that, I must brace myself to deal with copy edits and hunt down some poems for next week's Sun.
TAKING A BREAK TO CHECK MY EMAIL, AND:
Elyse Holladay has a blog! Here's a great post about how to make an outfit.
Some highlights:
*Consider your personal style (body shape, aesthetic, preferred shapes, fabrics, textures, energy)
*Consider your day (weather, tasks, demands on the way you show up)
*Skip the "nothing outfit."
Though she and I have quite different aesthetics, I always find her insights useful, and I'll be bookmarking her blog to read.
UPDATE:
It's 2:20, and I've added about ten poems to the "Future Possibilities" list for Poem of the Day at the Sun, and have done an initial complete read-through-and-respond to copy edits for the novel. Mostly I've just been replying STET over and over again, but I am going to read back through the MS with the notes and consider everything again before I send it all back.
UPDATE 2.0:
My Maggie dress is in the mail!!
Also, as I noted yesterday, I've been highlighting (gradually) in blue some items on my wardrobe spreadsheet that I'm not sure about holding onto --- which again is just another way of saying that I'm not sure, after all this time, how much I really, truly like them.
While I'm waiting for dinner to cook, I've also started highlighting, in yellow, items I might include in a capsule for our beach trip next week. We'll be gone seven days (house will not be unoccupied, O roving marauders), so I'm trying to zero in on a pack-lightly clothing scheme. It won't be too hard: wool dresses roll nicely in a backpack. I'll probably throw in a bamboo dress as well, to sleep in if nothing else. Then bathing suits, a few cardigans for restaurants and church, a couple of pairs of sandals, and I'm there.