Our Lady of the Forsythia, under yesterday's cloudy skies. It's looking the same today, but with warmer temperatures: in the low 50s Farenheit now (as opposed to the 40s or 30s or 20s), with a projected high of 71F. Unrelieved cloudiness, but warm.
I had an email this morning from Nat Tucker's Make It Look Easy, to which I've subscribed for these periodic free email updates. These are often useful little bulletins, even though I don't subscribe to her whole program or particularly adopt the style it promotes. Sometimes it's stuff I just don't care about or can't use, but often there's a tip or trick I appreciate and can incorporate.
The burden of today's email was wearing your clothes year-round. It began with what seemed to me a startling assumption: that you have so many clothes that you don't know what you have. You have your wardrobe spread over several rooms? Or else you put your clothes away when they're out of season, which is a thing I know many people routinely do, but I have never done. My mother never did it, which I suppose is why it wasn't even on my radar when I grew up and moved out and got married, and I was surprised to find that other people did have this whole ritual around putting away the summer clothes and getting out the winter ones, and vice versa. It was a ritual that made more sense when we lived in Utah, but I still didn't do it.
All that to say: wow, suddenly I feel so minimalistic.
And I'm not, really, not by the standards of people who are hard-core into minimalism, which again I am not (I have a religion already, thank you). I own something in the neighborhood of eighty pieces of clothing, not thirty --- and I'm fine with that. It occurs to me today that I can tell you exactly why I'm fine with that.
Why am I fine with the number of clothing items I own? I don't have so many clothes that I don't know what I have, that's why. I don't have so many clothes that I forget I have things and buy duplicates. I can see everything I own, easily and at a glance. Most of it fits handily in one small closet, in a 1922 house full of small closets. Two of my coats hang on pegs in the hall. I have two small underbed bins: one for underwear, nightwear, and socks, one for tights and leggings. I do not have stuff stashed away that doesn't see the light of day. Yes, there are a few items I don't wear often, but I know they're there, and I've made a conscious choice to keep them.
Part of the reason why I can have a (relatively, when we're talking multiple rooms) small number of clothing items is that I bought the core of my wardrobe to be worn year-round. Nothing is very obviously a summer dress or very obviously a winter dress. I have sleeveless dresses---but you wouldn't know they were sleeveless unless I wore them that way. I have dresses with sleeves, but they're not heavy or wintry. I have heavier and lighter cardigans and top layers, and I have leggings and tights and boots and sandals, all of which mix and match with the dresses I own. But I'm not consciously winterizing a really summery dress. Even better, I don't have "winter dresses" that I couldn't, at least theoretically, wear in the summer. I might want to wear only sleeveless dresses in July, but I'll get a good bit of wear out of my dresses with sleeves right up to the hottest part of the summer, and wear them again in the warmth of the southern fall.
All of this feels more important to me than having some tiny wardrobe without a lot of latitude. I don't want a wardrobe so tiny that I'm wearing the same thing day after day (even though I sometimes do wear the same thing day after day). But I want hardworking clothes that do precisely this. I don't buy a dress in the summer without thinking, "How will I wear this at Christmas?" I don't buy a dress in the winter without thinking about the summer. To be super warm, I buy cardigans and pullovers, tights and leggings and boots. To be cool I buy sandals.
Summer Sierra, for example:
She's a relatively heavy wool dress, but yep, I wore her even in July and August in North Carolina, just like this.
And winter Sierra (but one of many examples):
An important part of the whole picture, of course, is that it's a lot harder to do this kind of thing with synthetic fabrics or cotton. It's a lot easier to winterize even a thinner wool knit than it is cotton gauze, say.
Summer Maggie:
Winter Maggie:
Again, this is one iteration. I've worn the same dress a lot in the colder weather, with an array of cardigans, leggings, tights, and winter shoes.
I could cycle through my whole wardrobe of six dresses, but I'll spare you! At any rate, the important thing is, I think --- and I'm by no means a stylist or wardrobe consultant or anyone whose advice you would benefit from taking --- that I have learned to think in terms of my whole wardrobe whenever I contemplate buying something. My imagination is visual enough that I can actually picture myself wearing a given dress (at least, I can visualize the color, even if I'm not sure how it's going to fit me), and wearing other items I own with it. If my memory of what I own needs jogging, I can stand in front of my closet, and there it all is, in my range of vision.
I think about the item by itself first, of course: is the color right for me? is the shape of the garment at least a good gamble, in terms of fitting in a way that flatters me? Am I going to enjoy wearing this item? Where and when will I wear it (hint: the answer needs to be: potentially everywhere, potentially all the time)?
But then I challenge myself to pick at least three items in my existing wardrobe that I could wear with the item on trial, so that if and when I commit to buying that item, I have at least three fairly reliable outfit ideas in hand. Usually I do a mental cycle through all my cardigans before I buy something, because that way I have as many outfits up and running in my mind as I have cardigans. Mentally I try it with leggings, shoes, boots. Before I buy it, I already know pretty much how I'm going to wear it, both by itself and in combination with other things I own.
This has meant --- so far and touch wood! --- that every dress I've bought, expensive as they are, investment pieces as they are --- has been a good purchase. I haven't had to send anything back yet, and my goal is never to have to. Every dress has been versatile year-round. Even the ones I've bought in the winter are dresses I know I'll wear into the hot weather. And the ones I've bought in the summer are dresses I know will work for me even in the snow.
And the best thing is that they don't really even look like dresses that are being consciously winterized. They don't read so much like summer that adding a cardigan and boots seems like a stretch. I do kind of like the "pretty spring floral with chunky cardigan and boots" look, but day to day, it's nice not to be making that big a stretch, but simply putting on comfortable layers and rolling with it.
Today it's warm, in that transitional late-winter way that's so common, and so welcome, in the southern U.S. My day will encompass dog-walking, work, and the pub tonight.
So my new Willow dress is perfect: springlike color, but enough coverage, especially with leggings, to make me feel I'm not rushing summer too much. I can totally get away with bare feet in Birkenstocks --- there will be people out walking in shorts today, I can guarantee.
Soft cotton-blend navy leggings, so cheap, but still going strong several years later. Yes, someday I'd like some wool leggings, but I can't justify that investment yet, when I still have leggings that work for me just fine. I have zero complaints about these leggings. Maybe I have to wash them more often than I otherwise would, but I don't wash them more often than I do loads of underwear anyway. I can air them out and wear them two or three days running, which is fine, honestly. Again, it's not as though I wasn't doing some laundry, two or three times a week. While I get that for all kinds of reasons we'd like to do less, I still don't think that this is unreasonable --- and it is sustainable to keep using what I already own.
Anyway, someday when I do finally break down and buy wool leggings, I bet they'll be navy leggings, to replace these, my most-worn, most versatile pair. Navy is so basic, and it goes with so many things. It's absolutely the neutral foundation of my wardrobe, with gray a close second. Here, I love it with this periwinkle dress.
And it's great to break out the Birk Floridas. I bought these summer before last on Ebay, for something like $10. They are in exactly the condition you'd expect a $10 pair of Birkenstocks to be in, but I've glued them back together, and they keep on trucking. It has crossed my mind that I might --- even though I have purchased one new pair of barefoot sandals for the summer --- also pick up a second pair of Birkenstocks for pretty cheap, in case these just fall comprehensively apart. You can get Birk Mayaris, the ones that have a thong strap and have been endlessly imitated in knock-off brands, in the non-leather Birki material, for pretty cheap, even in better condition than these. As much as I love to wear Birkenstocks, and as worn as both these and my EVA Birks are, I might really consider that. It would be cheap, and I know how many pairs there potentially are out there --- there are always multiple inexpensive pairs of that style in my size on Ebay, no matter when I look.
I'm also considering possibly a second pair of "presenter" shoes, i.e. shoes to wear when I'm giving a reading or doing some other quasi-professional thing. I'd love something in the style of a Lotta From Stockholm clog, that would be a year-round shoe (closed toe, closed heel), good for transitional weather, an alternative to boots in the cold OR sandals in the heat. I don't think I'd pay the full, new price, but am scanning Ebay a little for something like that. I won't buy Dansko or Born secondhand, having learned my lesson about heel quality the hard way. It's got to be either a Birkenstock shoe (they have these Papilio Mary Jane wedges that are really cute, but I don't see them anywhere for under a hundred dollars), or something with a wood heel. This is something I could do without. I have my thrifted Old Navy fisherman-sandal clogs from several years ago that are still holding up really well. Those are good for warmer transitional weather, though I wouldn't wear them with tights, I don't think. They're not that comfortable, and I'd far prefer less heel, but they are very cute, and they dress up any dress I wear them with. So I can absolutely make do with those for the coming seasons, but I do have my eye out for something that's not super dressy, because I'm not wearing major heels or pointy toes, but is maybe one standard deviation more polished than anything else I have (and is an alternative to my darling red shoes, which I do wear for things like that, but which have their limits in terms of what they work with).
Ah, the impending springtime and the no-buy month, when the young-lady-of-advancing-age's thoughts turn to clothing purchases. But now the young lady must turn her thoughts to more immediate matters, and she hopes that you're happily doing the same.