Some Bright Lights Cosmos, blooming away in the warm autumn afternoons.
It is going to be warmer today: high of 82F. This trend will continue through the weekend, with a Sunday high of almost 90F. Oh well, it's autumn in the South. Glad I have some light dresses that don't look too summery.
On today:
*Mass at 8
*Dog walk (with dog pretty much back to normal, thanks to meds)
*Essay-writing and uploading
*Research for November lecture
*Ruminating and worrying over upcoming conference, which will be lots of fun, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to worry from now till the end of October
*Pecking at new poem
Leaving for Mass in just a few minutes. It's still pretty dark and gloomy out right now, so the light for my outfit photos is weird and yellow, because I had to have the bathroom lights on for anything to show up at all.
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock dress (S/M) in . . . I've seen this color called Charcoal Blue, too. No idea what its real name is. Bought December 2023, last worn September 1. Total wears to date this year: 20. Right up there with my Audrey as a most-worn dress in 2024.
*Secondhand Pure teal cashmere cardigan, bought spring 2024, last worn on Monday. I anticipate a lot of wear this winter --- this is such a soft, plush, lovely cardigan, in a color that works with so much of my closet. I wasn't going to wear it with this dress today, but there it was, and I put it on. I won't wear it all day --- might change into a light button shirt as a top layer once things warm up --- but it's good for the cool morning and the air conditioning in the church.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris.
So this is more or less an item on my outfit plan. The dress definitely was --- I decided not to bother with a top under it, since I wore a pinafore dress yesterday. I might change into something else to go out tonight, or I might not. We'll see.
Day 3 hair, still a lot of wave and volume, thanks to the heat and humidity. It still doesn't feel too messy worn down. I refreshed a little with my wet hands, but I think it looks okay with this whole outfit. The outfit is fairly simple, even if it too has some volume, so the big loose hair seems in balance with the rest.
And off I go.
MID-MORNING UPDATE:
A nice Mass for the feast of St. Januarius.
Dora was awake when I got home, so I took her out for a potty break and a sniff, gave her her tummy meds for the morning, and put her back to bed with her breakfast.
Ate some plain yogurt, drank more coffee.
Took a minute to cull two more items from my closet, neither of which I have been wearing, but hanging onto for some nebulous future special occasion for which, let's face it, I probably wouldn't wear them:
*an old prom dress I hung onto because I liked the color and thought I might wear it for some occasion, but really . . . I won't. I have this April Cornell silk dress to dress up in. If we have a REALLY special occasion, like another family wedding, I'll either wear that or buy another similar silk dress secondhand, depending on the color scheme.
This dress came from Goodwill, and it's really not worth trying to resell, I don't think. I put it in the donation bag, which I guess I'll take to the thrift store sometime at the end of the year. I used to take bags periodically, all year round, so it seems like an improvement, to have one bag that I slowly fill over the course of twelve months.
*my mother-of-the-bride dress from the Texasgirl's wedding in 2017. I have actually worn the dress part of that outfit since the wedding, with a denim jacket and boots.
But that's really not what I want to wear anymore, and there seems to be no reason why it should go on taking up space in my closet. Somebody else can benefit from a really cheap resale price.
I am also, honestly, looking hard at my skirts again. On the one hand, I like having them. I like the variety they provide, and the way they make certain of my dresses more versatile, by adding length or otherwise just repurposing a dress as a top. On the other hand, I keep putting them on my outfit list for the week and then not wearing them. We'll see how things go as we move into the fall and winter. I'm not going to cull anything fast. But it does seem to me that that's an area where I could tighten up my range of clothing choices and not suffer. Over and over, I choose and prefer dresses. And if I'm going to own as many dresses as I find myself owning currently, how much do I really want or need all these skirts (all these = 5, I think)?
Something to ponder, anyway.
I keep hearing about this 333 challenge, and this morning I decided to find out exactly what it is.
Not surprisingly, it's a minimalist-wardrobe challenge --- an immediate turnoff to me, yet weirdly I'm intrigued.
The idea is that you pick 33 items from your wardrobe, including jewelry, and that's what you wear for 3 months.
Here's an interesting blog post I read about the challenge, and the ways that it felt both liberating and constricting to the writer.
Like her, I think I'd get really bored --- although if you wear dresses, 33 items is a lot. It would be easier to do in the summer when you didn't have to include tights and leggings and outerwear.
At the same time, something like this could be an interesting exercise in what you wouldn't miss if you didn't have it. I could see doing a closet clean-out for the fall, packing away things I wanted to test in this way: say, three skirts, leaving myself just two (the two I bought most recently), and being really intentional about what layers I wanted to keep.
I wouldn't want to sacrifice variety and the potential for creative combinations. The basic capsule wardrobe doesn't appeal to me at all, though I frequently make capsules out of the wardrobe I have, for travel or liturgical seasons. One reason I wouldn't do an actual 333 is that the seasons in which this kind of thing would most appeal to me --- autumn, as in right now, and at the start of the new year --- are superseded by either Advent or Lent, when I just wear purple all the time, which is its own kind of challenge.
Speaking of purple, which is fast becoming my new core color . . . I did in fact buy another dress. I had a big Poshmark credit, thanks to the sale of my Marine Blue Maggie, and I had kind of had my eye out for one more NPL dress, maybe with sleeves for once, maybe a Mama dress . . .
And I'd really been attracted to the "Caffe Mocha" color, which is a kind of dusty brownish light purple that I think I could wear pretty well. It's soft enough to function as a neutral, but purple enough to be . . . you know, purple.
So, anyway. This dress came up yesterday:
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| Photo credit: Poshmark seller |
It's the Mama style I'd been kind of idly looking for, in a color I was actively interested in. It's a Small, so I hope it fits --- my other dresses are Small/Medium, and I'm a little worried about the bodice, but then it's supposed to be a loose-fitting dress, so possibly erring on the side of small isn't a bad thing. We'll see. If it's too tight under the arms, I'll resell it. With my credit, this dress cost me $17, so I could resell it for a fairly low fast-sale price and recoup what I paid and then some.
Again, yeah, I made a rule, and I have broken the rule, and oh well. The real consequence of that rule is that I bought tops and skirts, which I'm finding are less useful and appealing to me than dresses, so maybe this is a lesson learned.
Meanwhile, we'll see how this dress looks on, but my thought is that I could include it in my capsule for the conference. I'll admit that I pulled the trigger on it out of anxiety about this panel I'm suddenly on --- but I don't think I would have done that if I hadn't had the credit sitting there. I could see feeling really good in this dress for readings --- the color would go well with my green blazer, for a start, and I think I could look sharp and academic and fallish, without being too heavy or dark or hot (as in body temperature).
Lots of my cardigans would go with this dress: gray beaded cashmere, plum blazer cardigan, cobalt blue, aqua alpaca, pink merino, navy and champagne linen, maybe even the red cotton cardigan. Teal might be a bit bright, but we'll see --- this color does seem to want to go with other softer colors. My soft green pullover would look especially good with it.
Plenty of tights colors, including all the grays, navy, Sand Dollar, and Red Velvet Cake.
Shoes: brown Mary Janes, black Mary Janes, tan Papillios, graphite mid-calf boots, brown Tari boots, Mayaris, Crocs, Xero Jessie sandals, Stegmann clogs.
I could see wearing this dress all year round, with the exception of maybe the hottest summer days. I think having a linen dress with sleeves will be useful, and I expect it to wear much as my wool dresses with 3/4 sleeves wear, in terms of seasonal versatility.
Even though in some ways this was a reactive purchase, made on a stressful day when I was feeling anxious about things, I did observe my usual practice of thinking through how and when and with what other things I'd wear the dress.
Also, now that I suddenly have a little collection of NPL dresses, I'm considering whether I really need them all. The dress I have particular questions about is my Cinnamon Rose Leila --- of them all, it seems the most off in terms of color. I had anticipated that I'd be less attached to the brown Leila dress, but oddly, it's the one I really love.
I don't know whether I'd resell the Cinnamon Rose Leila, or possibly offer it out on loan to the Texasgirl, who I think could wear that color really well. The stipulation would be that if she gets tired of it, I'd want it back, either to wear or resell, but that might be a good way for that dress to circulate for a while. I might sound her out at Christmas, if not before, and let her try it on. Her build is a little bigger than mine, especially through the shoulders and upper torso, so I think it would be good to make sure it fits her before it leaves my house.
Anyway, that's a thought.
This feels like a lot of revolving-door action, but sometimes you do have to experiment. Secondhand seems like the best way to do that, as long as you're choosing things that have a good chance of continuing to circulate once you're finished with them.
I don't want to keep doing this, though, and I might very well give myself some kind of cap on buying for next year --- alternating months of no-buy have worked all right for me this year, although lately that hasn't been quite so tidy. I didn't buy much in August, after a no-buy July, but I did buy a few things --- and then it's just been out the window altogether in September.
I'm afraid to declare any more resolutions, because I'll just break them, but I also don't want to keep buying and selling over and over. I do like reselling things, because it hones my closet and makes me a little money --- but then I spend that money on more secondhand clothes, so that's kind of a cycle. I don't want to find myself back in the same place where I was when I was dopamine-hunting at Goodwill every month. There's got to be some healthy balance between, on the one hand, really liking clothes and enjoying their creative possibilities, and on the other hand, just using that as an excuse to chase dopamine hits.
Anyway. I love what I have. I really love my new Fiona dress --- the one new item I've bought this year, which feels like a reasonable limit (even though I'd said nothing new). I could totally see planning ONE new purchase next year, and then a more flexible limit on secondhand things.
We'll see. Time to let the dog out again, then get to work. This literary writing won't do itself.
EVENING UPDATE:
Just waiting for the husband to come home, so we can go out.
I've finished an essay, and the dog and I have been for a long, sweaty walk, after which I took a bath and washed my hair again.
And . . .
Cancel everything I said about this dress. Yeah, maybe I'll lend it to the Texasgirl sometime, but NOT ANYTIME SOON, because I'm wearing it.
Nah, I'm just going to have to have a lot of dresses.
That is just how it is.