Welcome, 2025! Here, it's entered with sun and cold, a drop of about twenty degrees in the temperature since last night. You might or might not have seen that we had quite the evening, close to midnight --- right at midnight, the world exploded in fireworks and more black-powder shooting, so that Dora, who had settled down happily in her crate, was catapulted again into a world of terror. I had to sit on the floor by her crate for a long time before she calmed back down enough to go to sleep, and I think I finally dropped off around 3 a.m. I'm up now, because we're going to Mass at the Abbey, and drinking my coffee with desperate zeal. Our brief pub jaunt last night, just because, was not worth the trouble, let me tell you what.
So, going to get dressed in a minute and eventually take the dog out for a spin before we go. Then back here to put on my black-eyed peas with the Christmas hambone for what I think will be a very early supper.
A new year means (among many other things) a new style album. I've benefited greatly from this practice every year, of recording my outfits day to day, and I look forward, in a low-key way, to what it will teach me about myself this year. I bid my last-year's album a fond farewell (though I'll continue to reference it for a while, to note when I last wore something) --- on with the blank slate!
What I wore last New Year's Day:
Wearing today (an outfit progression):
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Marine Blue, bought October 2024, last worn December 16. First wear this year.
*Snag merino tights, redyed in Jacquard Sapphire, third season of wear. I was surprised by how much I liked the Marine Blue/Sapphire juxtaposition.
*Xero Tari boots, bought summer 2022, third season of wear.
*Secondhand Erika&Co. vintage cotton-linen floral pinafore, bought December 2023, last worn December 9 (for the last Marian solemnity, as it happens --- I like the "Lo, How a Rose" theme it evokes). First wear this year.
*Secondhand Ann Taylor cashmere/rabbit-hair cardigan, bought October 2024, last worn December 16. First wear this year.
I hadn't put this pinafore, much less this entire combination, on my outfit plan for the week, but then I had kind of spaced the Holy Day of Obligation. And plans are for changing, amirite? At any rate, this outfit allows me to pull together several things I had not worn very recently, which is nice.
Briefly, because I do need to let the dog out:
One of my aims for this year is to wear each of my dresses (with the exception of the April Cornell silk dress) a minimum of 20 times. At a rate of roughly 20 wears per year, it will obviously take me about 5 years to reach a hundred wears for a dress. I'm not going to stress or be super compulsive about counts --- a rough estimate for each dress is enough. I'm not going to celebrate 100-wear milestones, I don't think. What I really want is a general idea that I am wearing each core item of clothing regularly in rotation with the others, that nothing is being ignored, and also that I'm not getting into a rut where I just keep putting the same thing on all the time.
I know for a lot of people that is the goal --- to wear the same dress constantly in different configurations. But my goal is the opposite. I want each dress to last me a long time. I don't want to have to replace it. I also don't want to be in a rut. That's too much my tendency, and I want to continue to work against it, to wear different things every day and not keep repeating the same idea over and over. This helps keep me out of depression, as well as making me look better. It enables a positive enjoyment of my clothes --- as a gift, because of course that's what any good thing is.
Of course, the new day and the new year are also a gift, and so is the dog, whom I had better walk before more time escapes me.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Lovely Mass at the Abbey. Now we're all confused and think it's Sunday again.
I am beyond tired after a late night with the hysterical terrified dog. Now she's sunbathing on the daybed, and I'm just kind of in a walking coma. Still drying some bedding I had to wash last night --- I'm going to put our good mattress pad back on the bed when the dryer stops, then relegate the sheets I'd stripped off to the drawer until next week.
Still mulling my clothing outlook, because that's what I do on this blog. I promise you I do think about other things, but here's where I ruminate on this one topic.
So, above I said that I aim to wear all my core dresses (excluding my purple silk April Cornell dress and my black linen Eileen Fisher dress, which I wasn't even counting because I wear it only for choir and funerals) roughly 20 times this year. Some will get more wear, but I hope nothing will get less. If I have fifteen active dresses (excluding the silk and the black linen), then I also know that I can aim for wearing each one twice a month. Again, some will get more wear. Some might get a little less. I'm not going to be all rigid about this.
But having this loose goal means that I can notice if there's something I really am not wanting to wear that often. If I don't want to wear it twice a month, then why do I have it? That seems a reasonable question to ask. I might have an answer for that question. Certainly in the case of more special dresses, and in the case of button shirts and other accessories, I do have an answer, which is that they serve me when I need them. I don't want to wear absolutely every item of clothing in my closet on that regular a basis --- and that's okay.
Conversely, there are dresses I'll want to reach for more. My current secondhand Sierra is a nice warm hug, and so easy to wear. I'm hoping the new one, a size smaller, will be more of the same. That's an example of a dress that makes me think, ONLY twice a month?? In the winter, especially, sometimes I just want to be cozy, and those dresses are basically like wearing pajamas (I mean, I do wear a Sierra for pajamas most nights, as it happens). I want to try to be put together most days, but if I feel like just wearing a comfort dress, I will. Similarly, in the summer, it's nice just to throw on a simple linen dress and be floaty and cool. I wear all my dresses year-round, but how much a given dress gets worn does depend at least a little on the season.
Meanwhile, if I don't want to wear a core dress at least twice a month --- which seems fairly minimal --- then I should probably interrogate whether I like it enough to keep owning it. If I have to make myself wear it, do I need to have it at all?
There is, too, the idea of putting some clothes away for a while, to give myself a chance to detox from them, which is to say: to stop being tired of them or bored with them. That's a strategy I've learned from my favorite Finnish account. Sometimes I accomplish this move simply by deciding to sell something, then changing my mind and pulling it back out of the outbox. Sometimes I accomplish it by entering a season like Advent or Lent, which automatically eliminates some clothes from my available wardrobe because they don't go with purple. I could actually make myself a smaller, more clearly defined capsule for this Lent and put a number of things away for Eastertide. That might be interesting. At any rate, I could approach my wardrobe by doing a capsule every month or season --- that would be one way to indulge in wearing a smaller rota of items while another rota rests.
I don't really know what I'm going to do, and that's okay.
One thing I'd love to get better at in 2025 is embroidery. The longer I own my dresses, the more likely I am to need to do some mending. I free-handed a little fish to cover the hole in my secondhand Sierra ---
--- and it's cute but amateurish, and it took me a lot longer to do, because I was making it up stitch by stitch, than I really would like my visible mends to take. I did buy an embroidery hoop to do this, which helped a lot, and I think next time I need to mend something, I will watch some YouTube videos, decide on a design, and execute it with a little more intentionality, instead of just starting to stitch and hoping it looks like something (and eventually going, You know, I could add a tail . . . ).
I hope I don't need to do too much mending anytime soon, but I want to have a plan for doing more presentable mending, to extend the life of my clothing. My great hope this year is not to buy much, but to keep the clothes I have in good order, and not to give up on something because it springs a little hole.
So far I haven't given up on anything --- besides this Sierra, I've also mended holes and tears in my teal Fiona and my Maggie dress. I've resewn a seam at the pocket of my Audrey as well. And while initially I felt that a mended dress was less "nice," I've kind of gotten over that with time. Heck yeah I'd wear my mended teal Fiona to a party, or even a wedding. I wear it to church and for all kinds of occasions. I don't even notice the mended place. I notice the graceful fit and the lovely color, and I remember that that is the one dress a total stranger has complimented in passing, saying it was "gorgeous." The mended spot really hasn't changed anything about any of that.
I am excited to receive my new Sierra (and hope my size-down was a good move). As of yesterday it had arrived in Gastonia, so it's not entirely implausible that I could receive it tomorrow, unless the USPS decides to send it to Ohio or something --- which could happen. If I like it as much as I expect to, then I will definitely give myself a dispensation to wear it as much as I want to, while other things rest.
The rules are flexible here. I've tried to be more generous with myself this year than I hope I will want to be, and in these days of Christmastide, I'm very much enjoying wearing things I didn't wear in Advent. And while I will keep wearing purple with pleasure, I'm mindful of the fact that I've just worn a lot of it, and come March will be wearing it non-stop. Those clothes will take a little back seat for a while, as other things get more of an outing.
Also, I appreciate how this pinafore dress I'm wearing today scratches the florals itch a lot. If I found some kind of really beautiful linen blouse with tucks and details in the collar and sleeves, I could even conceivably wear it for Easter. This is precisely why I am giving myself an allowance for secondhand things . . . I do also like wearing this pinafore with a tank in the summer. Speaking of which . . . my cashmere-silk-merino tank seems to have vanished after the last wear, whenever that was, and I'm not sure what I've done with it. I can't imagine that it won't turn up, but it hasn't yet. I didn't wash it or anything, and honestly, I am baffled. But oh well. Again, I imagine it will turn up.
And now I should begin to think about making cornbread to go with our black-eyed peas and ham for supper.