30 Pieces Of Clothing Are Surprisingly Versatile

Welcome to Week Three of my 30 Day Challenge! (Catch Week One and Two if you missed them!)

Are we really 19 days into September?!

Believe it or not, five pieces are yet completely untouched. Now I’m looking askance at the rest of my wardrobe, because it definitely doesn’t seem nearly as necessary anymore! Hmmm…

Day 13

Why I decided to take these photos faraway from the top of a staircase is beyond me, so you get not only one super tiny blurry picture, but two! Here, I slung a fluttery yellow top around my neck- shirts with interesting shapes make the best scarves because they’re unpredictable! Try it out for yourself

Day 14

Haircut day! Admittedly, a fuzzy cream-colored dress is not the best choice for a day when you’re shedding hair everywhere, but my mind was focused elsewhere, such as on how to most effectively wear a trapeze (read: shapeless) dress over a ruffle skirt!

Day 14

Flutter yellow top, this time worn with one sleeve dangling. I’m slowly working up to wearing the entire shirt. You’ll see.

Day 15

First day of studio! My new drafting professor is a super elegant seamstress who was trained in Paris & wears mostly black and white, so I figured I’d make a great impression with my brightest shirt and some gold suspenders

Day 16

See?? The fluttery yellow top in all its glory. But never fret, there’s a new shirt-as-scarf in town!

Day 17

Some subdued tights to ward off the cold. Accessories don’t count in my 30, but it’s almost as if they aren’t there, right?

Day 18

I honestly love this slipdress (also in outfits 9 and 14) as a capelet more than anything else. This is slightly more ruffle-overload than usual, but I like the overlapping shapes!

*

So far, unless they’ve been following the blog or the subject comes up, no one has noticed that I’ve been wearing the same 25 pieces all month! I’ve been trying to retain my eclecticism so the outfits don’t look like duplicates. How am I doing?

The biggest surprise is how unlimited I’ve felt all month! It’s actually liberating to look at a drawer of clothes in the morning, and know that the rest is up to my creativity.

Interestingly enough, last night I went over to help style my friend Kara, and it was unusually difficult! At the time, I had no idea why I was going nuts over a single outfit after this month’s styling mania, but now I’ve realized: full wardrobes are stressful! As your options expand, it becomes more difficult to evaluate each individual combination of items against one another, and style gets lazy or boring very fast.

(Though a million changes later…It worked out!)

*

Expect to see some design-related shenanigans soon. Starting classes again is unleashing a new wave of frustration as I struggle, as always, to redefine my relationship with fashion. As a design student, consumer, and, since starting Rethinking style, critical philosopher, it’s hard to balance my perspectives sometimes, ESPECIALLY when it comes to my work… This is going to be an interesting year, to say the least! Stay tuned