You’re Wearing That Again?
February 3, 2012 by mjessimanYou bet I am. Sporting the same dress day in and day out is not only socially acceptable and socially conscientious, it’s downright chic.
My Grade 6 wardrobe consisted of sweet, prim dresses made by my mom, and a single teal sweatsuit. I generally went with the sweatsuit. I still recall the daily dread of getting dressed (if my parents had known the depth of my pain, surely they would have purchased those Fancy Ass jeans I craved), desperately hoping my classmates would be too dazzled by my assortment of jelly-bean earrings—they were real jelly beans, shellacked!—to notice my limited fashionability (to my credit, I did sometimes cuff the elastic pant leg). Nobody ever said anything disparaging about my look to my face, but then again I didn’t have a date until Grade 10, when I got a part-time job and a Daniel Hechter frequent-shopper card.
Since then, I’ve always been self-conscious about wearing the same outfit to work twice in one week, imagining critical eyes boring into my sartorial soul. Indeed, it turns out my paranoia was rooted in reality: at a party a few years back, a co-worker remarked loudly upon seeing me in a skirt and simple black top I’d worn to other work functions, “Oh, you’re wearing your old standby!” It was a remark that sent me, twitching, back to retail therapy, pointlessly purchasing cheap and cheerful “this-will-change-my-life” items over and over again. However, at an average of $40 a pop, it’s not so cheap or cheerful to shop this way—especially when you never arrive at the elegant look you desire. The shine would wear off each not-quite-right shirt, skirt, cardigan, etc., after the first wearing and I’d be left with a chaotic closet and an unfulfilled fantasy to dress like a minimalist-chic Parisian.
Now imagine my confusion-cum-awe when, on a recent visit to my stylish and financially successful sister-in-law, I watched her emerge confidently from her room in the same dress 14 days running. Same dress, two solid weeks. On Day 13, after hovering, uninspired, over the mess of outfits in my suitcase—none of which were particularly flattering on me, nor would they survive more than a few washings—
I asked my sister-in-law about her uniform, a floaty, James Perse swing dress that suited and fit her perfectly.
The main reason for her fetching monotony, she told me, is practicality. “If I know I’m not going to wear a bunch of different things, why give myself so much choice and have to spend time thinking about things I don’t need to think about?” On top of that, relying on just a handful of items in her closet makes her feel virtuous and jibes with her anti-consumerist goals. Most of all, she found a dress, and a designer, that looks great on her, so why complicate matters?
I was altered, ’scuse the pun. I apologized to the memory of my hardworking sweatsuit and, on arriving home, donated 80 percent of my ineffectual wardrobe to Goodwill. I bought three new dresses (the plum one, above, was $40 on sale at Banana Republic; I’m working up to a James Perse) and vowed to wear them every day with confidence and the odd new scarf or belt that I really love. After all, as French style maven Ines de la Fressange says, “accessories are the key to personal style.”
I’ll admit that a recent visit to closetvisit.com briefly shook my resolve to wear a uniform. It’s a peek into the closets of “inspiring and stylish ladies.” The common feature among the closets is the staggering amount of stuff they contain. They clearly belong to women, however, who have built wardrobes thoughtfully over time. Still, a quote from one young clothes horse with a particularly boundless closet makes me think I’m onto something. “I wear the same things over and over again, like a uniform. I’ve gotta break out of that!”
