042. Have You Tried Wearing Only 7 Outfits This Season?
An Outfit Repeating Framework That Works Wonders
How many clothes is too many clothes? How many pairs of shoes should I own? How many coats? Bags? Sweaters? These are questions I often get asked and that took me a while to figure out for myself. The most accurate, and admittedly annoying, answer is ‘It Depends’. My personal sweet spot, which I found after much trial and error, is around 7 outfits per season.
Let me tell you how I got there. Some time during the Nth UK lockdown in 2021, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video by textile designer Lily Stav Gildor, a former assistant of Vogue US Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour. The job a million girls would kill for. Lily first went viral on the app for explaining that it’s actually pronounced ‘Winter’, like the season. In this video, Lily explained that the chicest girls at Vogue wear the same five outfits Monday to Friday, week after week, until a season’s over. I remember thinking ‘Ah! That makes a lot of sense’. I’d always looked up to Vogue editors for style inspiration - of the current team, I love to follow Naomi Elizée, Madeline Fass, Lilah Ramzi, Elise Taylor, and Elisée Browchuck -while also wondering how they could look so immaculately dressed on an fashion editor’s salary. They receive gifting and get lent samples but having the right clothes doesn’t always mean dressing well. As a side note, I wrote a newsletter on great style and budget and how the two aren’t always correlated, watch out for it within the next few months.
What I gleaned from that video was an opportunity to step up my outfit repeating game. Putting together great outfits isn’t innate for me so if I was to emulate said chic girls, I would have to spend some time at the start of each season thinking through each outfit which includes styling them using the FLAIR framework, and ensuring I had all basis covered (excluding workouts and special occasions). After iterating for a few seasons, I landed on the number 7.
At this point, you might think:
‘This is hardly ground breaking’. Women spend an average of 17 minutes each morning figuring out what to wear. Assuming you find it fun when it’s for going out (most women find it stressful), you will still spend 4 months of your life deciding what to wear to work alone. Decision fatigue is real and for me, who loves anything that helps with removing cognitive overhead from my life - my underwear, nightwear, and activewear drawers consist of multiples of the same bra, pyjama, and Lululemon set (in different prints and colors) - it was life-changing. Incidentally, nothing has ever come close to bettering the way that I shop (more on this later).
‘It’s way too little’. You might be right, this number will vary depending on your lifestyle. For example, if you are being social every night of the week or you go out out. It might also depend on your job (although if it’s good enough for the Vogue offices). However, if you account for how much of your wardrobe you actually wear, you might find you’re already doing that. The range I have found reported in diverse studies is between 10% and 20%. Assuming there is some overlap between seasons, it comes down to owning between 20 to 28 outfits. Which, for those environmentally-conscious, is not far from the number that a recent study suggests fashion consumers stick to so we might align with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
‘But, people will see me wear the same stuff repeatedly?’. This might be difficult to hear if like me you are a little vain, but people don’t care about you wear and, for the most part, they don’t notice. If anyone ever mocks you for re-wearing the same clothes they either are working through serious self-esteem issues or need to urgently pick up a book about the impact of fashion on the environment and touch some grass.
‘Where is the fun in that?’. Never before I started doing this, had the process of getting dressed proved this creative. What I remember from these 17 minutes I used to spend getting dressed each morning, I only remember feeling of rushed, anxious and flustered. This isn’t the ideal state of mind for considering how best to layer, how colors complement each other, or how to choose the right shoes to go with an outfit. Most days, I’d forget to put on jewelry, let alone a belt or a hat. In other words, I never really styled my outfits but merely put on clothes.
I have shared this framework several times on social media but never really got into the nitty-gritty of how to choose your seven outfits. Over the next few weeks, I will publish different examples of what that might look like for different aesthetics and lifestyles. In today’s newsletter, I am sharing what 7 outfits could look like for someone with a classic minimalist aesthetic. I assumed a lifestyle similar to mine: that of a 34-year-old who works from home full-time and has a social life consisting of two or three evenings out per week. Following the principles of a capsule wardrobe, most pieces are utilised as part of at least two outfits. This facilitates a vast array of additional combinations, allowing for mixing different tops with different bottoms if you want more variety.
Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments. Have a beautiful Sunday!
L x
Outfit 1 - A Day Outfit For Running Errands and Casual Meet-Ups (1/2)
