Dressing for your Lifestyle, Part 2

Posted by Jill Chivers in Shop Your Wardrobe Strategies

In the first part of this article, I shared with you some examples of how we can dress for a life/style we used to have – our past.  And how we can be filling our wardrobes up with items for a life/style we desire to have – an aspirational or fantasy future.

All of which leaves us with a wardrobe full of gear we don’t wear – because it isn’t who we are right now.  Those clothes don’t represent the life we’re leading now.  They’re for another life, another time, another person.

Which is all very well.  The concept is easy.  But how do you get to a place where you’re dressing for the life/style you have right this very minute?

In this second and final part of this article, I’ll share my 3 steps for dressing for the life/style you have now.

Please don’t just read this, not if you’re serious about creating a truly wonderful and working wardrobe, full of only items you love to wear, that suit your personality and your life/style – as they are right now.

If you want that wonderful, working wardrobe, follow these 3 steps – and see what happens.

Remember to experiment and explore!

Three steps for dressing for the life/style you have right now:

  1. Have a good look at the life you’re actually leading. Keep a diary for a month, write down the major activities you engage in every single day of that month. What are you actually spending your time doing? You can do this reflectively, looking back on the past month and recalling how you spent your time. Or you can do this in real-time, writing down each day’s activities at the end of the day. At the end of the month, look at the data you’ve collected. How are you really spending your time? Who are you spending it with?  What are you doing?
  2. Have a look at your wardrobe and assess. How many of the items you own suit the life/style you are actually leading? How much of what you have in your closet represents a life you used to lead – your past? How much of what you have in your closet represents a life you’d like to have – an aspirational or fantasy life/style? You need to know how much of what you own represents the life/style you are actually leading, right now.  Perhaps it’s less than half your wardrobe, perhaps it’s more, or less.  Whatever it is –  it’s important to get some data down in black and white about the items in your wardrobe.  Hard to make a conscious change if you don’t have proper data.
  3. Once you have the data in black and white, from steps 1 and 2, it’s time to make some decisions. What do you have in your closet from a life long past that it’s time to let go of, or repurpose and restyle? Just because an item is from your past doesn’t mean it can’t be parlayed into an item that suits perfectly your current life/style, but it will likely take some upstyling (altering) or some repurposing in some fashion (thinking about in a different way; combining with other more lifestyle appropriate items in a brand new way; getting creative in ways you haven’t been before; and so on). If an item from your past can’t be repurposed or restyled, then it’s time to let it go – sell it or give it away; it has no place in your current wardrobe.

Similarly, what items do you have in your closet that were purchased to suit an aspirational or fantasy life/style that you’re not actually living that can be let go of, or repurposed and restyled?  Go through the same process for “fantasy future” items that you did for “past” items in your closet, and streamline your wardrobe.  You’ll feel terrific when you do.

Your wardrobe should only house items that suit the life/style you have right now.  Anything else is taking up valuable space, not paying its way, and taking you one step away from that wonderful, working wardrobe that makes your life easier and more enjoyable.

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