In Part 2 of my review, I want to look more closely at retirements and purchases. Including my mistakes.
Here are the items I've retired so far this year.
Retired footwear, whatever its age, was all worn out. This is typical for me. I wear my shoes hard. Footwear will always be one of my largest expenses and that’s okay.
25 retired clothing items were more than 5 years old and each had many, many wears. All but the “occasion” dresses were worn out. Those are not worn out but are shorter than I now prefer.
1 retired item was a jacket bought at consignment that lived 4 happy seasons in my closet and can now find love from someone new.
However....
5 items were recent purchases that I would classify as “mistakes” — and two were near-mistakes— which is a fairly high number for me. What went wrong?
Kit and Ace top — great colour for me but too loosey goosey. Did not enjoy wearing even as loungewear. I did, however, wear it quite a lot in the year I had it, gritting my teeth every time.
Red cardigan— meant to replace an older worn-out one. I wore it, but didn’t enjoy wearing it. The shoulder fit felt off, the pockets were not well placed, it just did not hang the way I wanted. Off it goes. I will need a similar item in spring, though. I really love a bright red, lightweight topper.
Kimono — loosey-goosey (do you detect a theme here?). The colours are nice, it should, theoretically, have fit into the closet. But I did not wear it. I bought this with store credit and was really quite desperately searching for something I could tolerate there — alas. Someone else will love it, I’m sure.
BR Jeans — not a good fit and didn’t like the whiskering. Desperation purchase.
Linen shirt — scratchy and weird fit to it. I wore it a number of times but did not like it.
Pink shirt — I did wear this in my garden over two seasons (so it wasn't a total flop) but as flattering as this mid-pink is on me, I detest wearing it. I do not feel like myself in it.
Balloon jeans -- I really love the fabric of these jeans. I have worn them for two seasons, though not a lot. Mainly because of the colour. I wanted to branch out into greens but this is too yellow an olive to work well with my closet. I don't have stuff to wear with them, and don't want to purchase. So...onwards.
This is more shopping mistakes than I've made for many a year. Have I learned what I need to learn from these errors? Well...what I seem to have discovered is that I tend to make the most mistakes in seasons when I am flailing around, aiming for a style reset but not really knowing how or where to begin. I also make errors when trying to expand my colour range, but I think that's fairly common and forgiveable, particularly since we've been confined so much to online shopping.
As LJP noted on another thread and others have also commented, this year, the major changes in silhouette that have been underway for a number of seasons finally seemed to coalesce and become real and vital to deal with, in some way. Maybe these were the cuts available at retail across more price points and regions, maybe it was because more of us were venturing out more often and found we needed replacement items...I really don't know for sure.
Onto my successful purchases:
Successful spring/ summer purchases that became workhorses include a summer sleeveless top and a linen jacket with stretch sleeves. White shorts to replace worn out ones. Also, casual gear-crossover sandals and sneakers. (Duh)
My surprise workhorse NAS purchase was the loafers. I love these so much as my at home shoes! Game changers.
Other F/W workhorse purchases include my new, baggier all-cotton jeans, Blundstones, and new white booties!
I have to admit that I probably needed to make these purchases in order to freshen up. There’s a bit of guilt here because my wardrobe has expanded over the years and despite my recent retirements, I have a closet full of “perfectly good” clothes, all of which I genuinely love, and some of which I don’t wear as often as I might like. So what the heck am I buying new stuff for? Right?
But it does make a difference. The slight changes in silhouette, the greater ease, and the pure fun of playing with a new-to-me shape or colour does invigorate me. I don’t want to be unmindful of the effects the fashion industry has on our environment, but at the same time, I want to continue to have some fun with my clothes. It's tricky!
Thanks for reading this far, if you have, and I hope this may be useful to some.
