Prep Werk: Where Preppy Meets Western
For nearly a year I have been building a pile of wardrobe items to sell. My goal is to whittle the closet down to the essentials.
Sometimes, it’s the emotional attachments to a piece that challenge me from releasing it: I’ll never have this thing again, this was from a time in my life when, it’s in perfect condition and I’ll have to give it away for pennies, I could still be this version of myself I dreamt of…so I should keep the thing, right? No.
Sometimes, I keep something because I can make a great outfit with it, so…there is potential of use with this thing I already own. Does this mean I should keep it? No. (I can make a great outfit with anything. The question I need to be asking: Is this an outfit I really want to wear?)
When the detachment gets really tough, I remind myself of the things I value most via the ‘this or that’ game. “This handbag or a horse ?” The horse always wins.
With both clothing and the objects I own, I want to get to a place where I use everything. I also want to see the stuff in my daily life. So, the heels in bins I haven’t worn in a decade, even though I might pull them out for a photoshoot? They need to go. The antiques that have been sitting in the trailer for the past few years, even though I have had them since college? They need to go. If I can’t see it and don’t use it, it needs to go. I know the more material I release, the freer I feel. Sometimes, my body needs more time to catch up with that knowing.
In this collection of images, I model outfits and clothes that I wear in daily life. Going forward, I want to model more of, if not only, what I would wear to work, on a date, to the grocery store, on a client call, while working outside…the real clothes, not costumes. That’s not to say I have not been wearing clothing from my personal wardrobe within these capsule collections, but there is much in my wardrobe that lives in the “archive”…the section of the wardrobe with special collection pieces that I rarely take out, but have enjoyed viewing on the hanger. These pieces are as much of my style as anything I wear on the daily.
When consistently wearing what we own, a strong personal style emerges, and the questions around ‘what’ to wear each day disappear because we are choosing from a collection of essentials. (Caveat: don’t wear/keep items that feel so-so, k? These are not your essentials.) I desire to possess only the essentials because I want to clutter-clear my mind and my space. I overwhelm easily in the presence of stuff, and as the world gets more complicated and adulting gets more complicated, I want to simplify whatever is in my control.
Often, we ‘think’ we need more than we do. The reality is that we return to a small percentage of our wardrobe over and over again. Much of the wardrobe is filled with items for the “when’s”… “when I go on vacation,” “when I get my body back,” “when I finally do X, Y, Z,” but the “when” is now. Dress for the now.
I challenge you to locate your essentials in the wardrobe by making 10-20 outfits with what you currently own. An outfit can be any variable of a core ensemble. Document your looks. When finished, compare the # of repeated, most used items in those outfits to the # of items still left hanging untouched.
