Style – Hearthrose

Wardrobe Items Wear Out

There are a number of different types of “style blocks”, and one of mine is the fact that wardrobe items wear out. “Replace it? Didn’t I just get it sussed out? I’ve moved on to the next thing!”, is a phrase you would hear on repeat if you broke into my brain. (I don’t just feel this way about clothes – and yes, this is why I’m terrible about maintenance. I’ve moved on!)

Nevertheless, it’s true. And we can make it work to our benefit. How?

The Thing does not have to be perfect. It’s a wardrobe item, and it will wear out. Thus, The Thing will have to be replaced. This does not excuse treating it poorly – but it does give the opportunity for improvement.

Lady Adventurer

Public femininity is not something our 21st century is built to accommodate. For some reason, instead of feminism embracing lady adventurers and other womanly women, feminism embraced androgyny. (Whyyyy must “the best feminist” look most like a man? Riddle me that). Femininity became equated to weakness, fragility, uselessness – and it was sidelined. One does not wear long skirts to work in professional settings, and color is suspect. It’s a cultural thing, not a practical one -typing on a keyboard is equally easy in a satin blouse or cotton button-down.

Dressing for your environment

Dressing for your environment is more than dressing in work clothes for work and a swimsuit on the beach. Dressing for your environment means that you dress to fit in with the people around you, the culture and expectations.

I mean, we’ve all heard the trope that you should dress for the job that you want. That’s great, on the surface. But in practice, you don’t want to dress more than one level above the job you actually have. If you’re in the mail room, please do not dress like you have a corner office. It’s suspect (and won’t serve the work you need to get done). If you want a job as a creative, and you work in the accounting department, you honestly can’t dress like the graphics crew (or IT) – the most you can do is accessorize and hint.

Wardrobe Foundations

Wardrobe Foundations means the building blocks of your wardrobe. These items are likely to be boring and/or invisible and some of your more expensive items.

Bra: Buy one that fits. Be fit, quite probably. Skin tone and smooth. If you haven’t replaced your bras in a year, this may be what’s meh-ing up your wardrobe. Bras stretch, and they have a short life-span. You will be hand-washing this bra and air-drying it in order to have it last for you as long as possible.

Shoes: Buy a pair of shoes that are fit-for-purpose (comfortable enough to do life without thinking about your feet) in your base dark color. This is likely to be your largest foundational investment.

Bottoms: Buy a pair of pants or a skirt in a basic color for you, in a fairly durable fabric.

Why You Don’t Know How to Plan Your Wardrobe

Why don’t you know how to plan your wardrobe? Because you’ve never been taught. And not only have you never been taught how to plan a wardrobe, you haven’t been taught any of the sub-skills you’d need to get there. Since you can’t plan your wardrobe, you can’t budget your clothing expenses. Since you can’t plan your wardrobe, you’re at the mercy of snap decisions. Since you haven’t planned your wardrobe, you spend money on clothes that don’t fit in with your lifestyle or goals. Your lack of skill in this area makes you a great consumer – from the vendor’s point of view.

The Marginalization of Productivity

The marginalization of productivity is a feature of our modern world. It keeps us good consumers, because we can’t make the things we use on a day-to-day basis. If we can make them, making them is seen as low-status, and/or the things we make are seen as low-worth. ”Bought” things are better. At least, that’s how it’s been. We are seeing a turn-around as, to cut prices, the “bought” things are being made so cheaply that their quality has dropped below middling-well-made home items. How did we get here?

What is a Status Symbol?

What is a status symbol? It is an item which you value because you own it, not because you use it. Let’s unpack that… We determine an item’s value based on a number of concrete factors including the cost of materials, the cost of the labor (which includes both expertise and number of people-hours), and…

Today’s Fashion Has Nothing To Say

Fashion is not merely clothing, fashion is a way for the time and place you live in to identify itself through clothing. Today’s fashion has lost its ability to communicate, because today’s fashion has nothing to say. We exist on a merry-go-round of fashion, where one can wear a dress from the 1970s one day,…

Becoming Visible

It has been a trope of life as a middle-aged woman that one drops into invisibility as one ages. This is because our culture only sees those who are playing the mating game (or might play) as worthy of notice. But something that hasn’t been noticed is that many of us in this year of…

Style Evolves

As we’re moving into 2020, many of us online are doing retrospectives. Where were you, ten years ago? Twenty? And how were you dressed? Style is a conversation that you have with the people around you, communicating to them who you are and what you’re about. Twenty years ago, my personal style was at…