[This is the second in a series by guest author Courtney S. Danforth, an assistant professor of English at Darton College. You can follow her on Twitter at @csdanforth. --JBJ]
Most people don’t stand in front of their open closets exclaiming, “I have too much to wear!” No, far more common to claim one has “nothing” to wear than “too much,” but (obviously) the “just right” lies somewhere in between. If you won a Nobel prize, could you be ready for a press conference in an hour? Do your course evaluations mention how often you wear that red pullover? Do you have to unfold 17 different long-sleeved black t-shirts to find the one you were looking for?
My previous post addressed customs and style in wardrobe; this post explores wardrobe planning.
“I have nothing to wear!”
- Campus (teaching, office hours, meetings)
- Off-campus (weekend, errands, conferences)
- Evening (cocktail, arts/philanthropy events, rave)
- Dress-up Day (funerals, job interviews, media appearances)
- Athletics (running, yoga, gym)
- Weather (winter, rain)
- Top Drawer (underwear, sleepwear)
- Specialized (golf, riding, ballet, painting, 80s Night)
After identifying your categories, think about how many ensembles per category you require. For example, if I have an eight concert subscription to the symphony and usually attend three cocktail parties and a charity dinner-dance per season, four cocktail dresses and one ballgown will see me through those events. If I never golf more than twice on adjacent days, two golfing outfits will be plenty. If I’m usually on campus five days per week, I want fifteen day’s worth of clothing to avoid duplicating too frequently. And, of course, if your grandmother was anything like mine, you’ll always have two sets of funeral clothes–one for warm weather and one for cool.
Once you know what and how many you need, audit your wardrobe against your plan and make a shopping list for whatever is missing. Before hitting the mall, though, consider how often you prefer to do laundry and how much storage space you have. If you wash twice a week, maybe you can wear fewer clothes more often. If you wash once a month, you may need either more clothes or more Febreze. If your closet is already full and you have a two page list of missing items…
In “Determining the Perfect Amount,” Unclutterer’s Erin Doland asks some good questions about the relationship between clothing, maintenance, and storage: “Do I have enough (or too much) to get me through to my preferred cleaning schedule? (For example: Do I have enough pairs of socks to last me between laundry days? Am I putting off laundry until it gets out of control because I have too many pairs?).” How many times can you wear trousers before washing them? You might also be experiencing a laundry crisis because your storage space is too full to contain both the newly laundered and the unworn clothing.
To keep your wardrobe even smaller, consider some innovations in clothing rental. Certainly, men are familiar with renting formal wear, but the option has been markedly less available to women. Maternity wardrobe rental has been around for decades, but jewelry and handbag rentals are increasingly common, and I recently read about a new Netflix-style service to rent designer dresses. That one ball gown I need each year–I’m not going to wear it more than once, so renting might be a smart move there.
Do you have too much? What are your strategies for eliminating the overflow?
On an episode of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, nerd-genius Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Physics) packs for a conference trip by tagging his clothes with RF transmitters and cataloguing them in a database. If this appeals to you, well, there’s an app for that: Dress Assistant, and iWardrobe. I downloaded iWardrobe (for research purposes!), and it’s a nice little database, with functions to store both records of individual clothing items and records of clothing combinations–not for me, but a very decent app and, currently, free.
If using your phone to get yourself dressed in the morning is too much for you, there are lower-tech approaches too. Real Simple magazine has this seasonal list for women.
How do you plan your clothing? Do you have too much or too little? Do you have what you need and/or want? Please share your tips and experience in the comments.
[Image by Flickr user mysza831; Licensed under Creative Commons.]
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6 Responses to The Academic Wardrobe: Planning
Janice - January 15, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Dangit, I never have need of a ballgown!
My advice is to try not to wear the same outfit to teach the same class sequentially, even if it’s a weekly course. Students will peg professors, particularly female professors, badly for frequent repeats, and you don’t need your wardrobe to become a topic of conversation. I used to keep a daily log on work-days of what I wore, right down to the accessories, so I could avoid such a trap. Now I stagger, week-by-week, my base-colour for days so it naturally shifts.
What’s very important is to plan ahead to replace essentials (such as those long-sleeved tees or those perfect khakis) before they become stretched-out, worn and faded (think of it like maintenance or upgrades you’d perform for your computer, your lab equipment or your vehicle). And keep a Tide pen in your office drawer for those inevitable days when something spills or splots!
Courtney - January 17, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Great tips Janice!
As for the ballgown… for years now, I have operated a “Tiara Club,” in which my girlfriends and I wear our old ballgowns/bridesmaid dresses out drinking once in awhile while also wearing tiaras. It’s a fantastic way to blow of steam and extend the use of pricey clothing. Also, we never have to buy our own drinks. Maybe you could set up your own chapter of the Tiara Club? ;-)
Nels P. Highberg - January 17, 2010 at 3:10 pm
It’s funny how attitudes about fashion can differ based on location. I think Janice is right about how women can be critiqued, but I’ve seen women wear jeans and crocs to class, and I have no problem with that. I’m just pointing out that I seem to be at a place where no one notices such repeats or down dressing. (I do have to read all of the evaluations for those who teach in our program, and no one has ever mentioned the people who wear the same things or the crocs or whatever).
Off-topic, but I’m jealous of the women on my Twitter list who have been passing around links for some pretty amazing shoes and boots, if you’re willing to pay up to $699 a pair. Men don’t get those options, though. I’m not sure I could even find a pair of knee-length red leather boots in my size. And Roberto Cavalli and Vivienne Westwood recently had their Fall 2010 men’s collection shows, which have a lot of amazing plaid pants for men, but I’m sure if anyone my size tried to wear them, he’d end up looking like an ugly couch.
To be on topic, I try to get rid of things when I buy new things and keep the amount consistent. I usually buy one new head-to-toe outfit a semester, picking up a couple of other things on sale throughout the semester. I’ll replace the oldest and make sure I don’t exceed what the closet will hold.
dance - January 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Some friends were helping me move back in grad school, and thought having a box labeled “teaching clothes” was weird. I’m glad I’m not the only one categorizing my clothes—although, I would put conferences, meetings, media appearances, and funerals all in the same box with Teaching Clothes (standard uniform of twinset and skirt). Other basic categories are Casual (weekends, errands, AND office hours) and Social (slightly dressing up/sexier for bars and parties). And Gym. Currently, I live in an old house with very small closets, so all Teaching clothes are in my office closet, and all Casual and Social in my bedroom closet. Special categories: suits, dresses, snow, etc.
Janice, yes, shifting classes is my problem—eg, it’s been two weeks since I wore X, which is plenty for me as long as I don’t wear it again on a Tuesday/Thursday, only M/W/F. Have not sorted out the best way to track that.
Rana - January 18, 2010 at 1:58 am
Something that I find helps my planning is that when I find something that fits and looks good, I will buy several colors of it. I have a fairly limited overall palate – orange, brown, black, green, teal, navy – so mixing and matching similar tops and bottoms within that provides enough visual difference without having to think too hard about the overall effect. I also tend to have a cold-season wardrobe and a warm-season wardrobe, the main difference being length of sleeves in the shirts and more skirts in the warm wardrobe, more pants in the cold. Layering also helps.
For example, a typical cool-season teaching outfit would be brown (or green or black) pants, long-sleeve black (or brown or navy) shirt under a green (or orange or teal or black) sweater. It’s a look that’s comfortable, sufficiently tailored (wearing wool and cashmere rather than cotton and fleece) to warrant respect from students and colleagues, and variable enough to keep me from getting bored. In summer it would be tan (or olive or black) skirt, black tank-top, blouse or button-down top (the one area where I will get a bit more creative, since blouses are relatively cheap). Increasingly I find myself wanting to have fewer clothes of higher quality, rather than many cheap clothes.
One’s wardrobe does, however, depend a lot on where one is based. If I were in the PNW, for example, I’d be able wear more jeans and fleece to work; if I were in the NE, I’d need more tailored pieces and accessories. As it is, my “work wardrobe” and my “everyday wardrobe” overlap substantially, the main difference being more revealing clothes like shorts or yoga pants or camisole tops with shelf bras (none of which I’d wear to class – modesty is important here!) for summer and things like hoodies and fleece pants for winter.
One piece of advice (which I rarely manage to heed) is to not wear black on days with a lot of chalk-and-blackboard work.
Rana - January 18, 2010 at 2:05 am
And, to answer the other set of questions about “too much” – I’ve come to realize that, within each season, I can be perfectly content rotating between 2-3 pairs of pants, 3-4 shirts, and 3-4 sweaters or equivalents. However, I have tons of clothes leftover from earlier points when I was much more fond of variation and more willing to buy cheap junk. One of my projects this year is to start yanking that stuff out of the closets and drawers and start either selling it on eBay or donating it. It would be very nice if I only needed one dresser and one closet to store it all.