How many times have you gotten ready to go somewhere, looked in your closet, and realized that – despite having a closet full of clothes – you had nothing to wear? The truth is that you don’t have “nothing.” Your closet just isn’t being used to its full potential. Behind every “nothing to wear” is a wardrobe full of things that either haven’t been worn or haven’t been styled properly. This causes people to run out and buy the “perfect” outfit for the occasion, only for that outfit to be shoved in the back of the closet after it’s worn. Unfortunately, this cycle will become continuous. With the economy in terrible condition, nobody wants to look up and realize that all their disposable income is being wasted by unnecessary spending! The only way to permanently fix the problem is by taking a deeper look into the root of the issue. The “nothing to wear” fallacy mostly comes down to two things: not knowing how to wear what’s already owned, or not wanting to be seen in something multiple times. Let’s get into both in order to finally maximize your closet.
How To Do It
Not knowing how to wear what you already have in your closet can be a huge hindrance. We all have our go to outfits and combinations but oftentimes they feel stagnant after a while. An easy way to get out of that rut is playing dress up. Remember as kids we’d dress up in our parents’ clothes, pretending to go various places? Same concept, only this time it’s your clothes and your experiences. Pretend you have a dinner date or a day out running errands. Try mixing different combinations that you don’t normally do and see what works. Tailor different looks to different occasions. If you really like something, take a photo in it so you’ll remember it when the time comes! There is no risk, all reward by playing dress up. The added bonus is that you get to channel your inner child. Ultimately, the rut being experienced is caused by not thinking about outfit combinations until the day of the event. If you’re already pressed for time, the last thing you want to do is experiment with a new outfit combination. Having a few looks in your back pocket ensures that your style stays interesting and doesn’t feel boring.
Wear Them, Wear Them Out
Social media has created this idea that clothing should only be worn once and, after it’s been photographed, it needs to be immediately discarded and never worn again. Pop culture doesn’t help with rappers proclaiming they can wear their shoes “once, twice, but never three times.” That’s simply not true, nor realistic. The amount of clothing waste that exists from fast fashion is immense. A lot of it is due to consumerism, the demand for clothing hauls, and the need for everything to be new. Clothes are meant to be worn and worn out! If you wear it all the time, so what? Fast fashion is exploitative and wasteful enough as it is. Buying a new outfit for every single event that arises contributes to that issue. If you love something and feel great in it, why not enjoy it until it falls apart? There is so much pressure to curate the perfect social media persona that we forget to be humans. Sometimes that means repeating an outfit here and there. If the idea of being seen in a repeat outfit will truly destroy your self esteem, see the previous paragraph again before opening your wallet to buy something else.
Be True to You and Do It
Getting over the aforementioned hurdles makes huge strides in getting over a style rut. The objective is to learn if buying something new is truly necessary, or if the closet just needs to be reworked to maximize it to its full potential. More often than not, it’s the latter. The key to developing real personal style is releasing the idea that everything has to follow society’s rules. Turning that perception of nothing into something is a massive accomplishment. Use social media as a loose point of reference – nothing is set in stone. Trends change quickly, but style is forever. Pinterest is a nice tool for style ideas. A simple search for “how to style a concert T-shirt” can bring a myriad of ideas to something that’s been sitting in your dresser for years. A science teacher of mine used to tell my class “you learn physics by doing physics.” I applied that same logic to fashion. You don’t learn fashion by only watching. At a certain point, you have to get out there and do fashion. I say that to say this: wear your clothes, then wear them again. And again.
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Featured image/photo by Freepik.