A while ago, Krista wrote a terrific post about what she learned from tracking her WIWs for 100 days. http://youlookfab.com/welookfa.....s-and-long

Well, trust an educator to teach me. Because I had been on the forum for well over a year and it still hadn't occurred to me to keep track of my outfits on a daily basis. Partly because I didn't have a tripod and getting the pics was sometimes tricky. But partly just because I didn't really understand how the ongoing record could be so incredibly useful.

Krista, thank you for that lesson.

I didn't manage 100 days. But I did manage at least a month's worth of pictures. Most of them I didn't bother to show here, because most were variations (or, I'll be honest, complete repeats) of a very simple formula: pants (usually jeans, often skinnies because this was winter); a pullover; a scarf. Sometimes layered over a button down, sometimes a turtle neck. Pretty basic stuff.

This is my work-at-home wear.

When I'm actually going out into the world, it's a whole different story. I change the silhouette, I like to put on a skirt or dress occasionally, I add a jacket. And of course footwear and a bag and (in winter) a coat.

But at home in winter, comfort rules.

What I learned:

I don't want to wear loungewear while I work at home. But I want my clothes to FUNCTION almost like loungewear.

This means they need to have some give (knits, stretch) or some looseness (slouchy skinnies and BF jeans), and they have to be washable.

Some layering is fine, but I don't seem to want crisp shirts all that often when I am at home. (When I go out, it's another story - that's when the button downs come out!) This is for winter, of course, when cozy is so important in my climate.

I remember another post of CocoLion's a while back that has also been helpful to me. She made a distinction between "casual" and "smart casual" wear. She was putting most of her dollars into the smart casual capsule, when most of her life was lived in the casual capsule. And she wondered whether that was a problem and how to address it.

Well, I think I tend to do something similar. In addition to work-at-home, I also have relatively frequent trips to the city (where I tend to dress a bit differently than at home) and some appearances (ditto). And that's where a lot of my fashion dollars go. I get to "dress up' to my preferred standard in these situations. Some might say, "Well, just dress like that all the time," but it's not as comfortable or as practical as the way I actually dress while I'm at home. When you are curled up on a couch writing (what I do most of the time) you want to be able to, well, curl up!

Naturally, there's considerable overlap between the categories (denim, some sweaters) and I can feel pretty justified spending there in the future, I think.

I can also look for ways to create more overlap, i.e. look for very modern cuts in sweaters so I am wearing not just ANY pullover, but a really smashing one. This will be a goal next year. I have been inspired this week by Raisin's daily WIWs here! Club Monaco, here I come!

And in the meantime, I need to look forward to the summer work-at-home capsule, which is mostly shorts and tops. I think a major goal here will be finding cool, flattering, and fashion forward tops. Not easy to do around here for some reason.

Another really important factor is footwear; the right shoes really make a difference, and I can continue to put some dollars there.

By the way, when you saw my London trip capsule some of you wondered why there were so few casual outfits. Well, the reason is that I dress very casually almost all the time, and for me, getting a bit dressed up is a fun change. Maybe this selection of simple outfits helps to illustrate that.