Well you know I love a good thinkpost and I have enjoyed all of yours so here is my very long and very thinky contribution to the year-end genre.

First, thoughts about dressing:

I’ll start with a high note of my style year: “structured experiments” with my summer wardrobe, in which I picked a loose theme on a weekly basis aimed at finding out what my wardrobe could do (e.g., “pattern mix every day,” “wear all the skirts I haven't worn yet,” etc.). That was great! I had FUN, I learned a lot, and wound up feeling more confident about my style than I had in a long time.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep the momentum going into the fall. Partly because a lack of time, partly because I am struggling with some perimenopausal weight gain meaning that some of my clothes don’t fit (my summer clothes are a bit more forgiving in fit than my cold-weather wardrobe, apparently) and I am less excited to play in my closet. I am not particularly proud of my feelings around this development but there you have it.

Ok, back to positive things:

Best discovery: my navy Aran cardigan is my version of a denim jacket. This realization has helped me wear the cardigan itself in a more intentional way, but more than that it got me thinking about “my version of” other style-related things, and that’s been really useful. For example the recent discussion of makeup numbers prompted me to throw away this red lip crayon I'd had for an embarrassingly long time…and to ponder how I have bought and discarded SO many red lipsticks over the years, I want to be a person who wears red lipstick but every time I put it on it looks garish and wrong and I immediately rub it off. When I am going out in the evening or whatever I always turn to this other lip crayon in a deep, saturated shade of fuchsia/burgundy (Nars “Damned,” if you’re curious)…Oh. That’s my version of a red lip. The thing I’ve been chasing after has been right in front of me all along.

Best RE-discovery: some of my long-owned jewelry that I had put away as too “dainty” or “juvenile” works when layered with other pieces. This was a really nice realization for a sentimental person like me. More broadly, the idea of closet rediscoveries is important here. I’ve come to understand that I want to have a moderate-to-generous wardrobe in which I hold on to items for a long time, knowing that some items might fall out of favor for a while. In order for that strategy to work, I need to be on the lookout for when and how items might come BACK into rotation.

Second, some thoughts about shopping:

I will put it bluntly, I did not have a good shopping year! Maybe this is my version of (ha!) the struggles that others have identified with changing silhouettes, filtered through my own offbeat style and shopping habits. Maybe it is partly the weight gain issue (I buy things and they do not fit they way I expect them to, or if they do fit they don’t look like I expect them to. Early in the year I kept buying pants that were too small, later on I realized I needed to size up but now I keep ending up with things that are too big and sloppy.). Maybe it is partly just a general lack of intention and follow-through.

In any case, I did buy a bunch of stuff, but as I began to think about this yearly recap post I realized I didn’t feel great about my purchases overall and don’t feel that they moved my wardrobe/style forward much at all. So I sat down and went through everything I had bought and made some notes about what worked, what didn’t and why.

Turns out that my purchases from 2022 fall roughly equally into the following ad-hoc categories:

• Workhorses: most of these were items I have bought before, and have long known to be workhorses (Eileen Fisher skirt leggings, and this particular J. Crew oversized cashmere sweatshirt that I wear as loungewear). One exception: a white short-sleeved sweater with a pointelle yoke that gives it a fair isle effect. I don’t even wear it that often but it is so excellent in so many respects and the happiness factor is so high that I’m counting it as a workhorse. Anyway, that sweater was bought way back in January — oh, so no wonder I don’t feel like my purchases have taken my style in a new direction!
• Successes: items that I wear and enjoy but don’t wear often enough to deem them workhorses. Many of these items reflect already solid/longstanding parts of my style (which is probably why I don’t wear them tremendously often, I already have other things that serve a similar function so they just go into rotation with a richer mix). A few exceptions — which I’ll make a concerted effort to play with more, although their use cases may be more limited/they may be less versatile.
• Meh: items that I wear or have worn but am only so-so about. Lots of summer tops in this category! I continue to struggle with summer tops and have a lot of churn in this area.
• Haven’t worn: items that I like in theory but have not actually worn. To some degree I am just a person who often takes a while to incorporate new things into the rotation, but there could be an element of “what I think I want to wear vs. what I ACTUALLY want to wear” at work here.
• Needs alterations: sometimes I buy pants knowing they will need to be hemmed (short people problems). Funny though, there are also 2 summer tops in this category — one with straps that need to be shortened, one with straps that need to be lengthened!
• Fails: Most of these are me trying to do something new with my bottom half.

I do feel that I developed some good insights late in the summer about how to plan and prioritize purchases, but I largely failed to put them into action for fall. One reason was that fall weather arrived quite late in Seattle this year, so I went from feeling like it was too early to buy fall clothes to feeling like fall was almost over so what was the point! This leads directly into my first two intentions for 2023:

• Work on my transitional weather/cool summer capsule. True summer often arrives quite late in Seattle, but then we often have quite mild weather until late September or even October. I need a more intentional collection of clothing for these conditions so that I can enjoy then in comfort rather than feeling like I’m holding on to the previous season or being impatient for the next one!
• Work ahead: that is, focus my purchases on on the *next* season, not the current one. So, in early January I’ll begin planning and purchasing for my cold spring capsule that I begin wearing in March. Will this strategy work? Not sure, but it’s worth trying for a season. I’ll re-evaluate in March/April.

Additional intentions:

• Return to tracking wardrobe purchases, edits, and expenditures. Last year I said I was going to “let go of the need to track obsessively” and “instead let a gentle awareness of these things be part of the joy of living my values.” That was the right idea in terms of not getting all spun up about $$ and #’s, but in truth my awareness became so gentle that I lost the plot! I need to pay more consistent, concerted attention so that I can learn lessons and course-correct more promptly. Track not just the how many/how much but how it worked out and why.
• Also perhaps return to tracking wears. I am not committing to this for the long term, but I think I’ll experiment with it a bit and see if it helps with that “what I think I want to wear vs. what I actually want to wear” issue, or yields other useful insights.

Finally, several things I’ve been aiming at for a while but haven’t yet cracked the code:

• Keep trying to find ways to work mending, alterations, and sewing into my schedule. I did experiment a bit with visible mending last year and enjoyed it, although was somewhat frustrated by my less than ideal tools. I just invested in a speedweave loom and am excited to get to know it!
• Keep trying to expand silhouettes, especially on the bottom. I suspect there’s no way out here but through.
• Keep trying to find ways to plan outfits ahead of time in order to avoid extremely repetitive “bedpost dressing.” I just listened to this mind-blowing podcast about “Plan A vs. Plan B goal setting” (warning, slightly salty language at the link) — briefly, Plan A is what you plan to do to reach your goals when your life is going smoothly, and Plan B is how you are going to scale it back but still work toward your goals when life gets busy/chaos erupts. “Write down outfits on the weekend for the week ahead” has always been my Plan A in this department but I’ve proved over and over again that it’s not sustainable for me. I need a Plan B.

If you made it this far, gold star New Year’s Eve fireworks for you! Grateful for your attention, and for any thoughts/comments/insights you care to share.