I am super late with this post but better late than never. At least it is still January.

My 2022 was relatively uneventful style-wise. The biggest change was that we went back to work in person in May, we are on a super flexible hybrid schedule. I tend to go to the office 2-3 times a week. This year the schedule may get more formalized.

Work dressing remains fairly formal (no jeans, no sneakers, business casual or dressier), but I have been taking more risks, as there are not a lot of people around. For example, I dared to wear my faux leather pants to work recently. I am trying to amp up my WFH dressing to a more dressed-up loungewear look. I will probably post separately on it in the near future. Those two types of occasions do not include jeans. There are two more situations I generally have in my life, which are jeans based: out and about, running errands which tends to be casual; and meeting with friends for dinner/drinks etc. for which I like smart casual dressing. Thus, four types of outfits.

My stylistic preferences remain generally unchanged. My fashion persona is still "Sleek Urban Princess" as it was many years ago, with the same two shadow personas of Edgy Rocker and Romantic Bombshell. My style adjectives are currently in flux, the two that remain are sleek and structured and the rest I am thinking on. I have chosen "calm" and "light blue" as my word/color of 2023 as it is likely going to be a pretty stressful year.

For the past 4-5 years, I have been choosing a color palette per season, 2-3 neutrals + 2-4 colors. This has been working well and I continue to do so. Inspired by Brooklyn, I recently started choosing a theme per season to go with the colors. I have been sort of doing it for longer, but last year I decided to commit. For the Fall 2022 I did an "Academia Chic' theme: mostly Dark Academia with a little Light Academia and Blue Academia thrown in. This winter 2023 I am doing a "Dark Romance " theme and will post on this separately soon as well. The way I think of these themes is that my persona plays with a theme for a season, e.g. "Sleek Urban Princess" does "Dark Romance". This may be very different from somebody with a more bohemian persona doing the same theme. I don't think of it as my actual fashion persona changing. I am currently planning my Spring and Summer 2023 themes and they are going to be about juxtapositions of two styles each (Spring= A meets B, Summer= C meets D).

While I have always had a large wardrobe, it had gotten too large for many reasons including weight/size fluctuations and my main goal for 2023 is controlled reduction. To that extent, my sub-goals are:
1) Much-less-than-usual shopping - I reduced my shopping budget quite dramatically which will reduce the number of items I purchase
2) When I do buy something, I will practice 1-in-3-out (!)
3) Regular monthly smaller edits and bigger ones every three months (in the middle of one right now)
4) For my themes, focus on shopping my closet and add only 2-3 very well chosen items per theme.

The loose shopping list for Spring/Summer 2023 looks like below. It is more of a frame of what I am allowed to buy vs. what I am looking for. In reality, based on constraints above, I will probably end up fulfilling it only partially.
1) 1-2 pairs of trendy shoes; since I am a shoe girl.
2) A pair of wide full length white jeans and maybe a pair of light wash jeans, wide of flare; since I am also a denim girl .
3) 1-2 trendy inexpensive white tops; I have found these to be the key for warm weather for me.
4) The right work navy tote; this is an essential and has been a HEWI for a while. It is also the only item I am allowed to break the budget limit for.
5) A watch with a white leather strap - this is a replacement for a current essential that broke.
6) No more than 2-3 carefully chosen items per each of the A-D themes above.

Thank you very much for reading all of this!