My imaginary life is in a lively place with spring and summer whether even during autumn and winter! I find it so much easier to buy for the warm than the cold weather and this is reflected in the holes that I have in my wardrobe!

RunCarla, I hope you can use the travel voucher very soon!

Your comment about the women with rolling suitcases on your Pinterest board cracked me up. Imaginary me definitely spends more time in airports than real-life me, but my Pinterest boards are dominated by women in cafés. Imaginary me looooooooves sitting with my laptop in a café. Luckily, real life me loves that, too, just not in the past year.

Imaginary me also spends more time in farmers markets and European city squares than real me does, but I can square those fantasies with my urban LA lifestyle much more than I could with my small-town Colorado one. I just have to remember it’s never winter here.

Travel wardrobes are inspirational for me, too. I've just planned a two week travel wardrobe for a trip that includes hiking and city visits that I think could work for my at home life, too.

I love reading all of these! My imaginary life is basically my regular life but with 10x as many formal dates, events, and parties. I enjoy dressing up and don’t mind being overdressed, so these occasions do occur, but not nearly as often as I like to pretend when I’m shopping for gorgeous dresses and impractical heels. In my imaginary life nothing is uncomfortable and I’m never too lazy to hand wash everything.

Super fun thread. I have come to realize that I do not have the personality to lead my fantasy life (perhaps some sort of creative life in Italy with an inherited apartment here and there). I do have the fortune to dress however I want for the life I have - mostly at home, occasional travel (in non-covid times), lots of walking, mild to hot climate. My problem "how I want" is a moving target!

I still haven’t figured out how to dress in retirement, and the pandemic and weight gain have not helped. While I don’t really miss work, I miss the experience of shopping and dressing for work in a creative marketing agency. Today marks two weeks since our second Covid shot, so it means a lot more freedom is coming my way, along with challenges of how to dress in the real world.

I’m with you in judging items by their travel potential, especially footwear, but, even with both shots done, things are closed because of the virus variants and travel is off because of an aging doggie that needs lots of meds and other attention 24/7. She would have trouble with even a road trip which might be a problem this summer/fall with 4 funerals and a wedding pending.
You are right that those travel clothes are good for retirement wear.
Another fantasy I buy for is a beach vacation, because those catch me off guard and unprepared. This is not something I need. It will probably be used to frolic with grandkids in the sprinkler at home.

Fun to read the scope and humor of everyone’s imaginary world! If anything could be more different than my current life/wardrobe, I like to imagine I’m much more artsy and quirky than I end up on a daily basis, going to museums, spending days painting and collaging and quilting, visiting cute cafes or wine bars on the side. Fortunately I am able to do some of that on a very amateur level.

I love artsy and elevated boho style, big prints, unique color combinations, and fluid fits and fabrics, fun jewelry, style juxtaposition. However, the practical me who does the chores, errands, family socializing, and the me with the purse strings says, jeans, shorts, tops and sweaters, ma’am. (Will the real me please stand up?)

@ cjh - but you have that fantastic ‘Bog’ coat!

My fantasy life doesn't include going to parks or running flustered after kids but to be fair, I haven't bought anything I wouldn't wear in a park so I haven't really shopped for my fantasy life.

In some ways, my reality and fantasy are similar. I do live in an urban area but in my fantasy life, I would live in an apartment in some 'cool city', walked and took public transport and stopped at cafes where people randomly dressed like this.

Such a fun thread! I thought fantasy lives were always about formal events and holidays but I see great diversity here. Laughing at your fantasy life Carla, because I almost NEVER buy anything specifically for traveling... I hate the idea of losing my luggage so I take discarded and cheap sales items with me: worn in saggy denim (not too flattering but very comfy), cut-offs, years-old shirts and tops that are too casual for my daily life...
Anyway, my fantasy life (disregarding covid - months away from my first shot so trying not to dwell on it) consists of a business casual instead of suburban casual work environment and cocktail parties (instead of casual house parties though at the moment any party would be divine)... I try to bring a bit of my fantasy into real life by being just a bit dressier than the norm and letting other dressy people inspire me to keep doing that.

Sally, is that Paris?

Carla, you are right. I need to get out the bog coat now that it’s not wool weather.

What great musings!

My fantasy life is not too far from my pre-pandemic life — some travel, some urban, some fun occasions, but more of it.

My fantasy life also involves very little need for a wardrobe that must accommodate temperatures over 90 degrees and high humidity. I’d be happy with moderate temps for most of the year, plus some nice crisp, cold winter conditions with occasional snowfall and a need for cozy gear for exploring and hiking.

I too think that we should honour our imaginary lives. I think of these imaginary lives as somewhat real in that the emotions you feel when you think about them are real. Imagining the possibilities brings me a lot of happiness.

Anyway, I have a few imaginary lifestyles:

A graphics designer lifestyle
An entrepreneurial lifestyle
An artisan lifestyle making pottery or quilts
A matriarch lifestyle where I host family get-togethers
A cottage lifestyle with waterskiing, painting, and fixing sceptic tanks
A boating lifestyle with a 35’ sailboat that we take on jaunts through the gulf islands in WA
A California lifestyle with flip flops, wetsuits and surfing

The nice thing is: I’m not too far from any of these lifestyles!

But back to clothes:

- The thing I notice about these lifestyles is that they don’t require much in the way of clothes. Just really simple ones, and mostly gear.

For the graphics designer fantasy, I think a switch to some more vibrant colours in my basic wardrobe, as well as some more creative accessorizing, is all that would be required.

PS: I used to have the same jet-set fantasy, RunCarla! But it has fallen a bit in priority.

Ah Carla! Its great to hear someone else also loves planning the travel capsule! It's so fun to find the "perfect" travel clothes. I have a little subconscious metric that something is perfect if I would want to pack it for a long trip: cozy, walkable shoes, washable, breathable, zip pockets, versatile enough for a long walk or a fancy dinner in Spain--

My imaginary life is not that far off my "normal" life--minus the pandemic as I have been wholly teaching and at staying home for the last year. My current life has been working on home projects, wearing tough "work clothes", going to home depot, walking my neighborhood to the beach.

Not wearing many of my "cool clothes"...I am hoping ** to return to overseas travel/teaching maybe summer 2022.....

In my "Imaginary" Life I would just have more of my favorites--more international travel, more time at cafes, in museums and squares. More time leading students in Rome looking and talking about at art, taking photos at sunset, enjoying lavish gallery openings in a fabulous outfit. More time in historic cities, walking everywhere, riding horses, visiting family, hiking remote beaches, eating at special restaurants, touring the breweries and talking with all the chefs

Or for relaxing times, I have an imaginary life spending time in a warm tropical night on a veranda with a cocktail and a caftan, hair flowing the breeze........

My fantasy life involves formal parties regularly and the need to "dress up" daily. It also involves many pairs of gorgeous but highly impractical shoes. In reality, formal parties and impractical shoes? Yeah, not so much. I definitely enjoy edge in my style, as well, so more along the lines of Alexander McQueen or Balenciaga formal wear...

I indulge by often wearing dresses. My struggle is finding beautiful, unusual shoes that I can walk in all day and dresses that I love, but aren't weirdly too fancy.

@cjh Yes Paris and Stockholm