Now that I have a core, albeit minimal, wardrobe that is functional for most of my life, I challenged myself to do a few thinking exercises. One was to list at least ten outfits from my past that had a high happiness factor and what was it about them I liked enough to remember them. I listed outfits going all the way back to high school. The results had some surprises:

Three outfits had olive as a main color. I had recently resolved to use olive as a core neutral. I have some olive items but I never specifically shopped for it. I am keeping the new olive shoes that came on Friday.

Four! outfits featured epaulettes! One from high school, one from my 20s and two from my 30s. How many epaulettes are in my closet now? Zero! I don't know that I feel the lack of them so much as the vibe (lamenting the beloved linen safari suit of the old Banana Republic). This fits into the whole Hollywood Cowgirl love of drama and costume that I am exploring. Not sure how I will use this tidbit on the epaulettes though.

One happy silhouette is completely missing from my closet: long jacket over lean pants. I used to have a couple of long JCrew flannel coats that I completely wore out and never replaced. My other go-to silhouette is cropped jacket over pants or flared skirt, but I'm getting a bit bored with it. I'm adding a few finds to show what I mean. I'd wear both long jacket outfits with great happiness, and the short one as well. And I'd run away from anything that hit in between. Since I don't have the lifestyle that led to the initial purchase, I hadn't considered replacing them, but the hunt is on. Sadly, the finds themselves are not in the budget.

A last observation is that I like and am short on tweedy textures.

Writing the memories down has led to a nicely focused shopping list for the next few months. Has anyone else done this?