I am joining Roxanna in her “team wear” challenge to wear the heck out of our existing wardrobes this summer. To recap, the rules that I have set for myself are as follows:

  • track what I wear each day
  • for week 1, wear whatever I want, but no repeating garments during the week.
  • for week 2 and subsequent weeks, each day choose 1 item that I wore sometime during the previous week, and wear it in a different way.
  • wear at least one accessory each day.

I don’t intend to post recaps of every week of outfits (instead I think I’ll try to post more around themes as they emerge). But I’m sharing my first week of outfits because I think it’s interesting to notice what items I reach for first and why — on some level, these must be the “easiest”/favorite items in my summer wardrobe.

I have already gained two insights from this exercise:

  1. My collection of summer tops is pretty sparse. But I wear dresses a lot during the summer. Of the 6 outfits below only 3 included a top. Maybe I don’t *need* many summer tops.
  2. I set myself a challenge to wear at least one accessory each day. I thought that this would be sort of a bare minimum. But it turns out that in summer, one accessory is often enough — it’s all that is necessary to make me feel sufficiently polished, and adding more can even feel like too much.

Here are the outfits:

1-2: red/blue paisley sundress | tomato red cardi | red peep-toe clogs

gold rose pendant | gold anchor pendant | 2 thin gold bangles

Printed sundress, matching cardi and shoes is definitely a fast fallback summer outfit formula for me.

3-4: purple smocked sundress | sky blue cardi | braided clog sandals

blue stone/pearl earrings (made by me for my wedding)

The blue cardi doesn’t quite match the blue in the dress but I think it “goes” and I loved how the buttons picked up the purple of the dress — that was a surprise that really pleased me.

5-6: navy linen shorts | blue ikat-print popover

I never left the house this day so you get to see my “house shoes” with this outfit. Also forgot to add an accessory! The shorts look a little sloppy to me, so I actually took them back and exchanged them for a size down.

7-8: Liberty print smocked sundress | coral 3/4 sleeve cardi | coral flat sandals

gold three-strand chain necklace

This cardi is relatively new to my closet, it’s brighter than I was expecting it to be and I’m not sure it’s the best color for me but for now I’m experimenting with it and hoping it’s JFE. The dress is also in JFE territory. It’s my “it’s so hot I don’t want anything touching my body” dress!

9-10: Green crocus-print dress | gray 3/4 sleeve sweatshirt | fuchsia patent sandals

silver marcasite hoops | black/silver enamel bangle

This dress doesn’t really work as a stand-alone dress, the top is totally unfitted and it’s not flattering at all, but I’m experimenting with different ways to rein in the volume of the top. I love the colors and print.

11-12: cropped jeans | white 3/4 sleeve embroidered popover | coral flat sandals

porcelain shell pendant | vintage fish scarf (worn in hair)

Oops, I forgot my rules and repeated the coral sandals! Well, that says something about how useful they are. Should I hack another inch off these jeans?

Thank you to Roxanna for getting this started and thanks to all of you for any thoughts, observations, and suggestions you wish to share.

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