How many pieces of clothing in your closet do you absolutely love? Your go-to, well-fitting, wear-weekly, excited-to-get-dressed-because-you-feel-great-in-them pieces? On average, we only wear 20% of the contents in our closet¹. If the average American buys 60 or more articles of clothing a year, that equates to only 12 pieces that we routinely wear. So why do we continually buy new clothes that are literally just going to sit in our closets?
After years of staring into my closet, disappointed in the selection of frumpy polyesters and scratchy acrylic sweaters, I decided I had to make a change. I was wasting so much money on this (for lack of a better word) crap. No matter how many new things I bought, I never really owned anything that I felt fantastic in. It was as if I was always shopping to try and find that perfect item; buying cheap, uncomfortable shoes because they kind of looked like Manolo Blahnik BB pumps. But I always ended up settling for mediocre. Instead of investing in the real deal, I’d settle for close enough. All that “close enough” got me was wasted money and filling up a trash bag or two a year of clothes I no longer wanted.
I eventually learned that having fewer, yet well tailored, high-quality pieces of clothing was more fulfilling than continuously shopping. Looking forward to getting dressed in the morning in clothing I love trumped the short lived excitement of buying something new. I can now look into my closet and struggle to pick what I want to wear not because I am dissatisfied by the contents, but because I love everything I see. I actually wear everything in there.
One of my most beloved pieces is this Oscar de la Renta cashmere and silk sweater from the Picasso-inspired Resort 2012 collection (via TheRealReal, which is a game changer). That was one of my favorite de la Renta collections of all time. The sculptural jackets, Cubist era deconstructed prints, and elegant separates still spark a sense of joy whenever I see them. And best of all, this is a seven year old, USA made piece of clothing that is still in fantastic shape – not so much as a sequin is missing.
That’s the entire point of clothes. They’re not disposable. They’re not meant to be worn a few times and then tossed out (most of your donations end up in a landfill too, but we’ll talk about that another day). Clothes are meant to be loved, cared for, and above all worn.
-Shelby
¹Wall Street Journal, A Closet Filled With Regrets, Ray A. Smith
