Capsule wardrobes, the Five Piece French Wardrobe and other such 'minimalist' takes on building your wardrobe have really caught on in the last few years. I'm not saying I was exempt from having any interest in following their mantras - in fact, they really got to me. I began making list upon list of the items I needed, of the perfect basics that complete my collection of clothing and elevate me to sartorial nirvana.
I do still see the logic behind it. I think it's great for people who need to cut down on their clothing expenses. But I'm not so sure it's quite as great for people who want to stop thinking so much about clothes, and I think that's one of the main target markets for these 'curated wardrobe' schemes - people who want to spend less of their free time on clothing and shopping. In this trend-led world, it's easy to get caught up on new things, and you spend your money as well as your time trying to keep up. Minimalist wardrobes, I believe, started as a call against this - once you successfully edit down your wardrobe to the perfect amount of timeless items that can all be mixed and matched with one another, putting together outfits that you feel chic and confident in will be effortless.
In these wardrobes, you are supposed to have one item of each piece of clothing that is simply perfect for you - the perfect white t-shirt, the perfect button-down shirt, the perfect pair of blue jeans, etc etc.
[There's more to be said about the merging of minimalism as a fashion aesthetic and minimalism as a lifestyle, which are two different things, but that's perhaps for another post.]
Rather than spending time buying everything in order to look 'fashionable' and 'on trend', the obsession has then simply been transferred to searching for that perfect item of clothing. You only buy exactly what you want, so you try on hundreds of different variations of white shirts trying to find the one that will become your perfect essential. You don't spend less time on clothes at all - it's only that the object of fixation has changed.
I've been through this. I've tried on, for instance, skinny high-rise blue jeans after skinny high-rise blue jeans, searching for the one that fit just right, that wasn't too tight but wasn't too loose around the knees, that was just the right shade of mid-wash blue. And I just got tired. I was going in and out of brick and motar stores on Oxford Street and Regent Street and Covent Garden, so you might argue that it would have been an easier process had I purchased online. I'd imagine, though, that the process of buying multiple pairs of jeans simply to try on at home, likely buying the same styles in different sizes due to inconsistent sizing across different, and even within the same, stores, and then returning all but one (or even just all of them) sounds like even more of a headache to me. And more than that, it's not the physical fatigue that got to me, but the mental one. I'm spending just as much time on clothes, perhaps even more, except this time I'm getting no items out of the process and the climb seemed ever higher.
So I settled. I bought a pair from Zara that fit alright, maybe a little too elastic for my liking, the rise a little too low than I wanted, the colour a little too dark, and it ended up being one of my two most worn pair of pants that summer. The same process with other pieces I bought since has taught me several things:
1. Sometimes what is most useful turns out to be not what I wanted. Take the Zara jeans for example - I wanted the high-rise because I had a pair of high-rise black jeans that I wore endlessly throughout the winter and wanted a pair in blue, but I didn't take into account the change in my environment. I had finished my classes and was about to spend the whole summer in the library day after day working on my dissertation, and the mid-rise made it that much more comfortable to wear. I wanted a higher amount of cotton than the Zara jeans had, but the elasticity was what made it so comfortable for someone who was spending the whole day sitting down. And the wash? I grew to like it.
2. A piece of clothing can be just that - a piece of clothing. Aesthetic can be important (this will depend on how much you care about fashion and the clothes you wear but, well, if you don't care then... this blog is probably not for you). But an item that is good enough but not absolutely perfect might still fill that gap in your wardrobe. Sometimes it's not worth waiting months or even years (as I have) to find that absolutely perfect piece because in the meantime... you're just wishing you had a white t-shirt and thinking how much better your wardrobe will be if you had one.
3. Sometimes what wasn't perfect at the time will become so. I've rediscovered pieces that I didn't know how to style that's been in my wardrobe for a couple of years that I now really enjoy wearing. Because trends change and so do your tastes.
I'd been looking for a short-sleeved shirt a couple of months ago and while decluttering my closet, I found a two-year-old one in my closet. I'd worn it out once and never wore it again. I liked it enough back in the change room that I thought 'why not' and bought it, but it turned out to be sort of a weird length when I actually tried styling it - not long enough that it stayed tucked into high-waisted jeans, but too long to wear it untucked. But now, armed with greater knowledge of fashion tricks, I tried tying the ends into a knot and - I know this sounds a bit dramatic - it completely changed the shirt. I wear it all the time now, and found it hilarious when my mum talked about 'that new shirt' because she was actually there when I bought that shirt two years ago at Mango.
This is not to say you should buy absolutely everything you kind of like the look of even if you feel it's just sort of ill-fitting. But that sometimes they don't turn out to be bad purchases in the end - and if it's something you're drawn to, that in itself is not so trend-led and is the sort of thing you'll probably still want to buy in a couple of years, it's not the worst idea to buy it then and there.
So yeah - there are times when I think it's helpful to not be completely ruthless about your clothing - about how perfect it is, and culling items you already own if it's not. Because then, it's just a waste.
And no, finding that perfect white shirt will not magically improve your life and give you clear skin and make your hair healthy and enable you to live out the effortlessly perfect life of your dreams.
Some of your basics may not be perfect, but they are perfectly adequate.
[Sorry if this seems a bit disjointed. I wrote 2/3 of it months ago and kind of forgot where I initially was going with it when I came back to this draft.]