The start of thoughtful wardrobe planning - with graphs!

Our journey towards ethical fashion was strongly influenced by Lucy Siegle's To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?.  I came across it while browsing in the cultural studies section at Kinokuniya, and I bought it on impulse. I'd had an interest in ethical fashion, and I'd been aware that the fast-fashion model had problems, but I wasn't really doing anything about it.  Reading this book was inspirational and motivational, and I immediately told Tanith that she HAD to read this book. Luckily for our relationship, she felt the same way as I did once she'd read it.  Siegle is persuasive and rigorous yet doesn't fall into lecturing or teeth-gnashing tirades. I felt like I'd been waiting to read this book and was finally ready to act on it. I particularly like the end of the book, where she looks at the ways in which some people and business are countering the prevailing unsustainable, fast-fashion trends, and presents ideas on what would be in 'the perfect wardrobe' from this point of view.

After making the commitment to be serious about this, I made some goals. Some of them are about self-education - reading more on sustainable fashion and design, researching available brands and options - but many are about the clothes themselves. Those relevant goals include:

• Wear more of my existing wardrobe 
• Start making more clothes myself
• For 2012, have 50% of my clothes bought from ethical/sustainable sources (whether new or from op-shops) and 10% to be made by self.  

I obviously want to reduce what I buy and make, so I need to do more thoughtful wardrobe planning - what do I actually need? What do I really wear?  Inspired by all the maths floating at me lately, I decided to be really specific. I made lists and I made graphs.

Wardrobe planning could go along several different lines. The three that I've identified and which I'm planning to use are:

• colour - so core, basic, and accent colours, coordinating my wardrobe so it works together
• function - what clothes do I need for different activities and times in my life
• style - what sort of clothes do I wear? and want to wear? 

The rest of this post will be about function, as that has been on my mind a lot lately.

As my life stood a few months ago, this was the breakdown. The vast majority of what I needed was everyday casual clothing. Most of my work was casual contracts where mostly I could work from home, so my work clothes were also my everyday social clothes. I did have a need for more formal work clothes, for when I was lecturing or tutoring or giving conference papers. Social dressy covers everything from parties to weddings to trips to the opera, and sleepwear and gym are self-explanatory. And I feel that my wardrobe reflected this - what I wanted to change was what counted as 'everyday casual' - so moving beyond jeans as a default, and defining my style more precisely. Or getting a style at all?

However, with the decision to abandon my desperate scratching at the walls of post-doctoral academic employment, my wardrobe needs are going to change, as I hope to get a 'normal' job.

Obviously I'll need way more formal work clothes, and I also bumped up gym and sleepwear because I do need to get more decent clothes here - generally t-shirts, for example, start as casual, then get relegated to gym. Some go to sleepwear, although I do also have purpose-bought sleepwear. I'd like nicer gym gear as I'm getting more serious about my fitness.  I don't know whether this graph is accurate though! I can't quite imagine what life will be like with a 'go out to work' job in terms of my clothes - I've spent the last 16 years as a student and then a staff member at a university where if I really wanted to, I could have worn jeans everyday. The only reason I dressed up to give conference papers or to lecture was because I had a vision of what that should look like - but I could have worn jeans. I know I've been fortunate. But it does leave me floundering. My last few op-shop visits have been working towards increasing my green pie piece and I've been trying to mentally place each item as part of an interview outfit.

I'm still trying to decide if the graphs have been helpful or not. Obviously thinking in terms of what lifestyle or  function the clothes need to fulfil is only one approach - I may have worked out what I need the clothes to be for, but I'm struggling with what they should be, which is where style and colour come in. I'll move on to those in a later post.