For the last 10 months I have been on maternity leave, and since then I didn’t have that much time to go shopping, as my baby keeps me really busy. I tried to go shopping in the mall with the baby a couple of times, but honestly, it’s fairly more difficult to do that than it used to be before his birth.
However, I still go out on weekends – visiting my friends, going to parties, going to museums, to picnics, to barbeques, and so on. One of my wardrobe rules is “never ever wear the same shirt in the same place”. My friends don’t really have the chance to see me wearing the same outfit for the second time. After the birth of my son I realized I went shopping less frequently than I used to go before, although online shopping became a good alternative for me now. And what I also realized is that if I wanted to keep my habit to never ever wear the same shirt in the same place, I needed to prove creativity and be inventive.
So, I had a closer look at my wardrobe. I started thinking that it was a good idea to reinvent my wardrobe – to wear and accessorize clothes and outfits I didn’t have the opportunity to wear for a long time. So I started digging, and I realized I had quite a few outfits which I didn’t wear for years, and now it was a good time to wear them again. Two big advantages were on my side. First of all, when I buy a new outfit, I choose a garment which is not a part of a very prominent trend. I make my outfit choices following some more classical styles, and this way I can wear them years long. I avoid buying clothes from very specific trends which would go out of style the next fashion season. Instead, all my clothes are wearable for a long time, which saves me money, time and imagination efforts, when it comes to what I should wear tonight. The other advantage was the very fact that I didn’t show off these older clothes of mine for a long time, so I could wear them with no worries again now. Sometimes new fashion is actually newly discovered old fashion, and an old dress can be just as good as a new one.
My newest experience of this kind was a birthday party I attended recently. I decided to wear a Suzy Shier summer floral dress which I bought 3 years ago. I only wore it two times before for other occasions, and last time it happened that very summer when I bought it. Since then, it just hung in my walking closed. So I decided to wear it again. I was complimented for it, and nobody even realized it was not a new dress.
Another similar experience was with another dress, which is much older – 11 years. I bought it when I still was a university student, but its classical and simple style resisted throughout the years. For me, it’s a vintage dress, and I still enjoy wearing it. I happen to wear it approximately once per year, and last time I took it out when visiting some friends, just a couple of weeks ago. One of my friends, who knows me for many years, told me that he remembered this dress. The story of this dress is a bit more special, as it has a sentimental value for me – I was wearing it when I first met my husband (and some of his friends), and he liked me how I looked in that dress. Shortly after that we started dating. That’s why I kept the dress for so many wears, while I didn’t keep other dresses and garments as old as this one. So it didn’t surprise me when my friend recognized my dress which I also wore 11 years ago.
Another old outfit in my wardrobe which I thought worth to be reinvented is a dark blue little suit from Le Chateau. I bought it 4 years ago, and I wore it about 3 times during that year, but after that I somehow forgot about it and neglected to wear it since then. I rediscovered it in my wardrobe a few months ago and figured I should wear it again, which I most certainly did, to a birthday party, and then to a Christmas party.
I also love to accessorize my old and new outfits alike. Sometimes a piece of jewelry, or a scarf, or another accessory will completely change an outfit, making it look totally different.