On Falling In Love With Your Closet AGAIN
Before buying anything new, 15 fresh ideas for getting dressed. Plus: Some "savage" advice for keeping your collecting in CHECK ✅.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about STUFF. Stuff I have, stuff I don’t have, and stuff I have no idea I have but know is in there…SOMEWHERE (the moths are onto it…😈).
I’ve got a story coming soon about confronting the “off-season closet,” which is a nice thing to call a place separate from your main/everyday closet to essentially hoard things we don’t or barely wear and also never think about, because if we did, we would never put them in an actual black hole of “safe” keeping.
Much of what prompted today’s story is twofold: Prepping for our Summer Micro Wardrobe story, as well as the impending renovation of our 1964 doctor’s office upstate. It’s not a huge building, just shy of 1,500 sqft (our biggest to date, even tho the avg American home is about 2200 sqft, give or take a powder room). But how we design and really use this new home has been on my mind…relentlessly. In particular, how much storage proportional to living space do we really need?
The Dr.’s Inn, our 1964 brick pediatrician’s office when we bought it, left. Right, one of the latest renderings of what it will become. Who’s excited for this transformation?? 😬
My life over the past two years that we’ve been completing the cabin and squirreling away as much $$ as possible has led to a series of closet sales—hardcore edits to not only carve out precious space in my already tidy wardrobe but to really understand and be at peace w/my own shopping psychology (psychosis?), ie: what has been worth buying in Real Life, Right Now and what clearly has not (aka: the stuff that ends up for sale).
My friend Gillian, who just launched a new shopping curation company Darlings World, is an expert at what she calls The Savage Edit (we 100% need a T-shirt for that). When I asked her recently for her take on stripping back all the noise and superfluous pairs of languishing jeans in our possession, to get at the real stuff our style is trying to teach us, she shared something breath-taking...
“It’s like Love beauty, Love design, Love objects, but ultimately be very careful about what you let in,” she said. “It’s one thing to appreciate—it’s another thing to procure. Because once you procure, you have to care for it.”
“It’s one thing to appreciate and another thing to procure. Because once you procure, you have to care for it.”
Gillian reminded me that when we buy something and own it, it is ours to use AND look after—not just become a boarder in our cupboard/closet. So, what does it mean today to care for something we buy and wear? To love it enough to use it and take the time and seasons to build that bond of caring for it in our lives + collections over time?
My grandmother had one closet. ONE. Not one for in-season and one for off-season. ONE closet with about 20 things on hangers at most and one dresser. THE END.
And, I think she would be genuinely outraged by how many articles of clothing I own. Do I even know how many hangers I have? I do not want to know…I mean, I DO, but I also absolutely do not.
When we remember that relationship and really notice it—that connection between us and something we actively choose to spend our money on—it becomes more than stuff. It becomes a tool, a muse, a material to make beauty and active shifts in not just our style, but our lives. And something else: WE get sharper, quicker, and ever more “savagely” ruthless about what makes the cut and deserves the care we are committing to give.
Irene Kim of the magnificent fashion site In Modas Veritas said something similar in a text to me (she also wrote a brilliant five-point checklist for choosing what makes the cut to buy and what does not).
Irene in Paris. Aka: A person who knows that ALL the Mysteries of the Universe will be OURS when we have the courage and clarity to shred our closets down to the hits and ONLY the hits.
“I culled 75% of my closet when I recently moved to Paris from Toronto because I was living in 1/3 the space!” she shared. “I decided that this was a rare opportunity to keep only what I love, without qualification. It didn’t matter if I ‘needed’ it and didn’t have something similar in cut, color, or utility. I got rid of anything I didn’t truly love, even if it meant leaving a gap in my closet.”
These days, an actual gap in my closet feels like real luxury…space to breathe, to wonder, to maybe even wish for that perfect, beautiful thing—a summer dress or otherwise—that might show up and remind us of that incredible feeling of FALLING IN LOVE again.
And that’s today’s story. Before I choose the short list of things to make the (deep!) cut of our summer wardrobe in a few weeks, I’m heading back into my own closet—taking cues from Gillian, Irene, as well as a handful of photos of cool + interesting styling riffs I’ve been collecting—to see what new stuff we can dream up with the stuff we already have. (I bet there’s more in there than we thought there was. ❤️)
So, here’s to falling into those luxurious GAPS in our closets. And turning up GOLD. Let’s get into it. xxCb
1. Take photos of yourself. Not for anyone but YOU.
This photo was an accident when I was trying to shoot this vintage Courrèges coat I bought at Palm Beach Vintage a while back. I wanted to capture the underside of the collar, which was navy corduroy, and when I looked at this picture, I was like, “Oh! I should really pop my collar more often.” That’s what happens when we take photos of ourselves (consider it an unexpected upside of the influencer generation:). We get to see ourselves from different angles and get more intimate with what looks AND FEELS good to wear. And how! I routinely pop my collar now, like a reflex, or how I turn on my tiny kitchen lamp every morning. When we mess around and take photos JUST FOR US, looking at them lovingly like our own little kid (because in some ways, we ARE), something new and interesting always reveals itself.
2. Make a nightgown your instant pick-me-up uniform.
