I shall start this post with a series of facts:
Girls love clothes.
Girls get attached to clothes.
Girls own clothes they forget they have.
Girls want new clothes.
Girls buy new clothes.
Girls can rekindle a romance with clothes easily.
Girls sometimes don’t recognize when it’s time to let clothes go.
Girls don’t always like purging clothes.
Girls do love to purge if it means they get new clothes.
I doubt any of you, girls especially, will find fault with the above factoids. A self-proclaimed expert on this matter, I feel pretty strongly that I’ve depicted the relationships girls have with their apparel. Relationships. What a great way to look at it. In the above factoids, we could swap out “clothes” for friends or boys, actually candy also works, pretty easily. We girls are always the first to point out the best friends, and boyfriends, are those who make you the best version of you. So, shouldn’t our relationships with all those clothes be the same?
Rebecca and I recently did a closet cleanse for Julie.
Julie has it all, great apartment, best friends who she raves about, Martha-Stewart-level ability to put together a cheese and bread plate, and a nice boyfriend. Oh, yeah, and a closet FULL of clothes. I mean full. Imelda Marcos is said to be the woman with the most shoes. I actually think Julie may be the runner-up. Imelda though, can’t possibly have more clothes than Julie. Rebecca and I work in fashion, Julie has more clothes than us combined.
Julie’s closet though? It was a hot mess.
Because she’s so fabulous, Julie decided to start 2012 with a super-serious (actually we laughed the whole time), mega, bigger than ever closet cleanse.
For four hours, Rebecca and I played dress up, and clean up with Julie.
She modeled most of her closet for us. We played “Toss or Try” — my favorite part of the closet cleanse, where the client tells us whether she needs to model something for us or just toss it because she doesn’t actually wear it. We put together new outfits. We determined what jeans she should keep and what jeans were taking up space. Most importantly, we turned the scariest, most chock full closet I’ve ever seen, and turned it into Julie’s dream closet. Changing out the hangers, organizing it by dresses, tops and bottoms, getting rid of two trash bags full of clothes she doesn’t wear, and re-folding denim, work -out clothes and about 30 white camisoles made Julie’s overflowing closet look like a magazine ad. On top of the styling and re-organizing, we told Julie what she doesn’t need more of– jeans, white camisoles, and suiting pieces–, and what she could use to invest in– this dress lover could use some more tops for work and play.
Pair a blazer with ripped jeans to take an edgy look down a notch.
Add a belt to a white shirt to reinvent a look.
Tuck a blousy silk top or a unique one shoulder into a pencil skirt for a look that's smart, but playful. Bonus: it looks like a great cocktail dress!
In the end, this was the most challenging, and most exciting closet cleanse either Rebecca or I had ever done, and for Julie, 2012 will start off with a fresh outlook on getting dressed every day.
Julie e-mailed us this weekend to tell us how she was coordinating some old favorites, who had been lost in the back of her closet, into her work, weekend and going-out wardrobes. We’ve never been more proud.
These are some of the great looks we put together using the pieces she already possessed… We hope she’ll be donning those out and about soon!
- Brianne