WardrobeThe final entry for our week on Personal Presentation will be on a lady's wardrobe. There is a bit of an obsession with wardrobe size, style, and fit in today's society. One can hardly flip through a magazine without coming across at least one or two blurbs on creating the perfect style or flawless wardrobe. There are even countless
tv shows and websites dedicated to the subject!
How a lady dresses really depends on what she needs to do with her time. If a woman works outside the home, she will need to have more variety than a woman who is a homemaker. This is NOT to say that a homemaker should allow herself to become stuck in a clothing rut. Your family and home is your job and you should dress like it! Remember, it takes the same amount of time to put on a well-fitting and stylish top and bottom as it does to slap on a pair of sweatpants and a ratty tee shirt.
Though it is a bit outdated, I have found Helen Valentine and Alice Thompson's book
Better Than Beauty: A Guide to Charm to have one of the best explanations on wardrobe planning I have ever read. Here it is for your enjoyment:
Planning a Wardrobe
"How does one do it? Many women's magazines have a blissful way of attacking the problem as though money grew on trees. They tell you how many dresses and pairs of shoes you will need, what hats and coats to choose, and what accessories. But most of us cannot afford a whole new wardrobe at one time. And even women who could afford it would think twice before they threw out a few favorite frocks or a good coat and started from scratch.
Planning begins at home, right in front of your clothes closet. But even before that, there is one important step. Sit down for a moment and think. During the coming season, where will you be going, what will you be doing? exactly what types of clothes will you need the most?
No one except you can plan your wardrobe. But here are a few general ideas which may help:
Let's go back to your clothes closet. Take out everything you have left from last year. Let us suppose that it is an autumn and winter wardrobe you are planning. Out comes the old coat (how board you are with it!), the crepe frock, the brown wool sweet dress, the tired dinner gown, the suit that was such a bargain but really not much fun to wear. What a collection! This is the time when familiarity breeds contempt! You'd like to bundle them all up and send them to a worthy charity. But you can't. So, sit down and do the next best thing.
If you can sew, you're in luck. If you've never tries to sew, by all means make an effort. Or, if you don't want to sew, find an inexpensive seamstress. You have no idea how much money you can save if you've never tried this most practical of all ways to use leftovers.
Take that old coat. You really do need a new one. But let's not make a decision about it until we've considered the whole problem. Put the coat aside for a moment. If you can manage to salvage the suit, perhaps you'll be able to get that much needed coat. Your suit wasn't a success. The skirt was never becoming because it bulged in the back, though you did like the jacket. And it was a good looking tweed. How about the old wool dress? You never realized how nice it's plain nubby surface looks next to that nubby green tweed. Why not make a new skirt out of the wool dress? Sometime that merely means cutting at the waistline and mounting the skirt on a belt. Sometimes it means a complete remaking. But even that is less expensive than buying a new skirt.
Well, if that works, you won't have to spend as much on a suit. So there's something saved toward that new coat.
How about the crepe dress? Is it beyond redemption? Well it's black and that's a help. But the collar looks worn and gray. Cleaning can't change that. How about ripping the collar off entirely and putting on a small one of heavy white silk? Don't sew it in. Put it on with snaps, so that you can remove it easily. Why not have several collars? A dusty pink or a soft yellow would look lovely on black, if those colors look well on you. At any rate the old black crepe will do to
start the season. So again you've saved something toward the coat.
The dinner gown is a lovely color, but you've worn it so often. And it's skirt has a decidedly last-year look. Must you wear it another season? No- you have a plan. You'll get a coat. It will be black, because your last one was brown and also because the wardrobe that includes only one coat can stretch itself the furthest on black. You'll ask the store to get you enough extra fabric from the manufacturer to make a simple skirt. The neighborhood tailor will make it for you for very little. The old dinner gown can be cut up to make a really lovely blouse to wear with the new skirt. And you doubtless have other blouses or sweaters that will do nicely with the black skirt and give you a well-put-together look when you wear them with a new black coat.
That leaves a dinner gown to be bought. And, when you get some extra money, a street dress or two.That is the way to plan.
Of course, your closet will reveal an entirely different set of props, but the theory holds just the same. Too many women look dowdy merely because they do not make the effort to pull their wardrobes into shape. It does take thought and effort. But the results more than justify them. Chic can easily be a triumph of mind over money."
Homework: What five things can you add to your wardrobe to make it a bit more easy for you to get dressed in the mornings? Do you enjoy purchasing accessories (shoes, bags, jewelery) more that you enjoy purchasing clothing?
Anyone who has visited this blog (or my last one) for awhile, knows that I love talking about clothing and frequently toy with the idea of creating the perfect wardrobe out of a few good pieces. I recently came across the site Travel Smith and they are advertising an interesting concept: Get ready for five days and five nights with ten pieces of clothing! While the style of clothes is not necessarily my cup of tea, the concept is great. Their wardrobe list includes the following in only four colors- denim, white, black, and red:
