shopping my closet

My friend Nicole at The Neesby Lookbook introduced me to Kendi Everyday's concept of combining 30 items of clothing into enough outfits for a whole month--the 30 for 30 Remix.  (Make sure to check the link to Kendi's results, grouped by season.)

Partly as an act of solidarity with budget-restrained fashion lovers and partly as a creative challenge, I decided to play along.  If you read Kendi's musings on this project you will see she is adamant that no one should obsess over the "rules" of this challenge.  It's meant to refresh your perspective, not bog you down in details.  That came as a relief to me, because I definitely did not feel like taking a photo every day.  In fact, before 30 days ended I was more than ready to revisit the other clothes in my closet!  Here's the documentation I did achieve:

Please pardon the awkward self-portraiture.  The breakdown:
-14 photos
-24 items of clothing
-28 if you include the scarves, which I didn't plan to count, but hey.
-6 days of skipped photographs
Tally those numbers and I came close to completing the Remix within its original parameters.  But variety really is my muse--and then there's the fact that the weather is taking a nosedive that makes me want to wear two days' worth of clothes at the same time--so I'm calling it quits here.

A couple things stood out during this exercise in artificial scarcity.  One is that in the fall and winter, I spend most of my time wearing just three pairs from my shoe collection.

I have to show you how cute the middle pair is.  When I told my parents I'd been hired at the flower shop and was going to buy some Danskos, they almost immediately sent me these:

They're "Professional Embroidered," for those who care.  Darling, right?  I love 'em.  They go perfectly with this shirt...

...and jeans.  Voila: feminine without trying too hard.  Here's another key player in my restricted wardrobe:

I love solid-colored clothes with textural embellishments.  These two got some mileage during the last month.  The top one is a gift from my sister; the bottom one is a purchase from a consignment shop.  Both led me to unearth a verrrry interesting fact about my closet.  Check in tomorrow to find out what it was!