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I’ve been thinking about my wardrobe lately – I spend way too much time thinking about my wardrobe, mostly at work while browsing websites – and just today I came up with an analogy that works for me when it comes to redeveloping it: The wardrobe is a library, and you’re the librarian.

I’ve lost a lot of weight recently on Weight Watchers – and I’ve still got a little less than 20 pounds to go – but last weekend I got to the point where the old stuff needed to go and new stuff needed to come in. So I made a spreadsheet, I labeled and categorized it, I tried everything on. I got rid of what didn’t fit and wasn’t worth altering (weeding!), I put aside clothes that still fit my style and just needed a few alterations (repair!), and I made a list of what I needed to make it complete (collection development!)

Then I went shopping at Woodbury Commons here in New York. I didn’t get everything on my list, and I got a few things that weren’t on my list (like a really cute burnt orange dress and a pair of Bally high heels that were on sale for a truly ridiculous amount), but nothing I got wouldn’t fit in with everything else.  It all worked with my color story of mostly grays and blacks, magentas, purples, and teals with the occasional orange and green. It all fit in with my lifestyle – although I have to admit I need to practice walking in 4+ inch heels more before the Ballys get too many outings – and none of them were things I can see myself looking at in six months and weeding out.

And yes, I am a total nerd.

For fun, this is what I ended up getting:

• 1 white buttondown shirt, Thomas Pink, $59 (on the list)
• 1 black and ivory striped cowlneck top, Saks Off Fifth, $20 (on the list)
• 1 purple scoopneck cashmere sweater, Barney’s Co-op, $35 (on the list)
• 1 gray pencil skirt, Ann Taylor, $40 (on the list)
• 1 black tweed pencil skirt, Ann Taylor, $40 (on the list)
• 1 burnt orange jersey dress with bell sleeves, Max Studio, $58 (impulse)
• 1 pair black patent high heels with tortoiseshell heels, Bally, $75 (impulse)

I still need: flat shoes that work with my feet, a casual-fabric skirt like denim or corduroy, t-shirts (both embellished and plain, long-sleeve and short), and a suit in gray or navy.  But what I won’t do is willynilly buy things because I desperately need x item, only to get rid of it a few months down the line because it only goes with one or two things.

I’m not a style blogger. I’m barely a blogger, as we can see from the fact that my last post was a month and a half ago. But I do read a lot of style blogs, including Kendi Everyday, and so when her latest 30for30 challenge came around, I decided to do it.

This despite the fact that I don’t take pictures of myself and in fact don’t have the ability to do so – no full-length mirror, roommate is still in bed when I leave for work.

So there aren’t going to be daily outfit posts, and there probably won’t be daily posts, but I’ll be posting throughout the month about the challenges of dealing with only 30 items of clothing, and trying to compose 30 different outfits from that.  I don’t think it’s going to be that much of a challenge to live with a smaller wardrobe – I picked out 30 items in 20 minutes last night, and I didn’t really have to think much about it – but where I will be challenged is coming up with 30 different outfits. I repeat stuff a lot; not every week, but there are outfits I wear several times a month.

Here’s what we’re working with:

Dresses:

- Black cap sleeved cowl-neck black shift dress

- Brown sleeveless thick jersey fit-and-flare dress

- Teal wool jersey fit-and-flare dress

Skirts

- Denim pencil skirt

- Brown tweed pencil skirt

- Orange corduroy a-line skirt

- Black and white tweed miniskirt

Pants

- Distressed straight-leg jeans

- Pale gray wide-leg flannel trousers

- Camel herringbone straight-leg wool trousers

Jackets

- Black blazer

- Navy pinstripe blazer

Tops:

- Blue and white striped boyfriend buttondown

- Gray long sleeve tee

- Purple long sleeve tee

- Pink henley tee

- Dark blue heathered v-neck tee

Sweaters

- Magenta short-sleeved cashmere sweater

- Green cowl-neck short-sleeved sweater

- Teal cowl-neck dolman-sleeved sweater

- Cerise turtleneck sweater

- Brown cardigan with black elbow patches

Shoes

- Red patent wedge heels

- Black leather wedge heels with patent details

- Purple Pumas

- Black croco knee boots

- Brown knee boots

- Brown Frye Harness 12R

Accessories – belts, scarves, tights, jewelry, bags – are unlimited, so I’ll be filling out this list of mostly basics with those. I’m hoping that this will help me get rid of some clothes I don’t need, and figure out new ways of wearing the ones I have. Mostly, I’m hoping this will help me buy a few less pounds of disposable clothing and move towards a closet of fewer but better quality clothing. I think I’m pretty wasteful of both my own money and the resources used to produce clothing, and I’d like to become more conscientious about that in the next 30 days. What do I really need, and what do I just want?

I plan to finish February with a better idea of that.

I’m developing sort of a thing for blazers and jackets. It’s weird, because I’ve never been that into them before.

I own, like any sensible person who works in the semi-corporate world and has to go on interviews, two suits that include jackets. One’s tweed with a pencil skirt and mandarin collared jacket; the other is basic black with a gored skirt and velvet details. They don’t, in all honesty, see a lot of use. I wear the tweed pencil skirt a lot in the winter months, but my office is on the extremely casual end of business casual – I wear jeans a couple of times a week and once spent an entire week wearing flip-flops while recovering from nasty sunburn gained on a trip to Portugal. No one cared. We are not a formal office – just ask the consultant across the room in the board shorts.

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You know, I’m 5’8″ tall. Okay, fine, it’s really 5’7″, but the point is I’m taller by either one or two inches than the average American woman, and yet I cannot for the life of me find a pair of jeans that are not too long. Why is this? Is there a vast conspiracy to make me wear heels with my denim, because in all honesty: No. No, that is not going to happen. I won’t even wear heels with a dress. I may wear heels when I go to opera in April, but I’ll be sitting down the entire damn time. I wear heels for interviews, which are blissfully few and far between.

I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

I’ve done a lot of shopping at Ann Taylor Loft this year – sweaters, jewelry, shoes, dresses – but I’m fairly sure that this is it for the year. Appropriately, it’s a party dress that would be great for ringing in 2010 except for the facts that a) it’s not arriving until January 12th and b) I’m spending NYE on the couch.

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

Lindsay at Jezebel posted a video yesterday of one of the Gap’s holiday ads in a post entitled: New Gap Commercial With Little Girls Is, Yeah, A Little Gross. I’m…not seeing it, honestly.  Neither are most of the commenters.

The sticking point is apparently at :08, where one of the girls does a hip-pop. Now, I can’t dance. I really can’t dance. I can’t dance so much that I took weight training in college instead of a class in modern dance (which was considerably closer to my dorm, I might add), and even I know that hip popping is pretty much a standard in jazz and modern dance, not to mention modern cheerleading. The move itself isn’t sexual. It’s certainly not inherently sexual when performed by little girls in sweaters, tights, and boots.

But about 500 commenters agree with me there, and it’s not the thing that’s bugging me now. What’s bugging me are the comments like this one:

“it’s sick, quite frankly, that little girls would care so much about their clothing– how materialistic.”

This isn’t the only comment of this kind on the post – there are several in the vein of “they’re too young to care about their shoes!” – but this was definitely the most to the point.

Part of my reaction to it is increduality – I was pretty tomboyish after I got over my initial frilly dress phase around age seven, and I spent elementary school dying for a pair of Guess jeans. I got to go to the Gap for my back-to-school clothes for the first time when I was 12 and was so thrilled. I wanted my tennis shoes and sturdy sandals that I ran around to be cute.

And this is from someone who didn’t pay attention to fashion and what really looked nice until sometime in college, or possibly grad school.

There’s nothing wrong with being interested in clothes at the age of 8. There’s also nothing wrong with not being interested in them at that age (or any other). Kids are just as individual as adults, people. Really.