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So long, winter wardrobe: Notes for next year

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So long, winter wardrobe: Notes for next year

The trees around Nashville began to bloom in the third week of February this year, following several weeks of mild weather … which followed those few weeks of uncommon cold around the turn of the year. So having a string of last-minute days in the 40s and 50s this week has me feeling all nostalgic and squeezing in these last few wears of some of my warmer sweaters, albeit with lighter layers and, in some cases, exposed ankles. Still, there’s no denying it’s Spring, and I’m eager to do some seasonal wardrobe planning, but first wanted to make some notes for next year:

1) My sweaters skew too warm
At this point, I’ve knitted myself a lovely collection of sweaters for a person who lives at least one zone north of me. With the lone exception of my striped raglan, they are hardy wools and either worsted gauge or heavier. That was all well and good during that extreme cold snap, but it means I’m at a bit of a loss during more typical Nashville weather. That said, I’m not kicking anything out of the closet, or deaccessioning any of my remaining wool sweater quantities. Next fall, I’ll finish the blue Bellows (and figure out how to wear it) and allow myself a turtleneck to replace my sad ratty old one, but other than that, I need to think about lighter and/or non- (or not 100%) wool sweaters, and to be really strategic about what happens to the rest of the wool in my stash. Which means cardigans, lighter fabrics (as opposed to densely packed cables), abbreviated shapes, etc.

2) Monotony and claustrophobia are cousins
My winter outfit plan did eventually start to feel a bit stiflingly formulaic. I think it’s relevant that this is also the most bothered I’ve ever been by the short days, which may in turn be related to how cold it was for part of this year. This winter made me feel claustrophobic, and my wardrobe monotony contributed to that. (As I’m typing this, I’m realizing the actual weight of my sweaters likely played an unconscious role, as well.)

3) More shoes, please
Leaving myself with really only one pair of winter shoes didn’t help, especially as they were stiff and hard-soled. I’m so ready to be free of those boots! Which, for a boot lover like me, is really saying something.

4) Lighten up
Last year’s key message to myself was this reminder: “… what I want after New Year’s is completely different from what I want during the Fall and holidays. I always have an urge to lighten up — the things that felt cozy a week or three earlier suddenly feel dour and depressing — once we’re headed downhill toward Spring.” Having that in mind, I did set myself up with a lighter palette this year, overall, and have appreciated that. So the takeaway from that plus all of the above is to continue to lighten up, in every sense.

In the next few weeks, I will still be able to wear some of the sweater-over-my-shoulders looks seen in the Big Rubble post, the November outfits and the Paris packing plans. But other than that, I’m thinking about spring/summer sweaters — what that really means to me — and spring wardrobe planning overall. More on that very soon!

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: Instant sweater No. 1

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Instant sweater No.1

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Instant sweater No.1: Big Rubble

Last week, my friend Meg and I were at a dinner party at a semi-fancy restaurant. We were seated at opposite ends of a long table and I heard almost nothing of what was said down there all night … except at some point I became suddenly very tuned into Meg saying something about how she never wears the Big Rubble sweater she knitted several years ago (and later modified to a crewneck). You probably don’t remember me going on about this one back then, or more specifically, about how I wanted to be the kid in the kids’ version. Anyway, it was like one of those scenes in a movie where the protagonist is in the middle of some crowded, noisy scene and the camera zeroes in on their ear, which is isolating a single voice from among the din. Or maybe I have some kind of knitter’s sonar. Whatever, I heard her say it. Naturally what happened next is I politely shouted to the other end of the table “CAN I HAVE IT?” Being the best friend a girl could ask for — and a knitter who doesn’t like to see her efforts go to waste — she shouted back “YEAH.” After which I asked for another sweater from her collection, which she also said yes to and I’ll tell you about later.

There had been some drinking, and we’re both pretty silly, so I wasn’t sure whether these sweaters were really going to come into my possession. But when I walked into Fringe HQ a couple of snow days later, there they were on my table. That was Thursday. I got home Thursday afternoon and tried it on. Left it on with my pj pants for the evening. Wore it to work Friday, around the house all weekend, and to work again yesterday. Love. It.

The funny thing is, this is not the sort of garment I would ever have counseled myself to wear, or would ever have actually knitted — the wide elbow sleeves are the sort of thing I might think looks funky and cute on someone else but would expect to drive me bonkers. And this shape on my frame? No. But it’s just so pleasant to have on! Despite not having exactly gotten dressed or made up yesterday, I took a quick selfie (above) and Instagram polled it, and 90% of people chose “wear it everywhere” over “only with pj’s,” so I guess the moral of the story is we don’t always know what’s right for us.

No matter, I’m happy to have this light and cozy thing in my life. I like it even better tossed over my shoulders or wrapped around my neck, which makes it perfect for travel. The shape of it means it can be thrown on over just about anything — including my shapeless black silk Elizabeth Suzann Artist Smock (no longer available?!) — but won’t go under anything other than my ES cocoon coat, which has basically the exact same sleeves. (Maybe an inch longer.) So it’ll be most useful during the thaw, on the sort of days where it’s barely too warm for a coat but you still never know whether you’ll be wearing your sweater, pulling it off and throwing it around your neck, or vacillating between the two. In other words, expect to see me in it at Squam next June, and pretty much everywhere in between.

Instant sweater No.1

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: Deep Winter outfits

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Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

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Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

In my ongoing effort to better document how my carefully chosen and lovingly made garments are adding up to a wardrobe, I’ve been trying to take more outfit-of-the-day selfies, so I’m including a half-dozen recent ones here … even though a couple were taken before we really reached Deep Winter status. (I know — my ankles are showing!) In that last photo, I’m wearing all ready-to-wear clothes — a rarity for me these days. The boiled wool sweatshirt is from J.Crew several years ago, when I still bought the occasional unknown-origins item; the vest is the sleeveless Clyde Jacket I mentioned Tuesday having gotten at Elizabeth Suzann’s most recent sample sale; and the jeans are my two-year-old J.Crew made-in-LA ones. The denim vest in the fourth photo is also J.Crew, from years ago. In the first photo, the tunic is handmade but not by me. The rest of these clothes are all knitted or sewn by me. In three out of the six photos, I made everything I’m wearing. That is still astonishing to me every time it happens, even though it’s taken me several years of progressive wardrobe building to be able to say that.

As far as how I’m putting things together this winter, I’m in uniform mode: pick a pullover or cardigan, a top to go under it, and a pair of wide-legs or jeans. Always with the same pair of black boots. (There are some of the November pre-winter outfits that still apply, if you just swap out the flats for boots.) So, for my first hand of Closet Rummy this round, I assembled some combos for these two pullovers:

Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

Then, just to see what happened, I kept the exact same set of tops/pants and just dropped two different pullovers down the line on top of them. Totally works:

Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

Here are the two remaining storebought pullovers in the lineup. The big grey turtleneck is a no-brainer: Just add pants.

Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

With these cardigan outfits, you can allllmost take any combo and just swap out the cardigan for any of the other cardigans and it still works. So these 10 outfits are really closer to 40:

Deep Winter wardrobe: Outfits!

And now I know what I’m wearing for the next 60+ days! Thanks for always indulging me in this little parlor game.

For details on all of the garments pictured here, see my Winter closet inventory.

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: Deep Winter closet inventory

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Deep Winter wardrobe: Closet inventory

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Deep Winter wardrobe: Closet inventory

Somehow, winter set in without my having had a chance to properly “plan” for it. And whereas normally in January I’m well into a spring-forward frame of mind, we’re having a hard-core winter this year and I have to expect it to hang around awhile. So there’s no mood board, or make list, or any of my usual strategizing to be had. There’s just looking at what garments I have to work with (below) and figuring out how to put them together (coming up) for optimal warmth and comfort.

I actually have a whopping five (technically six) new seasonally-appropriate things in my closet since the last of the Wardrobe Planning posts —

– I started and finished my grey Cline pullover and my ivory cardigan
– I finished my natural wool pants
– At Elizabeth Suzann’s December sample sale, I scored a pair of clay canvas Wide Clydes, as I like to call them (they are decidedly not Culottes!), and a navy canvas Clyde Jacket that for some reason was abandoned before receiving sleeves. ($38!!) I adore it.
– And oh yeah, number six was that grey wool sleeveless tee that I haven’t managed to wear yet. Itchy.

And there are two things outstanding: the blue Bellows currently on my needles, which I hope to complete by month’s end, and the purple lopi pullover-to-cardigan conversion, which I’m more motivated to actually act on!

So apart from those two standing in the wings, here’s the full cast of Winter characters—

STARS OF THE ENSEMBLE

Deep Winter wardrobe: Closet inventory

ROW 1) fisherman sweater, grey pullover, boiled wool pullover (J.Crew 2014), striped raglan pullover, yoke sweater

ROW 2) vanilla Improv cardigan, camel cardigan, purple cardigan, black Improv cardigan, black Sloper turtleneck

ROW 3) white linen shell, striped muscle tee, chambray tunic (made for me, unblogged), grey wool tee (questionable, see above), black gauze shell (and tee equiv)

ROW 4) chambray button-up, plaid tee (me-made, unblogged), silk smock (Elizabeth Suzann, 2017), denim vest (J.Crew, ancient), navy canvas vest  (Elizabeth Suzann sample, 2017)]]

ROW 5) natural wide-legs, canvas wide-legs (Elizabeth Suzann sample, 2017), camo wide-legs, dark cropped jeans (J.Crew Point Sur, made in US, 2016), denim wide-legs

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS AND CAMEOS

Deep Winter wardrobe: Closet inventory

My Cowichan-ish vest and Anna vest, my State Smocks, my lone ratty old turtleneck sweater (H&M men’s, 2012), and a ragtag bunch of t-shirts, flannels and other jeans.

I’m in good shape! Outfits coming up …

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather

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Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!

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Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!

We went from days of sleevelessness to boots and sweater weather almost simultaneously with setting back the clocks. Sunday was the most perfect early-Fall day imaginable — trees in full color, the ground littered with leaves, and a breezy 78 degrees — and we literally woke up to cold and rainy early winter on Monday morning. The funny part is that on Sunday I was telling myself It’s cool, no need to be in a hurry, and was mapping out an outfit plan in my head that was all about faking sweater weather. (E.g. cowichan vest with tank dress and boots!) Then whoosh, and suddenly I’m standing in front of the closet dumbfounded and planless again.

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed while doing these wardrobe plans over the past year: They’ve slowed down my drive to make or acquire new things and have shown me how to get more mileage (i.e. more outfit combinations) out of the things I own. There’s still that old habit, though, of looking ahead to what’s new or in-progress or on my wish list rather than just concentrating on what I already own. And now there’s this whole new element of having laid out so many outfits over the past year that have never even been worn! So this next little plan is all about going backwards — digging up the unworn outfits, the favorite combos from the past few seasons, and the things that can become new again with just the addition of a cardigan or jacket, a switch from sandals to boots. And this time — for the first time since I began this — I’m not including anything in the plan that’s currently a WIP. Which means I’m also only thinking through the end of November, keeping it a little light still, and yes, looking forward to having my vanilla cardigan and natural wool pants to play with in December.

Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!
Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!
Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!
Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!
Wardrobe Planning: November sweater weather!

For details on all of the garments pictured, see my Fall Closet Inventory + camo/denim toddler pants post coming as soon as the natural ones are finished (soon!), but they’re all basically the same as the olive pair, with assorted variations. The black ankle boots are Everlane, and the tan flats are identical to my silver ones, handmade by Solid State Studios. An early holiday treat for myself!

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: 20×30 outfits and after-thoughts

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20×30 outfits and after-thoughts

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20x30 outfits and thoughts

My whole big 20×30 experiment for Slow Fashion October turned out to be more fun and informative than I might have imagined. And also a little bit addictive! (It was also the cause of my taking more selfies in one month than I have over several years. I managed it almost every weekday.) I began the month vowing that I wasn’t going to be a slave to the plan — as I said to the Crafty Planner, it was meant to be a game not a sentence — but once I got started, I found I didn’t want to waver from it. I really wanted to know if I could go a whole month wearing only 20 garments. The answer is … sort of!

For one thing, operating off of a limited number of clothes — especially if you wash them comparatively rarely, like I do — requires a certain level of organization if you’ve got things like a trip and a photo shoot on the calendar. So there were a couple of days where I had pretty much the whole set in the wash and had to wear something else. There were also a couple of weekend days at the start of the month where I basically didn’t get dressed. And while I originally thought I would treat the Rhinebeck trip as a time-out from all this (with the notion that it would be cold there), the mild weather made it possible to mostly stick to the plan after all. The exception being that I only wanted to take one sweater, and it needed to be one that would go with everything, every day, so I traded the camel cardigan in the original plan (which hadn’t been worn) for my little black cardigan.

I also didn’t actually wear 20 garments. The natural pants never got finished, nor the raglan seam fixed on my striped sweater, so neither of those made an appearance, which wiped out a lot of the possible outfits from the lineup. And the persistent warm weather meant the five sweater-sweatshirts in the mix were of essentially no use until late in the game. So in reality, I was working with more like 14 or 15 garments for the majority of the month.

That and the fact that the only real color in the group was in those sweater-shirtshirts meant the risk of boredom was even greater than I originally thought. (It was definitely an unintentional lot of black/white/army.) But it all worked out, and I either made or reinforced some useful observations along the way—

20x30 outfits and thoughts

1) Novelty is critical. My beloved State Smocks — with their unusual volume — are really fun to play with, and brought in an element of newness, which kept things from getting too dull. The two outfits in the middle got repeated on the Rhinebeck trip with just the addition of the black cardigan, and a shoe swap (snake instead of silver) for the second one. Also, I love this cardigan so much with the smocks that I’ve decided not to lengthen it, at least for the time being.

20x30 outfits and thoughts

2) A uniform doesn’t have to be uniform. An easy formula for me is to put on my white linen shell and one or the other of my toddler pants, then throw just about anything on top. These don’t look like five of the same outfit, even though they all have the same foundation.

20x30 outfits and thoughts

3) “Jeans and a t-shirt” can be reimagined. There are a lot of days in my world where all I want to do is put on jeans and a tee, hair in a ponytail, and get to work. But of course those are the days where I inevitably run into someone and feel bad about looking so blah. The fact that I didn’t include a t-shirt in the mix forced me to think differently on those days. The silk smock is as easy as a tee and so much nicer looking. Same goes for the sleeveless tee with my wide-leg denim toddlers instead of regular old jeans. The mix in the middle was my travel outfit en route to NY, perfect for the plane.

20x30 outfits and thoughts

4) Even a little bit of print can go a long way toward keeping things lively. I was soooo happy I had the camo pants and snake-print flats in mix, and had on one or the other just about every day. (Sometimes both.) Had this all been solids, I might not have gotten through it! The outfit upstream with the black vest and camo pants got repeated at Rhinebeck with the black cardigan and snake flats. You can also see here that I actually wore two different pairs of dark jeans in Oct — my handmades one day and the J.Crew made-in-LA pair on several others. So I guess technically that puts the worn tally back at 19 garments.

20x30 outfits and thoughts

5) And last but not least: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This photo is the same outfit I wore home from Rhinebeck (including the black cardigan in my hand), albeit with different shoes, but this was actually taken on November 1st. I thought I was excited to wear something different once the calendar flipped over, but when it came time to get out the door yesterday morning, the fact is it was much simpler to stick to the list. After all, there are still quite a few unworn outfits on there … and I’ve never felt this reasonably put-together on this many successive days in my entire life. I’d say that makes it a rousing success!

One other thing I want to note: When I picked out the 20 garments for this little parlor game, I didn’t think about their origins. I just picked 20 items that I thought I could wear for a whole month. This post in the #slowfashionoctober feed led me to go back and tally it up. Of the 20 items, 11 were me-made, 1 was a refashion of a RTW piece, 3 were storeboughts from before all of this, 2 are upcycled thrifted goods (the State smocks), and the remaining 3 were bought more recently from known-origins brands. I think that’s a pretty amazing balance and a fair representation of where my closet currently stands.

For a rundown on all of the garments, see my Fall inventory. Photos mostly at Fringe Supply Co. HQ during our little expansion — pardon the dust!

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: October outfits! (The 20×30 plan)

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Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!

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Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!

Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!

So! Here it is: My big 20×30 outfit plan for October (aka Slow Fashion October). Except I picked out my twenty pieces (above, not counting the shoes), started playing closet rummy and quickly made thirty-five outfits without exhausting all the possibilities. Which is a good thing, because this is October and any plan is going to have to have some wiggle room in it. We’re still in the lower-mid 80s right now (and loving it, honestly — the humidity finally broke) but with any luck we’ll be down into the 70s or upper 60s by the end of the month, but there’s really no predicting it. I’m being necessarily flex about the shoes, too: the black huaraches will give way to black ankle boots; the tan sandals will become tan flats. And somewhere in there I’ll need to make a separate packing list for Rhinebeck, where it will be colder than this.

An increasingly crystalline truth is that I can get by in any situation with this combination of shoes: one black, one tan, and a wildcard or two.

There are a few issues here, mind you. Ten of these outfits are based on a natural version of my “toddler pants” (I’ve told you this is what I call my olive pants and their descendents, yes?) which aren’t done. I, uh, had a little mishap. So that’s why they look funny in the photos: They’re wrong and not done. Also, some of those outfits are sleeveless. Will the pants be fixed before the temperature drops? We shall see. Likewise, the dark jeans pictured are my Willies because my me-made jeans don’t have a hem yet, but in reality I could be wearing either pair. And the striped sweater needs one of its raglan seams redone before it gets cool enough to wear it. Hopefully it will get cool enough to wear the sweaters I’ve included — at least once! But I’ll be winging it if not.

So I’m not being a slave to this, BUT (weather permitting) I can get dressed all month from the following without giving it another moment’s thought … unless of course I want to.

I’ll be attempting to document my outfits every day for #slowfashionoctober either in my main @karentempler feed or my Story (those are my Monday and Tuesday outfits up top), and will post a wrap-up at the end of the month — but I can tell you right now this is my favorite array of outfits I’ve put together yet.

Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!
Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!
Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!
Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!
Wardrobe Planning: October outfits!

For details on all of the garments pictured, see my Fall Closet Inventory + Refashioned army jacket + toddler pants post coming as soon as the natural ones are fixed, but they’re all basically the same as the olive pair (with assorted variations).

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: Pre-fall Outfits!