The Outfit That Picked Itself

Back when I worked in a grocery store, and my hardest style decision was which T-shirt to wear with my jeans, I developed a system to ensure all my T-shirts got equal wear. I kept them all in a stack in a drawer (imagine, being able to get all your T-shirts in a single stack!) and, whenever I got dressed, chose the one on the top. When I returned freshly washed T-shirts to the pile, I put them at the bottom, so I had a continuously cycling selection of T-shirts.

Although I've had to make some modifications to accommodate the much more prodigious size of my clothing collection these days, I still use this system throughout my closet. I keep all my sweaters in a stack (OK, seven stacks, arranged roughly by color, including 2 stacks of neutrals that hide in the back of the closet), and put my freshly cleaned sweaters at the top of their respective stacks (I switched to top-loading, because it's easier to remove one sweater from the bottom of a stack than to shove several sweaters under there on laundry day).

This gives me a pretty good idea of what I've worn recently and what I haven't, and this light blue sweater, standing out like a beacon at the bottom of my blue-green pile for months, had definitely not been worn recently. I've been on a One New Thing spree that has seen me mostly dressing in a series of neglected cardigans and vests (they'd piled up, as my use of layering pieces drops off heavily once the fickle weather of fall gives way to winter). But yesterday, I just snapped. I couldn't bear to build one more outfit around any of the New Things that still remained. I just had to reach into my collection of Old Things and wear something that was long overdue: the light blue sweater.

Since the sweater was next up in the rotation of blue and green sweaters, you could say that the sweater picked itself...and the remaining elements of the outfit sort of did the same. I wanted to bring some serious color into this outfit, and what happened to be at the bottom of my pile of colored skinny jeans (which I also try to wear in a rotation), but this dark eggplant-hued pair? Purple and blue are a good combo any day, and having them both come up for top consideration at the same time? That was a match made in heaven!

The next pieces in the ensemble were just as easy to select as the shirt and pants had been. I had an unworn pair of purple boots that would make a nice tonal pairing with the different-hued purple jeans, requiring almost no decision-making and neatly taking care of my One New Thing requirement. I also had an equally unworn purple necklace/earring set that was overdue for its debut, so it was a no-brainer for my accessories.

Ta-Da! In very short order, I had a fully analogous-color outfit ready for wearing, and it didn't require any thinking on my part!

Kind of a digression, but do take a closer look at the necklace/earring set. It's made of a stone I'd never heard of called solar quartz. It's dyed (the natural color is clear), but I'm very excited to add some mineral jewelry to my collection. I think natural crystals might become my next fashion passion!