Fall: The Season to Refocus and Rejuvenate Your Wardrobe

Fall. The season when the leaves start to change, the unbearable heat becomes a very teeny tiny amount more bearable (who’s joking, there’s really no relief until winter in the south), football season is upon us AND most importantly a fresh start is in the air. What better way to grab the fresh start by the shirt lapels of your closet and say “I’m gonna refocus, refresh and rejuvenate you whether you like it or not!”.

Not only do I always feel this way during the end of summer, beginning of fall, you know the way you do when you feel like there’s a fresh start for you and your wardrobe on the horizon and all you want to do is wipe the slate clean. But I also feel like this because having just come back from a two week vacation abroad in Italy, I’ve realized that I have way too much stuff, most of which I don’t wear and don’t need! So this first part of this post is all about how to REFOCUS and REFRESH your wardrobe! Next week, we’ll tackle which someone makes it sound less delightful and thrilling than it absolutely will be, rejuvenating your wardrobe with our fall favorites and must-haves.

So first things first, duh.

1.SIMPLIFY

Theres something about packing for a two week trip and then actually executing a two week trip that really brings to light how inefficient or absolutely useful and lean your wardrobe might actually be. Unfortunately for me, this go around really highlighted a few problem areas for me, being not enough jeans or versatile tanks to dress up and in general having WAY TOO MUCH STUFF. Now the goods news is you don’t have to go on a super expensive two week trip with your favorite dad to figure this out. All you really need to do is spend some quality time with yourself and your wardrobe reflecting on how you truly utilize each and every peice and voila, you can probably see the writing on the walls from either not having enough work to happy hour staples, a case of no new shoe friends or inability to mix and match easily along with a hundred other possible diagnosis’ of which is not the object here today. Figure out where the needs for yourself are in your wardrobe, where the gaps are in what you have and what you need AND, here comes the hardest part… GET RID OF THE EXCESS. Yup you heard me right. I know it’s hard, I’m going through the same thoughts of what if I want this in two years from now?? Or maybe I’ll need this next week? Or I just haven’t had the chance to wear it yet. WRONG. How do you know if it’s time to simplify and donate that top/jacket/heinous shoe? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I worn it in the past year?

2. Do I love it? If so what’s stopping you from wearing it then?

3. Is that hurdle fixable? (BE HONEST, if you were going to get it hemmed, or taken in you would have done so by now!!)

If the answer to these questions are no, No and NO… make room for other goodies by donating or selling the stuff that holding you back from a Fall refresh!

The trick here ladies and gents, is to be brutally honest with yourself. Like I said above, if there was something keeping you from wearing it and you hadn’t done so already to resolve that issue, you probably won’t! That doesn’t mean your a terrible horrible, it just means that you’ve got other fish to fry and that hem on those jeans from two summers ago ain’t ever going to the big fish.

Another really great approach to simplifying and REFOCUSING your wardrobe is to treat it like a football team of sorts. It is a fall refresh after all. SO, lets say you have 24 spots on your team, because obviously you have to have some back up players and whatever it sounds legit for football. Anyways these spots on your team represent the spots on YOUR team in your CLOSET. Unfortunately, you can’t bring any more pieces on the team than 24 because that’s how many spots there are on the team AND that the balance between the amount you can actually give proper attention to. If you had any more, you might be wasting some of the players time because you would never get to putting them in the game! Its kinda the same way with your closet! If you approach your closet like you should a football team with 24 spots, and tell yourself I can either get rid of A to keep B or keep A and pass on B, you’ll undoubtably simplify your closet and refocus your sartorial energy because you’ll be constantly evaluating how useful, and valuable an item is to you and your line up based on how likely you are to want to continue to wear it in relation to something new! This will help you to also really hone what it is that your looking for to add to your collection and not just settle for something similar to what you want but really wait and search and then purchase based on need and versatility instead of just impulse and pure trend.

All of these mindsets and steps are to encourage you to simplify and refocus your wardrobe, but also to make room for the new fall must-haves that we’ll be sharing with you next week! They’ll be thoughful, versatile and quality pieces to bring you into the new season of ch-ch-ch-changessss.

Check back with us next week for our Fall favorites!