OUTFITS || I Have Nothing to Wear... (LOL JK)

This year has been a bit of a weird one for me. I've completely fallen out of love with the fashion industry and the whole circus around it, and gone back to basics. There was a time when this was unthinkable though, where I'd be out on the high street every week, devouring the latest offerings. At one stage, I was actually finding Topshop bags under the bed filled with still-tagged clothes and receipts from months ago. Yet still, I'd find myself falling in to that most cliched of traps:

"I have nothing to wear..."

How could it be, that I'm buying so much, yet when it comes to the simplest of tasks - dressing myself - my mind is drawing a complete blank? And so it was, that the third time I found a shopping bag full of tagged clothes and a receipt dating back a month or so, I decided: "I've had enuf."

 

 

I stopped buying clothes, I didn't so much as stop by for a cursory glance at the shops that had given me so much joy in the past, because it was never really joy. It was accumulation for the sake of accumulation, and I wasn't going to be about that life anymore. 

Besides, I'd noticed that fashion is so fickle and really does work in cycles. Today's trend is out of fashion tomorrow, but back in vogue the day after, and during that time you've bought today, thrown it out, bought tomorrow, thrown it out and bought today again. I've never really been about trends or seasons anyway, I was just constantly buying things that looked pretty - to the point I was buying too much and literally stuffing it under the bed and forgetting about it.

What brings me joy now is makeup, because makeup is different to fashion in that sense. Sure there are cycles of repetition, but with makeup there's genuine innovation, real competition and disruption from smaller, independent brands - like Phee's Makeup Shop, and her Luxe Highlighter in Gloaming that I'm wearing in these photos, it's just beautiful and shiny AF. 

I have started to buy clothes again though, mostly online, but I'm only buying things that I actually need. I'm not thinking twice before I buy anymore, I'm thinking three or four times - 'Is this worth it, am I going to wear it more than once?' If the answer is no, it doesn't get bought. The three wardrobes I currently have are due to be stripped back down to two, and actually I'm feeling pretty excited about that. The dreaded "What shall I wear today/tonight?" question, no longer sparks a three hour internal debate - it's over within minutes. You don't need to stick to the same combinations: a jacket, for example, can be worn in so many different ways.

 

 

 

And that makes me really happy, because time is much more valuable than fashion, no matter what anyone says. Will I still talk about fashion on the blog then? Yes, I will. I'll still post outfit of the day photos, and god forbid, you might even see me feature the same skirt twice. Sacrilegious, blasphemous, heinous, heathen? Yes, but at least it's realistic.