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Spring Wardrobe Review and Results

I love my style bloggers. They pop up in my browser like magically soignee fairies or goddesses. The very best of them look like chic normal women who are having fun. Surely none of them are ever in a room full of eviscerated dressers and closets, half-dressed, fully dishevelled, gazing at sad heaps of fabric. Like me. I went through my clothes before the Wellington equivalent of summer. And then I spent a weekend doing alterations, making repairs, and running garments through refreshing vats of black or blue dye.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Dye vat! I get my best results using hot water on the stove. Note that I have covered my stove in tinfoil, making post-dye cleanup 1000% easier.

You used to say live and let live, you know you did you know you did you know you did...

These are my dye accessories. I really like the “spaghetti spoon” for stirring and lifting garments in the dye pot.

Where do all these extra clothes come from, anyway? My downfall in this area is not just thrifting, but running the Society for Protection of Clothing. “Just look at this gorgeous thing! It’s not quite perfect but…maybe we can work it out? At least I can rescue it!” This works so well for me with books and artwork that it’s been hard to bite the bullet with it for clothes.

I emerged from the fabric pile with a new commitment to three things.

  • Buying quality for myself – thrifting or not.
  • Shopping for new items from a list.
  • Avoiding thrifting “project garments.”

Summer is a good time to wear thrifted finds and experiment with colors, textures, and entire new looks. You don’t have the expense of outerwear, and you’re going to schvitz anyway. And, the week before Christmas is an especially prime time to go thrifting.

I did acquire a handful of new and secondhand items in a different color direction for me – thoughtful neutrals to freshen up my work wardrobe. More on that soon!