How my Word of the Year informs my Closet
Part I
The simple system you've all been waiting for just turned into the exhaustive backstory no one asked for. Don’t mind me over here writing to find out what I think. And by “all been waiting for” I mean, one person expressed curiosity, possibly just out of politeness when I commented on their post. But here goes.
When I finally started a clothing company after designing clothes my whole life, the first thing that started happening a lot is my friends confessing to me that they really don’t know about style or how to get dressed. Suddenly I was seen as some kind of fashion insider, or someone with elite knowledge who might be judging them. Maybe. But I also experienced it a lot as women who have a lot on their plate, and are receiving simultaneous messages that they should be performing fashion better, and also that caring about their clothing is frivolous and shallow. It’s taken me a few years to articulate what I wish they all knew instead.
First of all, I am not here to tell anyone that there is something wrong with you if you are wearing college event t-shirts and jeans, or even yoga pants every day of your life. If you feel like you are thriving and fulfilled and what cloth is on your body is the last thing on your mind, or if those clothes just say everything you want them to, go for it. That is all I want for you. I know that as long as I was wearing 12 year old t-shirts and yoga pants and store brand Uggs everyday, I was telling myself a story that my life was insignificant because all I did was stay at home with messy little kids. When I started to really stretch my budget by buying literally anything for the purpose of liking the way I looked more, I first felt guilty, but then I felt like suddenly I was saying my life was worth showing up for. That may not be your experience, but if it is keep reading.
Later, I had been cultivating a certain style that worked for who I thought I was at one point, but I started to feel like that wasn’t how I wanted to be seen any more. That view of myself didn’t fit anymore, and I started to remember a version of myself from long ago who didn’t like who we had become either, so I started to transform again. So these are the first three things I want to tell you.
It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks or feels about your style but you. Your clothes will never tell people everything you want to say about who you are, we all speak different languages in our own minds, and clothing styles are nothing if not inside references to cultural experiences. BUT they can say a lot to yourself about who you are, and who you are becoming.
That last word is important. There is never a final word on “what your style is.” You don’t have to figure out a perfect little capsule wardrobe and that be the correct answer for who you are. You are always becoming. You are going to outgrow past versions of yourself over and over again. It’s the same as that driving/sewing metaphor from this post. Just a series of small adjustments as you go, getting closer and closer to whatever point you can see on the horizon today.
Don’t let the clothes be everything. I have learned, over the years of mothering, as I’m sure others have through years of career and service, that it is worth investing in becoming myself. I have also learned that I can seriously overstretch my time and money trying to look on the outside like who I want people to see, but hating myself on the inside still. Clothing is one practice for being in integrity with yourself, it is a tool that can serve that end, but it will not ever heal you on its own.
I am a person who is maybe a little too focused on my development and growth and becoming at times. I’m an enneagram 4 if that means something to you. I tend to build up a fantasy life and at best be always fighting for that end, self-improvement all day long, and at worst planning and writing ad nauseam without lifting my eyes to the real world I’m in today. But that’s what we’re working with. So I started going through Lara Casey’s annual goal cultivating process in probably 2017 or 2018, and originally heard about having a word of the year then, but it didn’t really ever work out for me.
Like most of us, as 2020 approached I reviewed the decade and thought long and hard about where I was coming from and where I was going. I searched hard for a word that expressed how I valued my years buried in the soil nursing a baby seemingly 18 hours of every day, but was looking forward to blossoming out of that soil into an individual person with purpose. And we all know how 2020 went.
So in 2021 I saw that Stasia Savasuk was offering a Wear our Words Workshop I felt like it was just the right thing. I had been wanting to take her Style School for years, but couldn’t afford it. (Her new self-paced version is only $100 for a limited time, and so worth it if you have that margin). My mantra through the 2020 election season had been Preemptive Love Coalition’s “When Hate is Loud, Love Cannot be Silent.” I had also recently discovered Harry Styles and was experiencing a renaissance of silliness and exuberance, reconnecting with my inner child. I told my friends this video was my word of the year, but in my course workbook I just put LOUD. Here’s my Pinterest board for that year.
I don’t know what everyone’s word of the year practice looks like, it can be pretty woo woo, and I only have my own experience. Stasia helped me choose a feeling I wanted to cultivate inside of myself instead of goals based in what I saw on the outside. This practice grew up alongside of my connection with the sewing community on instagram, and on particular new years practice called #makenine where makers choose nine sewing or knit/crochet patterns that they want to make in the next year. I tired a make nine, but could never pick only nine, and have been in a process of so much rapid growth and change that what I said at the beginning never seemed to fit by the middle. It also took me a few years to connect these pictures I was developing of myself with how and where I spend my time in my every day life.
Then I took a fashion design class with ParsonsxYellowbrick, taught by Eileen Pappas, and really improved my ability to make a portfolio that followed through from a moodboard to a collection. We used Slideshow programs (like power point or in my case keynote) to present our process. So, somewhere in the middle I was using Stylebook, the app I use to plan and track my outfits, (if you want to know more about that, let me know and I will make a separate post) to plan a few outfits I didn’t have all of the pieces for yet. Partly I think I used it for make nine and stuff like that just because it was an image editing tool I knew how to use easily. So I made these outfit collages, but they were lacking so much information about my inspiration and details that I wanted all in one place, so after my portfolio class I switched to using Keynote.
What I’m saying is, I started treating my own closet the same way that I was treating my collection design, and I left out part of how that happened, although you’ve been seeing it on here. Last year I realized a HUGE goal of designing, patterning, shooting, and sharing a whole collection - The Suitcase Series - with my friends who were all awesome models. I wanted to prove to myself that what I was making met the real needs of unique women doing important work in the world and I did it. I not only completed the collection, but I correctly predicted which of my designs would be the right fit for my different friend’s styles, and made things they love and wear. BUT, at the beginning of this year, my business had completely stalled out, I had no more cash for making samples, and my mentors told me they couldn’t see me anywhere on my page. So I set out to be my own model this year. To cultivate my own style as the voice of my brand, and be my own (free) model. The final samples I made for me for pattern testing would be the same one I photographed, instead of needing another one for models. So that’s a big part of WHY I ended up representing my word of the year outfits as more fleshed out designs this time, because they are the moodboards for fashion shoots for branding. And it’s August, the time when I was finished with Suitcase Series last year, and I haven’t finished half of it or shot any of it yet. Sometimes that constant becoming is less like a black snake shedding its rainbow skin, and more like a caterpillar resolving into soup. That’s what this year has been like for me, but more on that next time.