Wardrobe Planning Hits and Misses Volume 1 Week 2

Since I started publishing Sunday night wardrobe planning videos and pictures on the Closet Reboot YouTube channel and Instagram, I’ve been a lot more mindful of what is photo worthy and what’s just another outfit.  It feels really strange taking selfies every morning to add to my amateur look book, but it does seem to help keep me honest about which outfits are awesome and which ones are just sort of lazy cop outs.  If the goal really is to feel my best when I get dressed (not to mention the rest of the day), shouldn’t every outfit be photo worthy?

This week I decided to do something a little different which is go back and revisit the outfits I wasn’t crazy about and decide how I’ll do it better next time.  The blue floral skirt is a good one.  I used to love wearing that skirt, but on Monday I felt sort of bla in it.  I’m thinking the reason is because I just stuck with blue and white when it probably needed a little more pop.  I used to wear it with this orange-red color, but I also kind of like the pink look to change things up.  Maybe if I had a better white sweater/blazer option, I would have liked the blue on blue – maybe even with a cool scarf that adds a pop of color.  Or maybe, I just didn’t have the right jewelry.  I used to have this wonderful chunky white necklace that would have helped, but it fell apart after one season.  Probably worth it to stick with higher quality costume jewelry in the the future.  

The same goes for the black, red, and white skirt – it just didn’t quite work the way we planned.  I think the main issue with this one was that my white sweater set is too big.  All the stylists I interviewed last summer mentioned that improper fit is one of the biggest mistakes people make with their wardrobes (see Selecting a Personal Stylist Part IV).  And, Mom was probably right about the long black necklace – having one of those would have worked much better than the white pearls which sort of got lost against the white sweater.  With a red or black sweater, I’m thinking they would have looked great and done Barbara Bush justice.  I’m liking the Sequins necklace Angela Britt recommended from Premier Designs as a black alternative.  I did love my earrings though – perfect for this outfit!

I did do some mid week shuffling last week when I realized that I had agreed to participate in a panel on Wednesday night.  There were some very stylish women at Rachel Green’s Lady Leadership Tour 2018 so I’m glad I made the last minute change.  Definitely check out Rachel’s Leadership Box which is a great combination of inspiration and style as well as the lovely mother daughter team (Lisa and Liz Sekora) at Amberleaf who have created a fabulous line of sleek clothing.  I suppose that is a good lesson about having some top notch go to outfits to substitute for last minute events that pop up – flexibility is always good.

I also switched things up a bit last Thursday for my son’s birthday dinner.  I stuck with the outfit I’d planned on Sunday for work, but changed things a bit for dinner.  Not sure why that didn’t occur to me when I was making the video.

On Friday I realized I really didn’t need the professional look I was going for when planning on Sunday since I didn’t have to go into the office – check out how much better this dress looks with the denim jacket than with the long scarf / shawl…  Jody Skorupski had mentioned in her video with me after Harvey that sheath style dresses work better for my body type than shift style dresses, but it does seem to work better with the jacket that Steph Hobbs recommended when she styled me for the Mom 2.0 Summit.

What did work was the outfit for last Monday.  I actually really liked the metallic shoes that I was unsure about.  One thing to note – with all the birthdays and graduations this month, my khaki pants where a little tighter than usual.  Since they weren’t vulgar, I went with them anyway because the snug fit kept me from overeating during lunch.

Ok, so good lessons learned and I definitely identified some holes in my wardrobe to help me shop more effectively next time.  I’m really excited to see what the stylists I’ve got lined up as guests for upcoming wardrobe planning videos suggest and how that improves my options! In the meantime, be sure to leave me a comment if you have some ideas for improving these ensembles or if you have some questions you would like me to pose to the stylists.  And please do check out my quick tip video on Thursday and my weekly wardrobe planning video on Sunday night.