Issue 20. Project 333 (Week 1)
My biggest challenge this week was having *too many* options
This is part of a series about my experience with minimalist style challenge, project 333 - selecting ~33 articles of clothing to wear for three months. To read why I’m doing this and what I’ve included in my wardrobe, check out the first installment.
Since this is my first share-out since starting the challenge, I thought we could benefit from some structure. Each installment, I’ll reflect on the same short list of questions, to see how things change over the 12 weeks. Below are the questions, should you want to join in. Also, please feel free to suggest additional questions for the list!
How did you feel about the challenge this week?
What was your favorite outfit this week?
What was your least successful outfit this week?
What was your biggest challenge this week?
Any key changes?
WEEK ONE
How did you feel about the challenge this week?
Energized, optimistic, creatively-inspired, and slightly nervous that this energy won’t last. I like the items I included in the capsule, and getting dressed was both fun and relatively easy, since I took out options I was consistently skipping over anyway.
What was your favorite outfit this week?
On Thursday evening, I met up with a friend for a Happy Hour and really didn’t feel like wearing a white t-shirt after wearing one each day. Jumpsuit to the rescue! To balance out the oversized denim jacket and casual shoes, I curled my hair into loose waves before I left (not shown in the picture below). I felt stylish, relaxed, and myself.
TAKEAWAY: I don’t miss having blouses to wear for nicer occasions, because I’d rather take the opportunity to wear one of my dresses or jumpsuits!
What was your least successful outfit this week?
This morning, I headed out to a coffee shop relatively early to catch a meeting to allow a friend visiting from Seattle to occupy my traditional work space. Since I wanted to sit outside, I grabbed a cozy striped knit. I loved the jeans, the shoes, the bag, but felt self-conscious about the high-contrast stripes on the sweater. With my low contrast features, I always feel like the stripes compete with my face. My first instinct was that I needed to purchase another sweater to replace this one, but quickly realized that’s not in line with the rules of the challenge, nor necessarily the best solution.
TAKEAWAY: I’m going to remove this sweater from the capsule and consider overdyeing it a dark blue color to make the stripes lower contrast.
Biggest challenge this week?
My biggest challenge this week was actually decision-fatigue, specifically: selecting which shoes to wear because I felt that I had too many options! Shoes and bags were the only category where I didn’t omit much, other than removing a pair of sneakers and an off-season purse.
TAKEAWAY: I need to remove a few more pairs of shoes: probably retire the woven ballet flats until the spring, and maybe take one more pair of boots out of the rotation.
Let me know if you have any additional questions or plan on joining me in Project 333!
Have a great weekend,
MM
When you wrote about this last week I wondered if this might be the answer to my fall/spring wardrobe misery. I've looked into Project 333 before but felt it would be too restrictive, whereas now I'm aware I'm wearing a restricted wardrobe anyway, so maybe I should be more intentional about it! Very interested to see how you get on.
Ok reading about high contrast stripes with low contrast facial features makes me wonder; is this a problem I suffer with as well?? I think so!! Tell me more about how you self-identified that way!