This week’s exercise for Wardrobe Architect was a great exercise in getting back to my roots and thinking about the origins of my personal style.  It also reminded me of a speech I gave in 2012 about sewing and my personal style at MIT, and how it evolved over the years.

So naturally, I picked “History” as my focus for the Week 1 Exercise.

My personal style started in high school, like I’m sure it does for a lot of people, except I don’t even come close to identifying with it anymore.  Case in point below:

Yes, I was the weird girl that wore renaissance style dresses and corsets to school.  Frequently.  I don’t know how I had the balls to do that when I was 16 and 17 (my brother-in-law asked me, “Didn’t you get picked on??” Me: “No, I think people were too freaked out to say anything.  Or at least it was behind my back.”).  There was also a little bit of goth in there – diy fishnet shirts, for one, and lots of black and safety pins.

High school is when I discovered my love of costuming and fashion from other eras – I collected costume history books and loved pouring over illustrations of clothes from the Victorian era or the 1920’s.  When I worked on costumes for the school play my senior year, I fell in love with the clothes of the era in which the play took place, the 1950’s

I guess the only similarities between my style then and my style now is that I like bold colors and loud prints – you wouldn’t catch me caught dead in any of the stuff I used to wear back then.  I still love wearing dresses, which is why I think I still gravitate towards making them.  Of course, mine are nowhere close to being as dramatic anymore.

Looking at the other categories on this week’s worksheet, there were two other categories that are relevant to my current style, and I wanted to touch on them: Location and Activities.

Location: living in New England, it’s cold.  A lot.  Spring is almost non-existent – it’s winter and then all of a sudden, bam!  It’s hot and summer is here.  Layers are key, and I wish sundress season was longer because I’d wear even more of them.  It’s also pretty conservative here, there’s been times when I’ve gone out to dinner with Chris and I’m overdressed.  Sorry, I like to wear cute, feminine clothes! #sorrynotsorry

Activities: most of my life revolves around work.  Before, my old job dictated that I had to wear black to work every day.  Now, I work for a super casual company where most people wear sneakers and jeans or shop at J Crew.  Trying to get my personal style to fit with my work environment has been tricky and I still haven’t figured it out yet.  I think that’s why the current state of my wardrobe is all over the place; I have no idea what to wear or how to dress now.

Whew, that was week 1!  What conclusions did you come up with this week?

Raise your hand if this sounds like you: you’ve been sewing for awhile, make quite a few garments on average a month, but when you open your closet, it feels like there’s nothing in there to wear.  Any takers?  Yeah, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately, too.  On the days that I go in to the office, or I’m going out to dinner with my friends, I stand in front of my (very messy) closet and scratch my head, trying to figure out what I can put together.

Part of it has to do with having full reign now over what I can wear on a daily basis – no more all-black dress code for my job, and since I work from home a lot during the week, I can choose to put on whatever I feel like (although honestly, a lot of the time it’s the same PJs I slept in the night before, shhhh).  It’s kind of overwhelming, since I haven’t had these kind of choices since college and I forget how to mix and match what I have to make new outfits.  But…I don’t think I have a lot of things that go together in my closet, either handmade or RTW.

I think my closet dissatisfaction comes back to my resisting to buy new clothes, since most of the time I look at something in a store and realize I can make it.  So, the RTW clothes in my closet are couple of years old and don’t necessarily reflect how I want to dress anymore; sometimes they’re clothes that I designate for the weekend because they’re worn-looking.  And then, there are my decisions about what to sew.  A lot of the time it depends on what fabric I have in my stash or what I gravitate towards at the fabric store, what new pattern is out that I just have to make, or what’s going on the sewing blogosphere at that time (Archer and Bombshell sewalong, anyone?).  I have an idea in my head of what I think I’ll wear, or what I want to wear, but it doesn’t always match up to reality.  I’m on a mission this year to sew more cake and less frosting, which should help, but I really need a clear blueprint on how to design a closet full of clothes that fit my life and what I need.

Sarai, I think you read my mind, and a lot sewist’s minds, too:

The timing of this series over at The Coletterie couldn’t be more perfect!  Sarai expressed the same kind of frustrations with her closet and wardrobe and is launching a series on her blog that explores how to build a wardrobe for us sewists.  Each week will have a different post related to wardrobe planning, and will delve into topics such as defining personal style and creating capsule wardrobes.  These are great topics, because for me, my personal style has changed so much over the past few years that I have no idea what to dress in anymore.  My hopes are that for 2014, I’ll have a clear idea of what kind of garments to make and a cohesive closet of clothes that I love to wear.

Do you want to join?  Head over to The Coletterie for a button and join the conversation #WardrobeArchitect