Use your favorites as a guide
Your favorites are important guideposts
A while back I ended up in an internet rabbit hole about why making friends is simpler when you’re a kid then when you’re an adult and two themes came to light:
1. Kids are trapped with each other for hours a day in school for weeks and months at a time. Friendships are formed as a kind of survival mechanism. But then, those same friendships are fostered through connecting outside of the school day.
2. Kids haven’t been trained out of being overtly rude yet. If some people are friends then other people are by definition not friends. Friendship shows a kind of favoritism.
I was thinking about this favoritism aspect again because another stylist I know asked for input on a SubStack article about why we don’t wear the clothes we don’t wear.
In answering her questions I realized I play heavy favorites in my closet and sometimes clothes fall out of favor. It doesn’t mean they’re bad clothes, they just aren’t favorites of the moment.
The thing about favoritism is, when you think about it as data it highlights your strongest preferences. It’s why I ask clients about their favorites in their closets. I’m learning more about what they love so we can add more love to their closets.
In business…
Obviously you can’t use favoritism in business the same way you can in your closet. People are not objects and shouldn’t be used as such.
But your favorites still hold valuable information. Your favorite clients to work with, your favorite products to sell, your favorite services to deliver – all of these hold clues about where you should be directing your future.
You can and arguably should craft your business in the direction of your business’s North Star. This is true even (and especially) if your business is “just you” or “just your freelancing” or “just a couple of gigs.”
This applies outside of style and business too…
Knit more of what you enjoy knitting. Cook more of what you enjoy sewing. Grow more of what you enjoy growing. Sew more of what you enjoy sewing. Read more books you enjoy reading. Spend more time with your favorite people.
Lean into what you love. Important clues live there.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of August’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
How do you reinvigorate a stalled project? – Summer Wardrobe Infusion Update #2
We’re about halfway through July, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts, about summer being well and truly here. But my plans for infusing my wardrobe with summery clothing? Feeling a little stuck in the muck at the moment.
So I thought now would be a good time to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
My Original Summer Wardrobe Infusion Plans
In case you don’t remember (because I certainly didn’t) my original plan was:
: tank tops & camisoles
: overshirts
: PJ bottoms (!?)
: maxi sundresses
: my well-traveled sweater
Not sure what the PJ bottoms were about, but whatever, they’ve gotten nixed.
So how’s the plan going?
Tank tops & camisoles
Status: drafted the pattern. Made one. Tweaked the pattern. And have fabric for more.
Next Step: make a second to test the tweaks to the pattern (and to have another tank top).
Overshirts
Status: pattern drafted. Cut one.
Next Steps: sew first shirt together. Tweak pattern if necessary.
PJ bottoms
Status: nixed.
Sundresses #1: the no-longer-really-an-Anna Dress
Mental Status: bogged down in over thinking.
In the Fabric Status: the skirt is cut & sewn, the skirt lining is cut & sewn, the bodice was decided on, the bodice fabric & lining were cut.
Next Steps: buy a zipper. sew the bodice together.
Sundress #2: the Plaid Sundress from SFO Fabric
Status: waiting in the wings.
Well-Traveled Sweater
Status: Finished!! Just in time for summer…
It is the perfect weight for sometimes chilly summer evenings, so I’m sure it’ll get worn this summer, but I did manage to finish it just as spring turned into summer.
And then there are the unplanned clothing projects
Of course some of the reason that my summer wardrobe infusion plans aren’t going quite as planned, is because of the clothing projects I’ve worked on that weren’t part of the original plan.
Mended Uniqlo Jeans
Status: Finished! Washed! Fantastic!
Lady Bat Sweater
Status: on the needles.
Getting ready to add more length to the front & back pieces.
I have the feeling that this sweater will be slow going for awhile. The yarn is pretty fuzzy, which makes knitting with it in high humidity weather rather horrible.
Summer Wardrobe Infusion Next Steps
I know from my self-made wardrobe project, that I prefer sewing when I have an extended period of time to concentrate on a project. I like sewing in multi hour chunks of time, and prefer sewing during the day, rather than in the evenings.
So, I think the next step for this wardrobe project is to see if I can do some schedule flipping about and find an afternoon to devote to this project. Where that afternoon will come from, I’m not entirely sure, but I’ll find it somewhere.
Although.
Another possibility is spending a day alternating between scribbling out Shawl Geometry edits, and sewing. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, feels far more doable than freeing up an entire afternoon in my schedule.
How do we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Buying, mending, and disposable fashion.
Writing about mending my favorite pair of jeans last week got me thinking about how we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out.
How do we decide it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Or rather, when do we decided it’s time to donate a piece of clothing, so someone else can throw it out?
When a piece of clothing can easily and cheaply be replaced, it’s almost never a case of necessity that prompts us to dispose of a piece of clothing.
And more than that, when the common avenue for disposing of our clothing is by donation, then we’re asked to donate them in “good working condition” – way sooner than the end of a piece of clothing’s life cycle.
It used to be (not that long ago) that clothing was designed, patterned, and manufactured with the idea that it would be altered, worn, altered, worn, passed along, altered again, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, and re-purposed until they became rags.
Clothing was designed, manufactured, and purchased with an intimate understanding of how labor intensive & expensive making fabric is.
Wide seam allowances & generous hems make it exceptionally easy for garments to be altered – both to fit the original purchaser, and also to fit whoever ended up with the garment next. Consumers knew what a quality garment was, and shopped with quality (as well as price) in mind.
Disposable fashion isn’t disposable until we throw it out.
When it comes to fast & disposable fashion, tons of attention is given to the beginning of a garment’s life cycle. Lots of focus is put on manufacturing clothing in ways that is less devastating to the people making them, and the environment.
With all this attention on the creation of a garment (which should absolutely be getting attention), it’s simple to forget about the end of a garment’s life cycle.
What exactly happens after we donate a piece of clothing is information that is readily available with a quick google search, but hadn’t entered the collective public consciousness in the same way the exploitation of garment laborers has.
Which is kind of a shame, because the end of a clothing’s life cycle is something we, as consumers, have a tremendous amount of influence over.
Just because a piece of clothing was designed to last for 30 seconds, doesn’t mean we have to pass it along after 30 seconds. Disposable clothing and fast fashion, aren’t disposable until we dispose of them.
We can mend our clothes. We can alter our clothes. We can re-purpose our clothes.
And they might just last longer than we think they will.
