Wear have I been?? In wardrobes mostly! PART 2
Further reflections on where my fashion-curious instincts have led me over the last couple of years….especially after having spent time auditing and evaluating my wardrobe before shipping it from Australia to UK.
Whilst reaping the benefits of understanding myself and my values through selecting / editing my wardrobe contents…I found myself venturing into the wardrobes of others. I have previously written (here) about ways I have used wardrobe audits with my students to start meaningful conversations about fashion and sustainability!
As part of the Joyful Closet project, I learned that numbers & counting can help mindful wardrobe practices. This started by counting the number of garments that made up my entire ‘wardrobe’, then counting sub-categories such as stripey t-shirts, pairs of jeans, etc whilst then keeping a tally of the most/least worn items. Investigating this numerical perspective on wardrobes (in contrast to aesthetic, emotional, functional….) I learned about other counting-fashion practices such as the Rule of 5 (5 high quality new garments per year+ 4 second-hand), 10 X 10 (pick 10 garments from your wardrobe and wear only these for 10 days), 30 wears (only buy something new only if you can wear it 30 times), Project 333 (33 garments only for 3 months, excluding jewellery, underwear, sleepwear, gym gear) and 75 day hard style challenge (track what you wear for 75 days and buy nothing new). All focus on intentional wardrobe tracking to reset existing wardrobe habits and all require a familiarity with existing wardrobe contents. These counting-fashion practices are collectively referred to as wardrobe challenges…a term I like as it infers two different relations to one’s wardrobe work - a challenge as in ‘invite competition’ or a challenge as in ‘a difficult or stimulating task’! People taking up these initiatives post their ‘challenges’ on social media using #wardrobechallenge.
This content posted on social media was a portal for me – into the wardrobes of others. Through this digital lens, I was able to look at 100s of social media posts dedicated to #wardrobechallenges; however, these weren’t so much inviting competition to a stimulating task, but rather sharing creative thoughts, ideas and self-fashioning activities we usually undertake individually and behind closed doors. I became fully immersed in digitally-mediated wardrobe work of the people posting under #wardrobechallenge, so much so that my interest became a full-blown research project. And what did my findings tell me?? That there are certain particular types of challenges that these people have – so I created a typology (published here) and some archetypes of the challenged fashion folks here: