Wardobe Edit: Part One

Kaarin and I have gotten to spend a LOT of time together lately between the swap, shopping, the photo shoot, and then again last night!

Sarah and Melissa, both with Washingtonian Magazine, came over last night while Kaarin did a wardrobe edit of my entire closet.

Melissa, on the left, did all the video footage, while Sarah, on the right, is the writer covering this whole style story for the magazine.

We (I use the term loosely) literally took every last item out of my closet and tried it on, and then asked three questions:

Do I love it?

Is it flattering?

Does it represent me?

If the item met all three criteria, it was a keeper. If not, we divided it up into piles of “Mend” (for clothes with stains or that had a loose button etc), “Donate,” “Consign,” “Trash” and “Swap.”

Now I have done a LOT of wardrobe downsizing over the last several months/two years while I was losing weight, so I didn’t end up having to get rid of too too much, but it was really awesome to get some input from a stylist and to hear her ideas about how to wear things differently than I ever would have thought to.

After we had gone through every item in my closet, I had three bags ready to get rid of.

Donate. Swap. Consign. I never even THOUGHT to go to consignment stores with any of my clothes, but Kaarin gave me a list of all the consignments/vintage stores in the DC area, and it is TWELVE pages. Twelve!

After all the clothes were gone through, Sarah asked us each to talk a little bit to the camera. She asked me a lot of questions about the whole styling experience, what I learned, what my favorite asset of my body is now, and how this experience has changed me. It’s a lot to get into for this post, so I’ll do a separate post about everything I learned about myself and fashion once the whole process is done. Next week she’s coming over to do part two of the wardrobe edit, which involves making lots of different outfits with what I have and taking pictures of them so she can put together an album for me. I’m so excited for that part, too!

The biggest tip I got last night? If you have any two piece suits, put each piece on a separate hanger so you can start to think about wearing each piece separately to mix it up and get more with less.

The other thing I learned? Even if you think it’s a good idea to chop up some cucumber really quick before your stylist and film crew come over, it’s not.

Hopefully you can’t see the bandaid too much in the footage! =)

If you could use one or two words to describe your style, what would you say?

Before this whole experience, I would have used the words Boring and Plain, but now I’m moving towards Classic and Bold.