Tuesday, January 29, 2013

refining my wardrobe: part 1

My girl Audrey at Putting Me Together is currently doing a series on building a wardrobe from scratch for women who are looking to do a closet overhaul, or starting to build their wardrobe from the ground up. While I believe my closet is not in need of a complete overhaul, I do hope to refine what I buy, wear, and invest in. I'm going to use her guide to figure out what I like, what I should be looking for in fit, and what things I should be on the look out for to complete my closet (apparently I'm an overachiever since I have already started that). Part 1 is about figuring out what you need and what you like.

step 1: identifying your lifestyle needs

Work: My current lifestyle is going to my job 40+ hours a week. My job has safety regulations in place which means that my legs have to be covered, I have to wear flat, closed toed shoes, and I have to wear a lab coat. Other than that, we don't have a lot of regulations when it comes to work as we never see clients. Jeans are very much acceptable in my role and if I wanted to I could wear a sweatshirt every day. I am planning on going back to school....sometime in the future. More than likely, I'll need to dress more professionally than I do now. More blouses, blazers, and appropriate footwear will be needed. I'm hoping that once my future is a little bit more clear I'll be able to work towards straddling that line of building a wardrobe for the future while still being able to use the pieces for my current lifestyle.

Weekend: We don't do a lot on our weekends (if Chris isn't at the hospital) so my weekend wear doesn't change much from my work wear. During the warm months I use the weekends to wear sandals as I can't wear them to work.

Special Events: We have 7 weddings coming up this summer. Eek!

step 2: defining your style preferences

I'm not really exaggerating when I say that being on pinterest has really changed how I approach dressing myself and what I hope to look like. It was through pinterest that I really discovered style blogs, and so 500+ just outfit pictures later, I can see what my preferences are.

I like: blazers, simple patterns (stripes, polka dots, gingham), clean lines, blues, neutrals with pops of red, easy layers, bolder colors but with neutral counter-pieces, skinny jeans with flats or wide legged pants with wedges. I like the more masculine layers of dress while still being feminine - sweaters over button ups but with pearls, or blazers with scarves and feminine colors. I'm unsure if I gravitate towards looks with pants because I know that's what I can recreate, or if it's because that's what I feel most comfortable in, but that's something I'm definitely trying to explore more.

Here are the 25 looks that really stuck out to me when I was looking for pictures that I would like to be "my style". I included the sources at the bottom, but some I could not find the original source for so if you know it, please let me know so I can credit the blogger!
1   2   3   4   5
6   7   8   9  10

Next up in refining my wardrobe based on Audrey's building a wardrobe is choosing wardrobe colors, which is taking me a bit to wrap my head around. I hope to have this figured out in the next few days!

Linking up with Because Shanna Said So