I know this is a bit of a departure from my usual, but I have to share a secret with y'all. I am having a moment with jeans, and it's not a particularly positive one. It's a very bad season to decide that jeans are too binding and yet... I'm trying to compensate by adding pants (I also don't want to wear skirts/dresses cause tights) but as I'm sure is shocking to no one, that's also difficult. I've got a couple pairs from Meeps and recently a couple from Uniqlo (to be seen later), but it continues to be a work in progress. Especially cause it's cold and I'm cold and even in the below outfit I kind of wish I'd included a scarf. Dammit.

So I got this shirt. Do I love it? I don't know. Do I hate it? Definitely not. But I think I'll know much more as the linen wears in because here it was pretty much right out of the package and it shows. I'll keep you updated.

Today's outfit is a bit of a funny one. When I first pulled all the pieces together I felt a little too "dressed up" for a Sunday, but after a few minutes of thinking about it I realized that if these are just pieces I have in my wardrobe, lying around to be worn, then I'm not dressing up. I'm just dressing as me.

Now this very coordinated approach might be some of the best I can do dressing as me, hahaha, but it's not special just because of that fact.  It's hard sometimes to push back against DC's kind of rigid sense of style, and my own recently developed love of athleisure, but this was a look I felt cool in, and was comfortable to wear, so I'm proud to share it.

This post is a bit of a project in options, since I just recently purchased this blouse from the Atlantic Pacific x Halogen collection. Trying it on in store I could mostly see what I wanted to do with it, but I also hadn't bought such a brightly patterned piece - outside of a dress - in a long time. Thankfully these vintage trousers I picked up over the summer are turning into a wardrobe workhorse, and pair so well with pretty much everything. The gray blazer (also second hand, this time from Poshmark) I threw over it at the last minute (this was almost pictured with a leather jacket) and the look felt finished to me. The super high rise pants and long length blazer balance each other out nicely in my opinion, while the subtle tweed textures plays well with the floral print.

I decided to combine these two posts because 1) I'm buying less and less so I'm concerned the recap posts aren't very interesting on their own 2) this outfit is a great springboard to discuss how I regularly purge my wardrobe.

I bought this denim/chambray top 1-2 years ago, to replace a very worn Lucky Brand shirt. I decided to replace it with something of a better quality because if you've managed to wear a piece out it *has* to be considered a wardrobe staple, right? Yeah, not so much.

Do you know how many times I've worn this button down? Maybe a handful if I'm being generous. And I could take that as a failure. I could take that as a yet another example of how I don't have a firm grasp on my style. Instead I'm going to accept it as a step that I took in what I thought was the best direction, even if it didn't turn out that way. I'll take it out of my closet, put it away in storage, and see if I miss it. That's really my preferred way of purging my closet anyway. Instead of a firm timeline or switching hangers, I just take it out, put it away, and see if I remember that I even owned it. If it turns out that a particular wardrobe piece doesn't actually deserve the place that it has, I give it away or sell it, to make sure that it still goes to a happy home.

I think so many of us are consumed by the idea of Marie Kondo-ing our lives right now, and the right way, that we lose sight of the fact that whatever way we can do it is probably already the best way. I don't want to purge certain sections (cocktail and other specialty event wear are the most prominent examples) because even if I don't wear them often, those pieces do get worn, and that's not a failure. It's a recognition of how I like my closet to function, in a way that works for me.