What are the odds?

I work in a small office; there are only four of us (if you don’t count Lupe the office dog, even though he has is own email address). Everyday is an oestrogen-fest (again, if you don’t count Lupe) and given that we’re all women, within a ten-year age range, with similar-to-a-degree backgrounds and mutual Facebook page likes it was only a matter of time before we began syncing (not that type of syncing — upon further research it turns out that the cervical cycle sync is just a myth, although anecdotally there’s nothing mythical about it).

Obviously, working in such close quarters week in week out you’re bound to eventually develop similarities to your colleagues and I’m not talking run of the mill office in-jokes or the secret tap sequences to get the temperamental printer to cooperate. You’ll influence each others coffee orders (long blacks all round?), pick up linguistic tics that make no sense but to your cubical cohorts and maybe every once in a while the universe will align and two of you will turn up wearing a similar item of clothing on the same day. But two of us, and on one day three of us, turning up wearing 97% identical outfits not once, not twice but three times in the same week — what are the odds? And I don’t mean that rhetorically, I mean like actually what are the actual odds — surely there must be some kind of mathematical formula to predict the probability — of identical dressing without prior communication.

The repeat multiple person outfit matching was understandably intriguing and perplexing to our building-mates. Let me break it down for you (the outfits, not the maths):

Day 1: Myself and MC both turned up in long sleeved breton tops, half tucked into light wash, distressed boyfriend jeans and sneakers (I favour converse while MC is a die-hard Addidas fan, which accounts for the 3% difference). Oh, but hair and make up can totally transform a look you say, apparently not — we both have middle parted, dark bobs and wear ‘no makeup’ makeup.

IL, from two offices down, was suitably confused to see me walking down the hallway ahead of him when he’d passed me only moments earlier as I was headed down the stairs — I wasn’t actually, IL, because I have unfortunately not yet mastered the skill of teleportation and although MC and I have inexplicably managed to dress identically today we are in fact separate beings and it was her you saw on the stairs, not me.

Day 2: I was feeling stripes again (if I’m honest our office is feeling stripes 5 out of 7 days a week so statistically speaking the odds of a striped situation are quite high) and it would appear so too were HP and MC. Long sleeved bretons tucked into black skinnies for MC and me, and into black peg trousers for HP. I don’t need to mention the hair and makeup other than HP also has a dark bob and is a fan of no makeup makeup. Fortunately, we each wore a different variation of the ubiquitous black flat — slides, sneakers and sandals — otherwise honestly, I don’t know if I would have been able to tell myself apart.

Down the hall, TC had almost convinced himself he was seeing stripes as a result of tender-submission-stress-induced-hallucinations and sent his underling over to confirm that he’d only lost sleep, not his marbles; three of us were actually wearing the same outfit.

Day 3: I couldn’t wait to get into the office to marvel at our telepathy. Unfortunately I was on a different frequency to HP and MC otherwise I too would have worn my chambray shirt with quarter rolled sleeves and black skinnies. I came dangerously close but when faced with the reality of wrestling the ironing board at 7:32am I reached for my trusty linen trousers (it’s completely acceptable not to bother attempting to iron linen) and tee combo instead.

Because chambray and skinnies are such a regular occurrence “double denim!” is pretty much our office catchcry. HP/MC walked in, cue catchcry — “dou…ble den…”, wait no. It’s double denim times two, is that quadruple denim? But if there are two people and four items of denim does that actually make it two to the power of four, which is 16 denim or is it two plus four equals sextuple denim? Please, someone just tell me how much denim it is.

What I’ve realised is that it’s not about the probability of multiple-variant outfit matching but that as an office we are a congruent: wonder what I (we) should wear tomorrow…?