“Could I be wearing any LESS clothes?!”
Wardrobe Reduction — 12 items of clothing for 2 weeks
As proposed by the Innovation Studio, a subject in the Master Degree Course in PSSD at Politecnico di Milano, the 2 weeks challenge that I chose to pursue consists in a wardrobe reduction. For the next 2 weeks I will only have access to 12 items from my closet.
The Reasons behind it
One of the reasons behind this choice relies on the well-known fact that the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Fast fashion — a business model that promotes rapid production of cheap clothing to meet the most recent fashion trends — has dominated and reshaped the fashion industry since the 1990s, causing it to be a major driver of the industry’s enormous greenhouse gas emissions and devastating environmental impact. Adding to this, most of employees in these industries work under very bad conditions that show a total disregard for basic safety measures, low wages and sometimes violence in the workplace.
The other reason is more related to a personal point of view. When the challenge was launched and even after looking at the given suggestions, I already knew I wanted to act on something regarding fashion and clothing. The other topics seemed also very appealing and even some of them I have already started to pursue but none is related to fashion. I thought this would be a good moment to test myself and try to understand my real needs. Fashion, fabrics and everything that ends in -wear are a part of my interest as a designer and has an individual. Besides its function of covering the body while protecting it from the outside, I believe that clothes are a way of expressing ourselves and our state of mind. They communicate something about the person who is wearing it, even if the person didn’t have that intention. It is said that the eyes are the mirror of the soul, I consider clothes the mirror of the mind.
Consequently, to these two previous ideas, I looked for challenges related to fashion and discovered some projects based on the principle of a certain amount of items for a certain number of days. After the research I set up my challenge: 12 items of my closet for the next 15 days.
The Selection & The Rules
On Sunday evening I went through all my clothes, shoes and accessories to decide which ones I wanted to take on this adventure. The selecting process seemed easy but it actually turned out to be very demanding! It took almost 3 hours to choose all the items! In the beginning I made the selection based on the relationship that I have with the items, their meaning (when did I wear them, who gave them to me, etc..). Everything felt good and it looked like I had chosen the correct number of items, but then I started to count them and realized that I had picked too many. I wasn’t respecting my limit, so I had to rethink all my choices. I started making a list but, on the paper, everything seemed too unreal and too impersonal. I wrote “jeans” and “black CK shirt” but it made no sense in my head! I knew which clothes I was referring to and I could picture them in my head, but they didn’t feel like my clothes anymore — by labelling them I was creating a gap between myself and the clothes that I care so much about. So I stopped making this list.
After a moment of reflection, I understood that the best way for me to arrive to a final decision was to actually look at the clothes in a mid-term way, not so thoughtful as in the beginning, but also not so careless as with the list. I cut little pieces of paper and numbered them from 1 to 12, I put all the items that I had considered before in my bed and started giving them numbers. At last, I had all my items selected and the rules well established.
Here’s the list of my items:
1 — It consists in 4 pieces, but I can only wear two of them at the time. These items can be viewed as accessories, that besides contributing to the aesthetic element of the outfit, they also have a function. These items are: a purse, a belt, a scarf and a pair of black basic tights.
2 — a pair of boots
3 — a pair of sneakers
4 — jeans
5 — black pants
6 — black dress
7 — a black jacket
8 — a purple t-shirt
9 — a black sweater
10 — a light grey t-shirt
11 — a grey shirt
12 — a light grey
This ultimate sellection will be my wardrobe for the next two weeks and the choices were made regarding aspects such as aesthetics, comfort and well-being. I also took a look at the weather report but the forecast was only for the first week. Although, I think my choices will satisfy my needs and the occasions I will be facing for the next days.
