cdcox |
12-16-2009 11:21 PM |
My system is utterly depressing, once I have it all written down.
Most days I wear a pair of slacks and a shirt. I only have maybe 3 or 4 pairs of slacks in my total rotation any given season. And I'm probably wearing two of those pairs on most days. So when I pick out my slacks I try to pick a pair I did not wear the day before, with the thought of not being the professor I had back in the day that always wore the same pair of pants. Sadly, I have become that professor, except I have two pair of slacks with an occasional change up thrown in.
Shirts are more versatile. I have maybe 12-15 shirts or so that I'll wear through the rotation. I have more, but they don't get worn very often because the are worn out or I just don't like them any more. I pick among the prime 15 so that I avoid wearing the same shirt too close to the last time I wore it. But I definitely tend to wear the shirts I like the best early in the laundry cycle.
Underwear and socks are completely random. They get throw in their respective drawers and get pulled out. A few years ago I bought a bunch of black dress socks and threw out most of my old ones, so I can just grab any two black socks and they are almost sure to be a match. Same with white athletic socks. That was a good move.
Shoes -- I have two pairs of shoes to wear with slacks: a black cap toe and more casual brown ecco's. I'll pick one or the other and either my brown belt or my black to match.
On casual days I'll wear jeans (button fly levi 501's, always) and athletic shoes in place of the slacks and leather shoes. I normally have one pair of jeans at any given time that I consider nice enough to wear to work. When they get a rip or too faded, I'll buy another pair.
Dress clothes follow a similar pattern. I only need to wear dress clothes for work 3 to 5 times a month. I have a suit, and it is probably 10 years old. It still looks good, but I don't feel sharp in it any more. I generally wear it only when I need to wear a suit. I should probably retire it, but I don't need to wear a suit very often. So that leaves two sport jackets: a brown/black/beige hounds tooth and a navy blazer. The navy blazer is only a year old, so it is my go to blazer, but I mix in the hounds tooth at about a 40% rate. Slacks for the jacket have zero variety: black for the hounds tooth and which ever happens to be my newest khakis for the blazer. I have about 4 nice dress shirts and 5 nice ties that I mix and match between the two.
In summary, the clothes I have are nice enough, but I never keep enough variety in the primo rotation. I probably need to double the number of slacks, add a nice suit and another sport jacket, add a couple nice pairs of shoes, and double my shirt tie combos. I could also freshen the winter and summer casual shirt variety and retire some of the older ones. The problem is that I buy clothes so infrequently that when ever I add a new pair of slacks or shoes I like having the new ones so well that I quit wearing the old worn ones almost immediately.
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