This was my first time participating in (well, attempting) Slow Fashion October, and like I said earlier, it coincided nicely with my desire to actually take a look at what I wear and what I want to wear.

There were two great things I did for myself this month, fashion-wise. The first is that I packed more handmade clothes than I’ve ever packed and took them on a trip where I knew I would be forced to wear them. I brought my Tegna Sweater, my Farrow Dress, and my Dress No. 2 in Magic Tulips (all pictured below).

Usually I bring one item that I’ve made, and then I save it for a “special occasion”, which doesn’t always happen. This time, 3 out of the 5 outfits I brought were something I made myself and I felt a lot more intentional about planning them, which is something I haven’t done often with the clothes I wear.

The second thing I did was start a Wardrobe Airtable (based on this template and inspired by Karen Templer’s blog post How to make a visual closet inventory), cataloged almost all of my clothes this month, and started keeping track of what I wore every day (almost). I made myself a couple rules: track everything, even if it’s the pajamas you didn’t change out of all day, and don’t feel obligated to wear anything.

A grid view showing several items of clothing captioned by their names.

A few years ago I had a secret blog called “What the fuck did I wear today” because I was so terrible at remembering what I wore and was also anxious about somehow repeating my outfits in a way someone would notice. The house I was living in at the time had a great long mirror setup and it was easy to take a picture of myself every day before I left for work. When I moved to Seattle, the mirrors weren’t as long and the lighting was less good, and I stopped doing it so often. And then I started wearing leggings and t-shirts to the office anyway, so who needed to track that?! The people I work with already know what I look like — I don’t need to try to impress them.

But after a while, leggings and t-shirts get boring (though no less comfortable). And taking time to care about your (my) fashion isn’t about impressing anyone else — it’s about impressing yourself, and making choices that you (I) enjoy. I’ve been working on this for a while, figuring out for myself what is enough effort, what I enjoy wearing, and why I wear (and make) the clothes I do. For me, I don’t want it to be how I am perceived by the world. I want it to be more about how I feel in the clothes that I wear and whether I can (and want to) take pride in that.

Anyway, if you got all the way to the bottom of this: thank you, and tell me how you feel! Are you in the same boat as I am?

P.S. If you haven’t heard of 99 Percent Invisible and the new podcast series they just did on Articles of Interest, I highly recommend checking it out. I keep trying to pick a favorite episode, and I can’t!