Fashion Prompts: A Little Closet Game
Winter/nostalgia edition!
Hello my angels! It’s JANUARY. We have now begun the season in which [to me, a child of the summer sun] time ceases to exist, and we all just sort of ARE for a while. Buckle up! I’d say this period of the year can last until late March. But, to clarify, I don’t mean buckle up in a bad way—no no. In fact, maybe it would be more apropos to say buckle IN?
Every year, I start listing activities I love to do during this time of wintroversion, to steal/riff on a phrase from Jess Graves. Soft and warm clothes with frivolous accessories! Working my way through the list of Oscar noms! Staying way too late at friends’ apartments because it’s been dark the entire time so who’s to say any time has passed at all?! And! Some of my favorite cooking of the year! It’s penne alla vodka season, people! Happy Penne alla Vodka to all who celebrate!
I arrived back to my cute little apartment on Wednesday evening after almost SIX MONTHS on the road for work. (Can you even believe that I started a styling newsletter during the stretch of my life where I was living out of a suitcase?!?! Am I crazy?!) In this very moment, I am in the throes of unpacking my bags from many moons away, PLUS a very full holiday week at home. And while that means that today I am living amidst some mild chaos, it also means I suddenly have access to MY ENTIRE CLOSET for the first time in months! An embarrassment of riches!!!! I am overjoyed.
I am also (and you might relate) prettyyy burned out from all the shopping in November/December, the shoppiest time of year. I am genuinely looking forward to fully ignoring the algorithm and just wearing my clothes for a while. It is very timely that this season calls for coats and sweaters and pants and boots, which took up the most suitcase real estate on the road, and which I now plan to wear with great variety and reckless abandon. Maybe two sweaters at a time?! What?!
The only thing that can get in my way at this joyous moment is the paralysis that sometimes comes with all this choice. You know it. That moment you stare up at your closet, only to find it is obscured from your vision by the overwhelming cloud of OH GOD, WHAT TO WEAR. It happens to the best of us and the most of us. I think we are all vulnerable to this particular phenomenon early in the mornings…on say, Tuesdays? I know for a fact that, if faced with THE CLOUD, my dad, Clyde, would turn to a semi-monochromatic color palette. Which you are welcome to try! But for me? It is in this moment when I turn to a Fashion Prompt.
I love a prompt! A gentle theme will set me free! I’ve mentioned before an album I keep on my phone, which not only has candids and mirror selfies of my looks in the wild (as a kind of outfit catalog), but also has screenshots and saved images of other people’s outfits I’ve liked online. It is basically an album full of prompts! And it can be a very good place to start if I am feeling stuck in a personal style rut, or just want a nudge in any direction. But since I was recently home for the holidays, I had access to some, ahem, fresh fashion material:
It’s little me! Look at her go! And whether it is my parents I have to thank for these looks, or some nice salesperson at Dillard’s, this is the fashion-rich well of inspiration we shall be drawing from this week. I encourage you to play along yourself, with any inspirational images your heart desires—bonus points if you also use your inner child as source material.
Let’s Play Fashion Prompts: Nostalgia Edition!
The rules of this game are as follows:
1.) Absolutely no purchasing of anything new. This is one part getting dressed, one part creative exercise. It is okay, however, if this inspires you to put something on your List. (If you’re new to Costume Change, I explain The List here.) For example, that white oversized turtleneck in photo one has peaked Grown Up Me’s interest.
2.) The images are for inspiration purposes only. We’re not going for exact replicas. Also not going for costumes. It is okay if the finished product looks nothing like the original!
3.) Weather-related modifications are welcome and encouraged.
Okay!!! Wish me luck? Here’s how I did:
Look One: Denim Girls For Life
Okay weirdly this prompt was harder than I thought! And NOT because I am at all lacking in the denim dress department! More due to the tension between layering with a denim dress and still looking like an adult in the finished product? Lee Hubilla could do it. But did I do it? IDK! You decide.
This first denim dress is vintage and heavy, like may-have-once-been-worn-on-an-actual-farm-in-winter heavy. I like to think the deep armpit holes keep it from going full modest milkmaid. No shade! Sadly no white lacy tights in my current wardrobe, but we make do. The second dress is a long strapless tube number from Reformation that I lurve, but that I typically think of as summer-wear. Lo and behold, a winter presentation!
Look Two: Early Sightings Of The Wrong Shoe Theory
I am living for this black-pump-white-tight combo! Lol! Who did this?! Was it me? If so, a high five to my little self. Unexpected! Fresh! I don’t fully understand why the weather called for tights but not sleeves, but who cares?! Also, may we all enter 2024 with the same confidence that 10-year-old me has leaning against that post.
I think my biggest wins here are the socks-and-heels combo, which is very 80s BUT I’M INTO IT, and this color palette, which I will be revisiting. The cream + caramel + black is feeling VERY WINTER MINTY FRESH to me.
Look Three: When The Starting Place Is von Trapp Family Singers
OKAY, at first I thought this one would present the biggest challenge. This little dress in the picture is ca-ute, but I don’t have any gingham or Peter Pan collars in my current closet. But we improvise! We experiment! And much to my surprise, not having the tools to really mimic the dress made me feel a lot more free to be creative.
von Trapps all grown up! Instead of gingham, I expanded to any and all squares—we love a check pattern—and collars in general. How fun! I feel like a business-casual boss woman from the 80s! An earnest but hard-working reporter on her first assignment! I drink Folgers! Except for in the first picture, where I instead write poetry and drink espressos standing up?! Also, check that color combo in the footwear. I am not letting this go!
Ba-dah, dah-bop-dee-da. The end! Hope you enjoyed this round of Fashion Prompts. All in all, a very enjoyable assignment—good for the creative brainwaves. AND JUST FOR FUN, here is how this morphed into what I wore to watch the Golden Globes at a friend’s that night:
Of course, if you decide to play this little game in your own closet, you can use any source images you like—vintage pics, street style images, movie characters’ wardrobes. Go crazy! Regardless of the inspo, this is a fun tool to have in your back pocket if you hit the winter slumps, or if you’re struggling to shop your closet.
Now get outta here, and go eat some pasta! I’ll see you next week.
Costume Change is a styling newsletter (vs. a shopping newsletter). There’s no spon-con in the above text—any references to clothing/shoes/shops, etc. are purely honest-to-goodness recommendations. As always, I hope that Costume Change first and foremost provides you with inspiration to shop and re-style inside of your own closet. Thanks for reading, and reminder to keep those comments kind!