Sartorial Sunday: Wardrobe planning

I can't claim to be fashionable these days, in fact I'm not sure I ever have been. I've always found it too hard to spend with abandon, no matter how gorgeous the cloth. Instead, I try to buy items that fit into my current wardrobe and make old items feel fresh. Buying things that coordinate ensures they will be worn more, making them good value purchases even if they weren't the cheapest initially. Buying pieces and styles you love is also a sure way to get good wear from them. Personally, I love jackets, especially military ones, so I have a few of them in different colours and I wear them to death.

My wardrobe philosophy is not for everyone. It's a little boring and a little organised but I like to hope there is some style to it or a stylish restraint at the very least. Style over fashion, I say. To stop it becoming totally dull, some "wardrobe shopping" is sometimes required, as is some experimentation with mixing and matching to find new outfits. A couple of times a year, I like to take a photo of my outfit each morning for a week. I set up the self-timer on the camera then stand in the same spot and talk to my invisible friend like a real dork as the flash goes off.  I have a good old laugh about what a nerd I am. Here's a recent week.

Quite a few items from this week are a good five years old and others have spent mere weeks in my possession (like the tan belt I was coveting in my previous post on winter office wardrobe inspiration). Mornings are not my prime (as proven by the Wednesday photo) so for years I have been dreaming about an App to take outfit photos that you can later catalogue and tag so that the next time you feel like wearing your yellow cardigan, you can see what other items you normally wear with it and even where you wore it last so you don't always catch up with the same people in the same outfit. Genius, right? I reckon it would help me avoid wearing the same combinations over and over - a concern if you're not buying new clothes and accessories each week. Not to mention the time it would save staring blurry-eyed into the wardrobe unable to remember what looks good with what. There are a few wardrobe planning programs around but nothing that really makes my heart sing. So for now, I will continue with my own little system and bore anybody with any technological nous with the boring but fabulous details of my App idea.