Uniform

Last year we posted about Matt Souveny’s 1 Year, 1 Outfit Project. As the name implies, Souveny, a Royal Air Force pilot and men’s fashion blogger, spent one year living with ten carefully curated clothing items. Well, the year and the experiment have passed, and we caught up with Souveny to see how it went:

DF: How did the experiment go?

MS: Better than I expected. I half thought my clothes would be in tatters by the end of the year, so seeing as though everything is still very wearable I was pleasantly surprised.

DF: What was the best part of the experiment?

MS: Getting to wear my grails on a daily basis. Most people save their nice clothes, but I got to wear all of my favourites everyday.

DF: What was the worst?

MS: Dealing with the weather, I was freezing in winter and wearing every layer I had and in summer I was doing laundry every couple days just to have a fresh shirt.

DF: What item in your wardrobe stood out as a must-have?

MS: Footwear always seems like the hardest thing to trim down in my mind so having a single pair of boots that I could wear hiking and then clean up and wear out to dinner was pretty essential. I also don’t think most pants would survive the daily abuse that I put my Outlier chinos through. I’m pretty grateful they held up.

DF: Did you find yourself wanting more clothing options?

MS: Absolutely. By the third month I was going pretty crazy wearing my uniform every single day, I powered through that though and then dressing just became automatic. By the time winter was over I was just happy to not have to put on all my layers every time I went outside

DF: Many of your items were pretty expensive. what would you say about that?

MS: Some of them are insanely expensive and I would never encourage anyone to spend beyond their disposable income for any of these things. I think this could certainly be accomplished on a smaller budget, I just figured that if I was going to wear the same things every day then they might as well be clothes that I loved and was excited to wear.

DF: Now that the experiment is over, what will be different?

MS: More clothes! I’m going to keep the same philosophy of buying better, buying less and getting rid of any excess, but I’m not going to restrict myself to a set limit. As it stands I have about 30 items in my closet right now and it is completely overwhelming.

Read an expanded version of Souveny’s recap on his blog.

My high school hallways were like a fashion show catwalk. With my classmates carefully scrutinizing my outfits, I made sure my clothes were up to date, that I had the right sneakers, the right cuffs on my stonewashed jeans, the right collar shape on my Gap button-downs and so forth. I carefully rotated my wardrobe to make sure there were no repeated outfits in a given week. I didn’t want anyone to think I didn’t care.

While no one ever accused me of not caring, no one cared that much either. All the anxiety, time spent assembling the right styles, laundry–all of it was for naught. I hovered through high school enjoying low-to-medium popularity, no portion of which was attributable to my clothing.

Most people just don’t care that much about what we’re wearing. In my experience, people will notice if our clothes aren’t clean, if they’re falling apart or if they are majorly out-of-date. They’ll notice if what we’re wearing is well made or fits us well. But people won’t care if the nice, clean, stylish thing we wore on Monday is the same nice, clean, stylish thing we wore on Friday.

The world is filled with a profound number of choices, but studies show that having fewer–not more–choices may be the path to greater happiness. Few places provide a greater opportunity for strategically eliminating choice than our clothing.

Rather than boring and imposed fashion, a uniform can be a great way to simplify your life and even express your style–there’s a reason Steve Jobs, one of the foremost design gurus of the last 100 years, wore the same outfit day in, day out.

With a uniform, dressing and life become much simpler and speedier, and with the right uniform, no one will accuse you of not caring.

If you are interested in creating your own uniform, here are a few tips to get you started:

If you don’t have a uniform, or don’t know what it would be, start with your favorite clothes as the basis of your uniform. This should be stuff that that fits you well and you feel comfortable wearing. The idea is to have a wardrobe of only your favorite clothes. If you don’t have favorite clothes or don’t don’t care about fashion, ask someone you trust to help select your uniform.
Try to find versatile clothing that will work for several different settings. For example my Outlier pants, a staple in my uniform, work for casual and dress occasions.
If you can’t make one thing work for several occasions, create separate uniforms, e.g. a work uniform and a casual uniform.
When you find something you like, buy multiples. Get a few colors of the same item if you’re worried about looking the same all the time (but remember no one cares).
Even if you don’t wear the exact same thing every day, choose high quality clothing staples like a particular skirt, pant or shirt. Choose classic cuts in muted and complementary colors that you’ll be less likely to tire of and that work well together. Ideally, every item in your wardrobe should look good together.
Add variety and style to your uniform by wearing accents like colorful undershirts, shoes or jewelry.

Do you have a uniform? Let us know your suggestions in our comments section below.

[This post originally appeared on this site on April 12, 2013]

Tag: Uniform

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