After 12 months of the big spreadsheet

Luīze Leave a Comment

Another 3 months have passed and here is an update on my big spreadsheet. If you are new to this, between 2014 and 2017 I was doing season capsules of stashing away the ‘unseasonal’ items and doing the whole ritual of ‘seasonal change’ every couple of months while tracking the number of wears. And then it felt like too much fuss… So I started tracking the number of wears without doing the ‘now you go away’ ritual. Here is the outset post (that includes a link to an example Google Sheet), here the 3-month update, here the 6-month update, and here – the 9-month.

Having a year’s worth of solid information is great, and my data-loving side is filled with joy. If you think that this is for weirdos quantitative sociologists only, Marina is an example how less spreadsheat-inclined normal people might get value out of this exercise too… So, I’ll go through the most and least worn by categories as I did in previous posts, and then try to draw some mor egeneral conclusions.

So here you have the wardrobe heroes of 2018 by categories with the number of wears January through December in parenthesis:

Layers

Most worn: My mom’s gray hand-me-down cardigan (62) because in summer it’s my AC saver in the office. Also works well if my street layers are a bit too much for the office, etc. We’ll see what 2019 for this one, as there won’t be an office anymore…

Runner-ups: Julie’s pink cardigan (60) and the other gray cardigan from May 2018 Swap (58).

Worn the least: The floral courduroy bolero (2) – it’s fancy and in Rīga, works very well (although takes it slightly over the top) with the HnM sweetheart dress, but not casual enough for every day even by my very lax standards. I’m probably keeping it forever, though.

*

Dresses

Most worn: My mom’s dark blue silk dress (32). She made it herself, btw. This dress also serves to assess my sewing skills… And the comparison is not flattering.

Runner-ups: My mom’s hand-me-down MnS dress (28) and my aunt’s ‘take this, you might defend your thesis in this’ dress (25).

Worn the least: The HnM sweetheart dress (4) – again, it’s a party garment and lives in Rīga so that I would have a mainstay for all family celebrations and opera. Feels like a bit of a waste but I’ve had it since 2008, so it has to be somewhere in vicinity of those #30wears. it is wearing out, though, especially around the ‘bones’ that keep the shape of the top, so it might become a skirt one day. Also, last February I finally found a nice way to dress it down a bit, this, and I have been developing that ‘look for a short sweater to tone it down’ sensibility further on, like so:

*

Tops

Most worn: The demon t-shirt (58). I can only repeat that: “This is weird, because I don’t have a feeling that I’ve worn it that much. Here, a proof that my memory and perception of frequency of wear cannot be trusted!” And after 100+ total wears since 2014 it finally was beyond repair, so it is not with as anymore. The picture, though – a painting of a lietuvēns by Kristiāns Brekte – is still good, and I’m looking for a surface to repeat the trick I did with the No Pasarán t-shirt and the Street One jacket.

Runner-ups: The February 2018 Swap Forever 21 t-shirt (51) and my mom’s hand-me-down lace blouse-undershirt (38).

Worn the least: A couple of newcomers, because we cleaned my mother’s wardrobe on December 22. A great gift for both of us, indeed, if you see what proportion of my wardrobe are her hand-me-downs! I already wore – once in 2018 – the green synthetic fantasy of birds and flowers and the black MnS ‘beat’ short-sleeve turtleneck:


*

Bottoms

Most worn: My mom’s hand-mw down shorts (67). The secret here is that I wear them as shorts and as underwear/chub-rub prevention under skirts or dresses, so these shorts get a lot of summer wears. Also, they are very comfy. On my to-sew list in 2019 is trying to make an exact replica.

Runner-ups: ZIB black leave leggings (62) and Amoralle leggings (52). Both of these, after having reminded me how essential leggings are for my comfort and happiness, are now beyond repair

Worn the least: It’s a tie – at two wears – between the ZIB splash leggings that are mostly used as loungewear in Rīga and my ‘new’ hand-me-down green capri jeans. Yeah, there are big news for the ‘Luīze wearing pants’ section, we’ll see how it goes.

*

Footwear

Most worn: Arcopedico wedges (132) because nothing beats the office shoe.

Runner-ups: Veja Wata Pierre (121) and Vegan Birkenstock Gizeh (118). Birks are going to truly fall apart sometime in 2019, but we’ll keep counting until then. And keeping an eye on their vegan section for replacements. BTW, dear Birkenstock, could you be so kind and bring the vegan Gizeh back for June? I really don’t care which color…

Worn the least: Nokian Hai wellingtons (4) – they live in Rīga and are rainboots. I keep wondering if bringing them to Barcelona could be a good idea… but in Riga they are handy as well, just that this year I spent very little time there. And, after an 8km walk in December, it is clear that their shape and sizing – they are clearly making Finnish women feel good about the size of their feet since 1898 because I haven’t been a size 37 since I was 12, I think – work alright.

*

Adornments

2018 hasn’t been a good year for adornments: I don’t reach for necklaces automatically, my ears have become very sensitive to anything that’s not farmacy-grade baby earrings, my headbands ar big and flashy, and unfit for bike rides, and this year I didn’t have the seasonal spreadsheet *making* me wear all that. I don’t know it’s just a temporal thing or a new aspect of growing up I’ll just have to accept.

Most worn: The red wooden necklace (31).

Runner-ups: Jēkabs necklace (30) and Ban.do headband (23).

Worn the least: The flower ball headband (8) – I rescued it from the Rīga wardrobe and we had a great time together in London, but then in Barcelona I find it hard to wear. And the bicycle-headband incompatibility (the wind!) doesn’t help. And I am growing more conservative, I’m afraid… Ugh.

*

So far, so good, but what does the future bring?

First of all, the spreadsheet stays. I do think that it is the right amount of obsessing and ‘hard data’ for me. Wardrobe tracking has helped me to not only become aware of the unsung heroes of my wardrobe (officewear, leggings, the more ubiquitous t-shirts) but also to appreciate that a low count does not necessarily move garments into the ‘out’ pile. I have my reasons and excuses. Some of them are very rational, as in having two winter coats of varying thickness and two pairs of waterproof boots in Rīga, even if in 2018 I have spent only three weeks there. There is enough space in my mom’s house to keep them there instead of lugging them back and forth. And there is no proper winter in Barcelona anyway.

It is a bit harder to explain away the little black cocktail dress and that flower ball, but let me try. Those are aspirational and backward-looking pieces at the same time. I would still like to be the person who wears those, and tracking tells me to what I extent I am.

The person I was when I bought that LBD. Brussels 2008.

I also tracked – in wider categories – what covered my legs. That serves two purposes: (1) knowing the seasonal balance, and (2) taking future hoisiery decisions. Measured in days ‘worn’, the winner are bare legs. 169 days in 2018 I have left home with nothing covering my legs, wearing no or ankle socks. That’s the climate part. The runner-up with 135 are leggings, hence my talking about their central space in my wardrobe beforehand. The other three options – knee-highs (52), tights (48), stay-ups (44) – are clearly minor players. In 2018 I abandoned stay-highs and embraced opaque woolen tights. And Bonne Maison knee-highs, when worn with midi-skirts, are a very good option for spring and autumn.

2019 will bring a whole new vibe with me finishing my thesis and leaving behind having an office to go to. Although it has always been a very relaxed environment, the very fact of getting out of home was enough for me to dress nicely. Now the landscape will be one of balancing drawing/blogging/running errands from home (in something comfy) and projecting my professional self as a freelance researcher and professional organizer. From all 2018 outfits this might be the one closest to how I see that new self… I know, pretty boring and grown-up!

What has happened in your wardrobe in 2018? Abrupt changes? Baby step evolution? Lifestyle switches? Did you try any method of wardrobe tracking? What has your wardrobe taught you in 2018?

#whatiwore 2019w01 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

The year might be new, but the brain has to be fed:

1. I am still a sucker for a good fashion anecdote, obviously, especially if it’s about somebody’s whim becoming an unexpected hit: Bernstein’s Folly. Or protest fashion that then loses its meaning – Wretched Excess: The Rebellion of the Wide-Leg Pant. Or just completely weird ideas, like having designated drinking jackets as to not to ruin the good suits – Ivy Workwear Style Via Princeton University’s Beer Jackets.

2. A short look at the gilets jaunes from a purely fashion point of view: The Power of the Yellow Vest.

3. If the Holiday season has tired your liver, kidneys, and/or brain and you have been entertaining the idea to never ever consume something again, turns out that Vice (!) has a whole straight edge section (!) dedicated to ‘the drugs are bad, mkay’: (a) Smoking Weed Can Be a Lot of Fun, But Let’s Not Pretend it Doesn’t Fuck You Up; (b) When Partying Becomes a Problem: How I Managed to Quit Drink and Drugs; (c) How Giving Up Drink and Drugs in Your Twenties Can Change Your Life; (d) This Is Why Gen Z Isn’t Into Drink or Drugs; (e) Quitting Alcohol Doesn’t Have to Be the End of Your Social Life. The funniest and scariest cultural changes in substance abuse I found there were the pressures stemming from the footprints such behavior leaves on one’s social media: it all will be photographed if not filmed, will project a ‘bad’ image, your prospective employers will be able to see it, your puffy face will look uglier in the selfies… and, in this competitive economy where serious people start to prepare for their career in the kindergarten, ain’t nobody got time for that anyways.

4. I don’t own anything Elizabeth Suzanne, their aesthetics are mostly not really my style, and I know that their way of working implies a price point inaccessible to most, but I just can’t help but love the way they do business: 2018: A Reflection and Recap and 2018 Holiday FAQs.

5. Those who have made a new year’s resolution to travel more, don’t. It’s a dirty business. Literally. (In Spanish) Cada turista contamina al día en Barcelona el equivalente a conducir 410 kilómetros. Go to a library and read  a book instead!

*

What I was writing about a year ago: How expensive is an ethical wardrobe? 2017 second half money talk.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2018w01 + Sunday links.

*

So, what are your new year’s resolutions? Teetotalism or getting a beer jacket? More travel or more books? Doing more or contaminating less?

Luisita 31 or 31 facts about me

Luīze 2 Comments

Somehow this March 2007 selfie feels relevant…

I’m turning 31 today and here you have 31 things you didn’t ever necessarily wanted to know about me:

1. I’m an only child. That does explain a lot.

2. Although several millions of people share this experience, it still tickles me: the state that issued my birth certificate does not exist.

3. I have found a missing piece of family history online. The family legend was that my grandpa’s sister’s second husband had been incarcerated for anti-Soviet activities in the 1950s, but later in life he never talked about it, so there was no additional narrative about that. Doing a more general family history project a few years ago, Google revealed that he – Mikhail Krasilnikov (1933-1996) – was a vanguard poet and student experimenting with performances in 1950s Leningrad. The Russian internets have his prision-time photos, his poetry, memories of his friends and photos of my great-aunt too. I was high on this new piece of the family puzzle for days.

4. Quoting Hamilton, an ongoing issue in my life is “why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?” with the answer being “because it’s obviously the case”. Since kindergarten I’ve had enough “no, Luīze, not you, maybe somebody else knows” situations to be prepared for this scenario, much more than the opposite one. This is one of the reasons why PhD has been so hard – you get a room full of people whose basic experience is to be the smartest on in the room. That ought to lead to trauma and friction.

5. The story about professional ambitions that I like to tell myself is that I’ve actually given a try to every idea that made sense. An alternative view would be that I’ve been quitting stuff when it stop making sense from a very early age…. At three I wanted to become a ballerina. My mom dutifully enrolled me and after a year or even less I had it clear that the tutu was the best part and that the classes with a strict teacher wasn’t. The next idea that persisted for a long time and, in a way, never really went away was becoming a fashion designer. So I drew, I read, I learnt classical drawing, and at the end, just before the entrance exams for the arts high school at 16, I stayed at the comprehensive programme. The next fantasy was to become a journalist. I did a gig for few small publications and realized that I didn’t have guts to do serious (read: dangerous) reporting from conflict areas while most local stuff was so boring and half-assed that I didn’t want to be part of that. By that time I was deep in volunteering for NGOs, so working for an international NGO suddenly seemed the perfect combination of politics and impact. Yeah, it took some more volunteering and a six-month internship to learn that that’s not the case. After that one dissipated, I started my undergrad, fell in love with the scientific method, vowed to become a sociologist and even got a tattoo honoring Descartes. Nine years later I am a few months from having a PhD in social and political sciences and no illusions about this industry.

6. Yeah, there are two tattoos. 2011 question mark honoring Descartes’ ‘methodological skepticism‘ and 2013 ‘el cuerpo de Osiris, cuerpo brotado, se alzó y caminó’ from Eduardo Galeano‘s microcuentos reinterpreting the myth of Osiris and Isis. No regrets and they are keeping up great (a n00b advice: mine are gray and not black), my grandpa still pretends he cannot see them, and I still haven’t been able to come up with a reasonable addition. The only nuisance are all the people who think that it is a fine icebreaker to ask about the meaning of my tattoos, no, not cool, stop that sh*t.

Planning my first tattoo the obsessive-compulsive way.

7. I’ve had several piercings that were done in the following order: a ring in the helix of my left ear at 12, nose stud in the left nostril at 13, belly button at 15, earlobes at 19. The upper ear and belly button never healed, so they disappeared quickly. The nose stud lasted until a few years ago. The earlobes are still here but very sensitive nowadays, hence I’ve let go of my extensive stupid earring collection and wear pharmacy earrings.

8. Until some German pop-feminst books set me free at around 14, I avidly read and believed women’s magazines. That’s an incredible amount of false beliefs about life, sex, beauty, femininity among other topics. Ugh.

9. An issue that was too big for pop feminism was body issues, fantasies about fatness, and linking bodies to acceptance and self-worth. The most reasonable way of describing it is a low-key body dysmorphia. And knowing that so many all of us suffer from this doesn’t help. Body positivity, the average user’s guide is the blog post I’m most proud of.

10. At 16 I realized that life with short fingernails was much easier. It took a bit more time to arrive to the same conclusions about life without nail polish and make-up in general, but I don’t think I’m ever going back to that.

11. I’ll never know if I didn’t learn to walk in heels or is the whole thing just that painful (long way beyond my boundaries of acceptable discomfort). Anyways, no heels for me.

12. I started drifting towards vegetarianism at 14, went serious ovo-lacto at 18 and started flirting with veganism at 23. A list of my favorite Ⓥ resources can be found here.

13. Yoga is the physical activity that I’ve practiced most. I started with a very fitness-oriented version sometime around 15 or so and – with differing intensity – it has stuck around ever since. The second most practiced is tennis that I (having until then only played with the clay and watching my mom play) started learning at 8 and abandoned at 14, I guess. I did take it up again during my first year of undergrad but didn’t continue. Posterior trials with ping-pong confirm that the neuronal pathways forged for this are solid and would happily come back. I hope it will make sense some day to go back to the clay and the amazing sound of a correct hit. Other sports I’ve given a committed amateur’s try at some point include floorball, volleyball and swimming. After 1.5 years of actively learning it, swimming must be the third most practiced by now.

14. I have an advantage in yoga, though. My joints are very mobile, not enough for Cirque du Soleil, but still enough to see difference very quickly and get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Only recently I learnt that also my recently cranky ankle (after a sprain) and lower back pain if I don’t move enough are due to the same random genetic gift.

15. I don’t have a driver’s license. This is the only thing I regret not doing when the rest of my cohort did it. It’s a skill I find useful and a good idea but I had other priorities when all my classmates were getting theirs at 17. And it has been like that ever since.

16. I have very few teeth, 27 of the 32 there should be. All my wisdom teeth were extracted (I lived in pain and on drugs for a year or so meanwhile) and on the bottom row where most people have four incisors I have three. Funnily enough, the space is so well filled that nobody, including dentists, had noticed that until I was 18.

17. On a related dental hygiene note, dental floss for me is a basic necessity and a happy little indulgence at the same time. Meanwhile, I only brush once a day.

18. I’m between ENTJ and INTJ on the Myers-Briggs matrix. Knowing that gives me a perverse permission to be even more ruthless… “Anyone who worries they are an unfeeling, manipulative lunatic is probably quite cuddly“

19. Right before running into C, I was very excited about the idea of polyamory (thanks to Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, of course). So at that point monogamy was a radical choice for me (wording of that notion: Tristan Taormino), and much hilarity ensued when I announced I was settling down for an exclusive coupledom to the same friends to whom I had waxed enthusiastically about polyamory just months before. 6.5 years since then and going strong.

20. The food that never fails to make me happy is basic avocado maki. Even the pre-prepared ones in the airports. Most potato-based dishes come in as close seconds. Yes, I am a case of the stereotypical Eastern European potato love, and will never get bored of them.

21. The drink that never fails to make me happy is natural rooibos or any of the subtly bitter herbal teas: nettle, raspberry leaves, lemongrass. Like one of the characters in a Nora Ikstena novel, I get way too sentimental when drinking camomile, but in the great debate of fresh vs. dried mint for herbal teas I’m firmly on the side of dried.

22. Flavor I’m really NOT into: anise! Be it in licorice, liquor or fennel (probably the only vegetable I don’t know how to make palatable for myself), I don’t like it.

23. My drug of choice: alcohol. By now I have an extensive knowledge, both personal and cultural, on how it works and what to look out for (as opposed to many other substances), and it’s pretty clear that I’ll never be able to drink like I could (and did) when I was 17. Current favorites for an occasional indulgence include fruity session IPAs, easy chilled white wines and – if need be – quality distillate straight up.

24. Best smells are freshly mowed grass, lavender, roses and sunny pine forest. I don’t wear perfume, though.

25. The bulk of my taste in music was summed-up C in the phrase “dead black ladies”. Eartha Kitt and Ella Fitzgerald, in particular.

26. Yet my 2017 and 2018 have been heavily tainted by everything Hamilton, including the Mixtape and #hamildrops. Musicals do attract me in general, although the only one I’ve seen live is The Book of Mormon. As for hamildrops, this: “Rise Up Wise Up Eyes Up” by Ibeyi.

27. And I consider South Park to be among the best series ever. Yeah, it might be early childhood trauma, but that satire is wow. For me, much better than Simpsons or Family Guy. Some of my best early adolescence memories is watching South Park VHS tapes I had made from the TV and playing with matches (and candles) for hours. True story.

26. My favorite escape is to be drawing while listening to something. I guess there are many people whom I’ve offended because of my doodling during their classes or presentations, but I just can’t help (and it feels so good and so right). Also, I typically remember what I’ve been listening to while drawing that exact piece. I am very present while doing that.

27. I find chairs very uncomfortable. That position just does not feel comfortable. I wiggle, sit on my leg, try to sit cross-legged on the chair, etc. And wish that long distance travel – or work – could be routinely done with legs at the same level as bum. The Fifth Element-style travel drawers (with or without the drugs) seem very attractive for me. And not for nothing you get a similar thing when flying business class.

28. I’m a walker. True to basic human advantage in resilience to outwalk anybody, walking is my favorite way of getting to places in the city. A pretty typical day-off for us with C is walking some 3km to get dinner or lunch and then walking back. Fun. This goes back to the point about comfy shoes. Unwalkable footwear is useless.

29. I have a certain talent for languages, as far as I really have to use them. However, my two major pitfalls come from Latvian. In Latvian all words have fixed stress – always the first syllable – so I have to learn it the hard way in languages that have variable stresses, which is all others I speak: English, Spanish, Russian. Russian is currently the hardest for me when it comes to accents. The other Latvian quirk is not having articles… so I have no intuitive understanding of where it’s supposed to be a definite, an indefinite one or nothing. I manage somehow, but it’s a continuous struggle and startle people editing my texts. Well, at least I don’t have the typically harsh Latvian accents when speaking other languages… and some claim that my current Latvian prosody (and volume) are Spanish-influenced.

30. I’ve been more of a night owl since the kindergarten but can be trained to follow a reasonable schedule (but never get one of those 5am rise-and-shine inspirations). Additionally, I sleep a lot with up to 10h of natural everyday sleep. Although there is a lot of fetish around little sleep and early rising, I find solace in the internet knowledge that Einstein slept 10-12h too.

31. My mom’s inspiration for the name, however, was The Human League’s Louise. It was innovative at the time, according to contacts at Latvian Bureau of Statistics, I’m the 22nd Luīze registered in Latvia. Some years after it became more popular and now there’s a lot of Luīzītes. I just let people reinvent my name as they please, because nobody that doesn’t speak Latvian is able to get it right. Well, at least exactly as my mother intended. And people are creative alright! I’ve gotten Luis, Elise, Lluice, Luitze, Lizzie, Alice, Lucille… Luisa is not in use in our household, but Luise and Luisita is.

*

Too much information? Anything left unanswered? This is the opportunity…

#whatiwore 2018w52 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Om-nom-nom, here we go with a nice hefty portion of brain food to finish off 2018:

1. People either ignore them on hate them these days, but once they were all the rage – Artificial Intelligence: A Guide To Synthetic Fibers.

2. And if you are going to proclaim yourself as a natural fiber person, The Types of Cottons You Should Know.

3. Ha! The consistent theft and forgery of design can be a good thing for fostering in-house production and integrated supply chains at least at the highest shelves of fashion industry: Fashion’s Notoriously Controlling Luxury Brands Are Busy Bringing Everything They Can In-House.

4. And more garment history so that you would have an idea about the history behind an now-ubiquitous design: The Boot That Became “The Chelsea”.

5. It has been 120 years since Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class and 40 since Bourdieu’s Distinction, and still our fashion choices tell our politics and social class by a mile away: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters and Cambridge Analytica Used Consumers’ Fashion Preferences to Target Them with Pro-Trump Messaging.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: Fashion, sustainability and tidying books I read in 2017.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w52.

Also, this is the 200th blog post at Un Armario Verde en 100th #whatiwore post. You can scroll through all those posts here (if you want the weird Mediterranean seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn) or see them all at a glance on Pinterest here. All together it looks rather spectacular, and the data lover in me squeals alright about such abundance of consistent data.

*

What do you think your fashion choices tell about you? Could you be politically targeted due to your looks or would that be a total miss? Do you camouflage or express your true self via clothing, ehm, wearing your heart on your actual sleeves?

#whatiwore 2018w51 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Nom-nom-nom…

1. If you wanted a reminder why fast fashion is not a good idea neither as a gift nor as a last minute sequin dress provider: (a) Global garment workers exploited as big brands pressure suppliers: Report; (b) 5 Years After Pay Pledge, HnM Still Isn’t Paying Laborers a “Living Wage”; (c) Bangladesh to eject safety inspectors brought in after Rana Plaza disaster. Stay away from those people! + also, The Biggest Fake News in Fashion, aka ‘fashion as we know it is bad for the environment and pollutes a lot, but we cannot really say that it is the second most polluting industry’.

2. And if you wanted a suggestion list for your 2018 resolutions: Ten simple ways to act on climate change. Yes, you already know these by heart but have you actually tried to apply these to your life? All 10? Half? Just 3? Let me remind you that the 4 most effective on the individual level are: having less children, going car free, flying less, and switching to plant-based diet.

3. A long(ish) read on the sudden appearance (in the common social consciousness) of one of the trendiest sustainability issues: The plastic backlash: what’s behind our sudden rage – and will it make a difference?

4. And just for historical fashion fun – The Pilgrims: The Original Sadd Boys [for whom black was too daring of a color].

5. An occasional uplifting piece of new that is supposed to make us feel hopeful about fashion: The UK workers’ co-op filling in fast fashion’s gaps and here you can buy from that co-op: Community Clothing.

And as a community service: In Mapping, Size Matters + more about Gall–Peters projection. Because you are old enough to know that maps are political and that Africa is bigger than Greenland or Europe. You are welcome!

*

What I was writing about a year ago: 7 dresses x 3 months: Lessons learnt.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w51.

*

Have you already prepared your 2019 resolutions/goals? Are you giving up something? Are you starting something new? Did your 2018 sustainability resolutions work out?

#whatiwore 2018w50 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Hello there, we specialize in the best brain food around here:

1. Knowing my tireless advocacy work for laundering less – proof 1, proof 2 – I recommend this cute BuzzFeed survey of figuring out how much of a cleanliness freak are you in comparison with (let’s not talk about the survey design or its representativity) the average American millennial: Ok, This Poll Is The Place To Confess How Often You Actually Wash These Things. Obviously, I don’t mean to say that the average person is right, just to point out that there is a lot of heterogeneity in habits that still allows survival and that critical judgement has to be applied.

2. Feminist analysis from when subtle, symbolic sexism in politics was a worry – The Princess Effect: How women’s magazines demean powerful women—even when they’re trying to celebrate them. Oh, 2014, I miss you!

3. I keep coming across excerpts from Alison Matthews David’s Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present and it looks delicious. Take a look: 7 Ways Victorian Fashion Could Kill You. Into 2018 reading list it goes!

4. And continuing on the topic on trusting your own judgement: the glory of a minimalist purge (of quite an extreme case, I’d dare to say) in I Surrendered My Wardrobe and the equally true story how a tiny wardrobe might be only a temporary therapy instead of a permanent solution for your true self in The Anxiety of the Minimalist Closet. Relax and do you at your own pace, if you are suffering from millennial shit anxieties you probably still have at least 50 healthy years to live, you have time to explore all kinds of dressing. I, of course, recommend a step-wise reduction and greening of your wardrobe…

5. And a party pooper which might or might not renew your sustainability pledges for the next year: Does Climate Change Mean You Should Fly Less? Yeah, Maybe. For me the balance between individual and collective action is the hardest part of the whole sustainability thing. I’m still figuring it out (17 flights in 2016, 23 in 2017, 8 in 2018 but 2019 already looks like a fly-a-lot year…) but starting to think is.. well, a beginning.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: #100wears: Hummel Madelaine Zip Jacket.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w50 + Sunday links.

*

How do you deal with the ‘personal responsibility’ vs. ‘only massive social/political action can achieve the CO2 cut we need’? Is your propulsion towards radical lifestyle changes, community organizing, or just existential dread under the blanket? What to you do when the existential dread and helplessness comes?

Garment Stories: Hunting Ensemble Beanie

Luīze Leave a Comment

This is a new category born out of my burning wish to tell this one thing… It’s not #100wears just yet for this one, and it is long way from being beyond repair, but it’s a lovely gem of a garment and the story behind it makes it even lovelier.

The cutest thing happened last week. I received the best gift in a long time. And here comes my lesson learnt (as a receiver of such gift) about gift giving: the best material gift is the replacement of something the receiver loved and then lost/wore out/grew out of. Of course, this is not applicable to irreplaceables (pets, people, etc.), so don’t be daft about it, but if you know somebody well enough to know that they have lost a material possession they were fond of, that would make sense to own again and haven’t replaced it yet, here’s your perfect opportunity to show how loving and attentive you are. Boom!

The other way of telling this is ‘my partner gave me a hat that’s very similar to the hat I had until last February and I couldn’t be happier about it’.

So going back a while… I found a red knitted hat among C’s possessions in 2013/2014. I have no idea where it came from, but it was cute and practical, and I started wearing it. As an adult I’ve developed sensitive ears, and year-round swimming (and hating the blow dryers) and bicycle wind don’t help. And I always felt cool when wearing. Few things have that power, so I cherished the little red beanie.

With time it got a patina of meaning and inside jokes, especially about being part of the crew taking after the aesthetics associated with Jacques Cousteau and Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. But during a beer festival in February 2018 I somehow lost it. Yeah, you tell me about the benefits of losing a hat in -17ºC Latvian winter. I looked for it, I wrote the organizers but that beanie was gone… the n-th proof that I am pretty reckless with my things and because of that it probably fell out of my pocket and was shoveled away by a snow/garbage truck. Sad.

I can’t even claim that all I wanted for Xmas was a little red hat, because after a few Pinterest searches I just assumed that the hat I was left with was the gray one I crocheted for C in 2012/2013, so I just wore that one. Yes, very in line with my ‘use up what you’ve got‘ ideology… it’s a fine hat, but it’s a long way from being as visually interesting as the red one. Sorry, gray hat!

I had basically forgotten about the red one when C showed up one day after work with a little package for me. Ta-dah! He had gone beyond a lazy Pinterest search and found Hunting Ensemble Fine Merino Beanie in bright red. 100% merino and made in Germany. This is what I meant before talking about perfect desired presents that bring so much joy…


The new hat also sparked an interest in learning – well, doing a basic google search – about the little red hat. Turns out it has a fun name (‘cap comforter’) and a long history in civil engineering diving that then TV made it Coustou’s trademark. Well, he was wearing it anyways and it looked good on the color TV. Read up: The Incredible Story Beneath Jacques Cousteau’s Famous Red Hat and An incredible Follow-Up to Jacques Cousteau’s Famous Red Hat. Googling ‘standard diving dress‘ you’ll see several historic photos with divers hugging the bonnet under their arm and sporting a knitted cap.

I unpicked the brand tag from my and now I have the perfect anonymous red beanie. It’s so similar to the old one I could have illustrated this with last year’s pictures and nobody would have found a difference… Ha!


*

Have you received something very special this festive season? Have you ever had any successful replacements of this type? Do you lose things often?

#whatiwore 2018w49 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Nom-nom-nom, said the little gray cells:

1. A bit of indigo fetish just for you: True Blue and Indigo Witches + raw, traceable wool fetish, too – Fleece patrol: How organic wool from Patagonia is creating sustainable luxury.

2. Funny fashion tips (and obsessions) around maintenance of hegemonic masculinities: My Father’s Fashion Tips and The Most Flattering Sweater?

3. The horrible stories of visible and undeniable pollution created by textile industry in loosely controlled places: (a) Bangladesh Pollution, Told in Colors and Smells, (b) The denim capital of the world: So polluted you can’t give the houses away, and (c) Dying for Meaning.

4. One of those weird, chain-of-unintended-consequences stories how politics created fashion structures in XVII century and how climate change is making it unviable now – The King of Couture: How Louis XIV invented fashion as we know it and Are Fashion Seasons Outdated?

5. And to put some fire in making nice, authentic for you – not necessarily ones made of 1940s originals, though – wardrobes Five Reasons Vintage Clothing Is Not Just “Old Used Clothes” (Even Though It Kind of Is), and Building a Vintage Closet: a few quick notes, and Building a vintage closet, Step 1: Who are you? There’s a whole series of these there…

*

What I was writing about a year ago: #KonMari for advanced minimalists.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w49 + Sunday links.

*

I am more and more astonished about the collective wish to play winter here, and my willingness to take part. It has been sunny and oscillating between 16-18ºC lately, and streets are full with winter jackets and boots. (OK, and sunglasses too.) Of course, those are not thick enough for a really cold winter, but is very clearly not the same clothing that one wears when a Latvian summer hits exactly the same temperatures, or when a Spaniard travels to Scandinavia in August. And I should know better. I have had enough of those 10ºC summers. But there you have me, wearing wool tights in 18ºC and being cranky about sweating too much. Weird… Yes, yes, climate change, wool nostalgia manufactured by marketing, clinging to the picture book ideas what winter is, the paradoxical life of being cold inside (the no-heating life, anybody?) and warm outside, but I still find it a bit disturbing when there’s a mass market for poorly filled puffy jackets that have a winter look but keeps you warm to the level that a Latvian spring coat would.

Are people faking winter where you live or do you get a real one?

December Swap (8th!) recap

Luīze Leave a Comment

Swap Nº8 came and went. Remembering my exhaustion and despair after the previous one, I (a) was going to do my best to be the most relaxed possible around it and (b) was on a lookout for how it went if I didn’t have other high-stress commitments bookending a swap. After that last recap post, several people gave me advice on how to do it better. Most of that centered around ‘ask for more help’ and ‘stop cooking’. Ha! I can’t do that. My inner grandma insists on feeding people. And as nobody has offered herself to cater for this event just for tips (that this time did not even cover the cost of food and tape), it’s a bind I see no exit from.

To try to stay sane took the previous two days off work (hello, thesis that has to be handed in by X-mas) and made sure I had no plans for Saturday evening or Sunday. Shopping happened, taking the seed suitcase to Ateneu happened, cookies and tortilla happened.

The monster-size vegan bread cookies…

And it went fine. People came and swapped. There was tea and snacks. I beamed at the opportunity to shrug off all the ‘oh, what a great idea!’ with a ‘yeah, I’ve been doing this for more than two years’. I was accompanied by an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers from the very beginning until the very end. Thank you all!

On that positive note I am toying with two ideas for the next one (9th of February, btw): (1) to skip the Banc Expropriat thing and just bring it all to the Roba Amiga container, and (2) to insist that tips are actually ‘taquilla inversa’.

As for Botiga Gratis of Banc Expropriat, I went to ask if they were still OK and accepting stuff as rumors about their eviction come up all the time. The answers are, yes, they are open and active, but their backroom is full to the brim with bags and bags of garments. While the idea is wonderful and clearly working, it is not working enough. The Botiga Gratis has clearly become a guilt parking for the socially conscious graciences who share the stigma of the containers but then do not acquire their stuff exactly where they bring the old garments. I’ve noticed this spark in the eyes of Swap uncustomers when informed that the leftovers go there, they feel great about it! No, dude, your worn out fast fashion jersey is not charity. It’s garbage you refuse to dispose of properly.

So my new plan is to add another didactic dimension to this work and educate people why Roba Amiga is the thing to do. First of all, that is the official municipal response: used garments and textile waste go to Roba Amiga containers, and those people take care of sorting and figuring out whatever can still be done with that. If any other alternative would appear – ganchillo crochet enthusiasts, patchworkers, pillow stuffers, etc. – I’d be very happy, but they haven’t yet. And organizing a whole different shift (and people don’t want to do this; fuck, I don’t want to do this) of bringing bags and bags to Botiga Gratis when they already have bags and bags wastes both my and their nerves and time.

And, yes, I have to give this thing a bit more of a capitalist spin and suggest that everybody who benefits from this event considers paying me. If every person who passed through the event last Saturday would have left an euro in the tip jar, I wouldn’t be complaining, because that would have covered all the food, all the tape and then some… but it is not the case! So taquilla inversa – i.e. ‘pay what you want/can if you consider this a good idea’ – is the big poster I’m preparing for the next Swap.

The leftovers.

The magical team that wrapped it up, swept, washed up, and locked the door. Thank you!

As for my commitment to stay calm and do less. Well… it started well. We had a very late lunch after the Swap with C and some friends, I was happily decompressing and munching seitan. At home I had Pride and Prejudice and drawing waiting, so it seemed perfect. But instead I got what seems to have been my first migraine, leading to going to bed at eight and just staying there. Miserable. And the shitshow continued on Sunday when I woke up with pain in my left foot that made it hard to walk. On Monday at the GP they confirmed that 8+ hours on foot is not a good idea, especially for my apparently not well healed last year’s sprained ankle. Bah! The ‘don’t overdo it’ part clearly didn’t work out this time. But I’ll try again…

The little pink jersey was the only garment that left my wardrobe. And I even know who has it now!

On the bright side, what did I get? A pair of Vans-like slippers and an off-shoulder dress in 100% black lyocell. Neither of them is a whim. A pair of sneakers is always a good idea because I burn through mine. These are my size but I expect them to give a little to become extra comfy. My current plan is to wear them around the house to break them in. The only problem there is that my May swap slippers (thank you, Margareta, for spotting them!) is now at the comfiest point before they break… These are the new ones:

And the dress is a shape I call Mucha dress, although poor Alphonse is probably rolling in his grave because of it. But for me they do recall his heroines: off-shoulder, generous and drape-y cuts, florals and ruffles, and playful about tiptoeing between a nightgown and a dress. Not full length, though. I’ve had two such pieces so far that I wore to threads… which was easy given the flimsy fabrics and my constant tugging of the dropped elastic waists and/or shoulders. This is the spirit of a Mucha dress in my mind:

My Pinterest wishlist featured a couple of Mucha dresses:

I had never imagined one in black or any solid color for that matter, but here it came: no signs of previous wear, Zara, made in Morocco, 100% lyocell. This one does not have an elastic dropped waist to tug at which will probably prolong its lifespan and has pockets! The Zara thing is starting to worry me a bit because of 9 second-hand garments I’ve adopted in 2018, four (!) are from Zara. But to hell with them, I have a new Mucha dress for once it gets warm again… Or maybe even for January with tights or leggings?

*

Do you have any swap experiences? Have you ever organized a swappy event? If yes, how did that go? Or do you have any other routine sources of quality hand-me-downs: family, friends, etc? What’s your best-ever (or just latest) swap find?

#whatiwore 2018w48 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Because your gray cells deserve a feast:

1. And because ’tis the season: 12 Easy Ideas for a Sustainable(ish) Christmas.

2. And to reduce the stress and increase the lifespan of your most festive (hence usually the most exposed to stain catastrophes) garments: How to Remove (Almost) Every Stain from Your Clothes.

3. Oh, funny story for 2018: Victoria’s Secret Is Trying to Change With the Times. Or Is It? D-oh!

4. And on the other side of sex-segregated dressing and gendered narratives: The Sneaky Way Clothing Brands Hooked Men on Stretch Jeans.

5. Of course, this section wouldn’t be true to itself without some climate pessimism and tales on how the world is going down the toilet in a hand basket, courtesy of George Monbiot: In a World of Their Own and Hopeless Realism.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: Stop browsing fast fashion, browse the internet instead.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w48 + Sunday links.

*

Do you have any plans for sustainable-ing Christmas? Less love miles? Less gifts? Less decoration? In my family this is the first year – after several years of discussions about such possibility – when the agreement is to not to give presents… We’ll see how that will go. So far it has been quite relaxing as the pressure to think up something reasonably fun, useful and sustainable for people who already have it all has been lifted.

#whatiwore 2018w47 + Sunday links

Luīze 2 Comments

Feed the little gray cells:

1. OK, the retail might be working very hard to reinvent itself, but this is just weird: “Going to a store […] should feel like going to a hotel or resort, where you are taking away a memory because you are touched by an emotion you want to revisit […] As a retailer, this means “you are not serving a person who needs an item,” […] You are serving a person who needs an experience”: Libraries, Gardens, Museums. Oh, and a Clothing Store.

2. When the way how we use our body parts change, also this happens: Surgery students ‘losing dexterity to stitch patients’. Apparently stitcher robots are not really here yet…

3. And the other reason to praise – or at least explain the surge of – the hands-on crafts is their mental health benefits (in Spanish): Las manualidades son el nuevo yoga para la paz mental: Lettering.

4. George Monbiot got on the quit meat bandwagon only after imagining animal-less meat. Here’s another sprinkle of his futuristic excitement, in this case about synthesizing all food: “a group of Finnish researchers has been producing food without either animals or plants. Their only ingredients are hydrogen-oxidising bacteria, electricity from solar panels, a small amount of water, carbon dioxide drawn from the air, nitrogen and trace quantities of minerals such as calcium, sodium, potassium and zinc. The food they have produced is 50 to 60% protein, the rest is carbohydrate and fat. […] They use electricity from solar panels to electrolyse water, producing hydrogen, that feeds bacteria (which turn it back into water). Unlike other forms of microbial protein (such as Quorn), it requires no carbohydrate feedstock – in other words, no plants.”

5. Lessons from the plastic-free people (in Spanish): Tres años viviendo sin plástico and – with focus on our unwillingness to trouble others – Sin plástico y sin vergüenza.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: How to Survive *Winter* in Barcelona.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w47 + Sunday links.

*

What are the sustainability practices that make you feel like a burden? Asking to weight your own containers at the bulk bins? Telling that you don’t eat this, this, this, and that at a social gathering? Asking where and under what conditions was this made? Having to lie about what you did with people’s last year’s presents?

#whatiwore 2018w46 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

The best brain food for the best people:

1. Mid-term elections in US, Melania Trump’s fashion choices, Michelle Obama’s book tour, and the season 6 of House of Cards have brought a series of NYT articles (♥ Vanessa Friedman) on the meaning of dress while in office: (a) Melania Trump: Out of Africa, Still in Costume, (b) The First Female President Will Not Carry a Handbag, (c) Dressing Michelle Obama, Then and Now, and (d) The Congressional Uniform Is About to Change.

2. And these two weird-for-me articles (trigger warnings for restrictive beauty standards and class bias) speak to the same interaction between appearance and how people treat one in line with their reading of our appearances: Why do attractive people dress well? I interviewed a random stranger to find out and How to become an International Woman of Mystery.

3. Can you beat Bill Gates’ score on this climate change quiz? And after that, Climate change and the 75% problem. Major takeaway points: cut meat and dairy, reduce your consumption of new things, rethink all those internet purchases, think about making your dwelling more energy efficient…

4. The McKinsey report about how ‘nearshoring’ – still outsourcing to cheaper places but doing it closer so that the production would shorten even more the sketch-to-shelf cycle – is the new business-smart thing to do fashion popped up in my feeds again (this was the first time): In an age of super-fast fashion, Mexico and Turkey may be the new China. Ugh, when relatively good things happen for the wrong reasons…

5. This: Please Stop Clearing Out Your Wardrobe In The Name Of Sustainability. Again and again, every conversation about sustainability has to begin with the fact that the most sustainable thing to do is to wear out things you already have, even if they came from fast fashion brands that you now loathe. Paradoxically enough, wearing your fast fashion stuff a lot is a way of sticking it to them! My advice on this, here – Baby Steps: Detoxing A Wardrobe Takes Time.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: The Pink Post: Instrumental and subversive uses of the traditionally feminine.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w46 + Sunday links.

*

Have you had to curb your impulse to throw away anything that said H’n’M or Zara on it after your first exposure to problems with fast fashion? What did you do? Do you happily pick up fast fashion items at swaps or second hand shops or do you shun them? Do you ever think about this paradox of you wearing and hence representing a brand you do not agree with at all while doing the most sustainable thing possible in giving the most possible wears to their garments?

#whatiwore 2018w45 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Brain food, brain food, what a good idea:

1. Urbanism and fashion industry, oh, yes: Is NYC’s garment district unraveling? and How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town. And, in similar vein, some innovation in how to get their fashion to people (still moving parcels around but at least not with new garments): WeWork Is Getting Into Workplace Fashion With Rent the Runway.

2. Today is the Best Time in Fashion: “Fashion has become closer to modern art. Whereas both forms were once ruled by strict classical ideas, the space is now free with untrammeled creativity and multidirectional experimentation, where people can both celebrate beauty as well as ideas that challenge traditional notions of beauty.”

3. When politics and ethical/sustainable fashion might or might not come together: Made in USA and the Rise of Nationalism.

4. What the ultrarich do if they have similar long term vision of future as I do: How tech’s richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse.

5. Structural disadvantages in the industry: The Most Diverse Fashion Season Ever on the Runway, but Not the Front Row and What it’s really like to be black and work in fashion.

*

What I was writing about a year ago – #100wears: Ginta’s gray cardigan.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w45 + Sunday links.

*

The weather is confusing, there is a lot of work (at work, ha), the blog is a bit backlogged, and my links are very USA-centric. Yes. How are you do doing?

KonMari experience: Mara

Luīze 2 Comments

In April 2018 I gifted myself a Marie Kondo consulting workshop in London and soon after started looking for my first practice clients to get certified as a KonMari™ consultant. Mara – a Swap enthusiast interested in sustainability and zero wasting – volunteered for hours of such fun and ended up becoming my first client that has done all the KonMari™ categories. It was a pleasure working with her and here you have her (very flattering) testimony:

“Given the fact that I have a tendency to accumulate quite a lot of unnecessary things, the 6 sessions I did with Luize as my Marie Kondo consultant definitely ended up making my home a place that sparks joy rather than causes anxiety.

Session 1. Clothes

Our first session was sorting out the clothes (minus the shoes) and we spent 5 hours going through every single item I owned. during the whole process, Luize simply guided me and asked me useful questions like “How do you feel about this item?” “Why do you keep it” or “Does it spark joy”. It made me ask myself if I really needed that piece of clothing and it held me accountable for what I kept. She also helped me notice, as an external observer, that I had clear preferences for piling up clothes of similar colors (mustard yellow, deep blue, coral red etc) and then many of them were in fact doubles. This made it easier to discard items that were superfluous. Because Luize is also very ecologically-minded, she also helped me focus on those items that were of better quality, learning to appreciate the materials they were made of.

My aim with this Marie Kondo reorganization was to downsize, not to make room for new or more, so Luize’s Marie Kondo training coupled with her minimalist tendencies really helped motivate me to think small and end up with a closet which I can easily access.

Regina helped a lot. Especially with bags and boxes…

The result is that all my clothes now fit neatly into my wardrobe, they are nicely sorted in a way in which I can see them easily, I was advised on which clothes go better hanging or folded and by getting rid of the items that were simply there as wardrobe fillers I have managed to gain more access to the clothes I really wanted to wear.

The homework pile: when some clothes were hard to dispose of, Luize encouraged me to take that decision later and/or try to fix them and make them wearable. In this pile there are some that need the zippers fixed, some that I felt too guilty to give away and decided to try and wear them when the season came, and some that are too white and easily stained so I will try and dye them.

Mara’s KonMaried drawer…

*

Session 2. Shoes and jewellery

My shoe collection was rather easy to downsize, there were some pairs I was made to realize I had never worn because the occasion never came, the style didn’t suit me, or they were simply beyond repair. With the jewellery the sorting took a lot longer but the end result was a collection of jewellery I decided I wear the most, a bag of things to give away to charity or to bring to the swap Luize organizes 4 times a year. As with the previous session, what helped me the most was the fact that I had company in the process, and that despite my initial fear, I didn’t feel in any way judged for owning, keeping or discarding an item. Luize just asked me questions and never insisted or tried to convince me to do what she thought was best. She just made me think twice and gave useful tips on how to arrange the items I kept and where to properly discard those I no longer needed.

How 15 pairs of shoes became 10…

And the drawer makeover.

*

Session 3. Books

Our third session was sorting out my book collection and this was fairly easy, but I received good advice on how to store them and make them more visually pleasing, also how to better keep the books organized into books I need to return and those I intend to read soon. Luize told me about where to sell the books I no longer wanted and I managed to do that as homework after the session.

Session 4. Stationary

This session was an extremely tiring yet productive one, and I can still reap the benefits whenever I look into my nicely organized box of pens, pencils, markers, paintbrushes etc. It took a long time to sort out which pens to discard and which were worth keeping, but with a lot of patience and good company, we managed to arrange all the hundreds of objects that usually were crowded in one place, or invaded the rest of the house. (I’m looking at you, paper clips!). We compartmentalized, thought of smart storing ideas, the erasers got a new permanent home, as did my multiple scissors (some were sent off for adoption). The end result was one complete tool-kit for an English teacher/ amateur painter/ googly eyes-afficionado. The bare necessities remained and the extras were donated to very happy new homes.

Session 5. Papers, notebooks, stickers

Being an English teacher, the part I dreaded the most was the one involving teaching paraphernalia. Having sorted the stationary, I felt like most of it was over…but we still managed to fill 5 more hours sorting my stickers (which Luize did wonders with in terms of organizing and managing to put them all in the same binder. How? Every little thing she does is magic …) My notebooks were also ripped up, keeping those pages that actually meant something, with the promise (and homework) that I would transcribe them. What was left was a series of blank pages inside some visibly thinner notebooks, a lot of paper thrown into the recycling bin, and a firm promise to never end up having 5 different notebooks for the same things. There were of course the host of toys and games, laminated activities and cards that I had accumulated during 5 years of teaching kids.

Yet again with infinite patience and a slightly amused look on her face, Luize stood by me as we separated the items into “to keep” and “to donate” until we had one mentally and physically lighter English teacher and multiple happy teachers who received parts of the activities I no longer use.

Session 6. Kitchen, bath and beyond (misc)

From learning to fold table cloths and kitchen wipes to designating special forever homes for different kitchen items, this session felt a lot easier because it was not so hard to decide what to keep and what to let go of. When we finished that we managed to tackle the medicine cabinet, throw away expired things, sort nail polishes into a nice box, dispose of make up I never really used and decide on a more clever way of storing the creams and gels I want to use first, and have the rest in a lower drawer.

All of this, without a detached observer, is pure hell. So much easier when a wise voice points out the obvious and pulls you out of staring into the void, surrounding by a ton of items you don’t even know where to begin with.

My sessions with Luize were all hard work, but so needed. Despite the mountain of objects that I had to tackle, it all became much lighter and manageable with the help of someone trained in this, and more importantly, someone truly enthusiastic about helping others organize themselves, cut down on stuff and think in a more environmentally friendly way.

I found in Luize a calm, no nonsense companion, someone I could use as a second conscience when wondering what to do, and a well informed Marie Kondo consultant. Moving into a new home and having had this help was priceless!”

Tidying can be very tiring…

*

Oh, so much kindness! Thank you, Mara. Also, unwittingly, I think, she managed to give me back a big cup of my own medicine giving me a double lesson not only in how it feels when somebody comes in and helps with something long postponed but also the vulnerability (and later on – gratitude) it implies.

You see, our initial agreement was non-monetary as I needed to practice, but somewhere in the middle of the process Mara suggested that she could come over to deep clean my place with her magic water-filter Storm Trooper vacuum cleaner. We did that once Mara’s process was over, and I got to experience the complete range of emotions starting from embarrassment of revealing my dust bunny farms to a stranger (whom I had been lecturing on tidying, no less), the relief of having somebody beside me determined to carry out all the steps and not allowing me to ignore some of those dark corners, and the final happiness of ‘oh, even the air has become lighter here’. So my thank you is also for that therapeutic intervention.

*

What are your relationships with tidying? Are you the person that has no conflicts around your possessions and order, whatever your sweet spot on the austere-chaos continuum? Do you go on individual tidying sprees or do you like to have a buddy for that?

#whatiwore 2018w44 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Ho-ho-ho, brain food for everybody!

1. I am so not gen-Z, I have no intuitive understanding of the streetwear aesthetics. Hence, (a) The Season of Peak Sneaker Silliness, (b) How America Became a Nation of Yoga Pants, and (c) Is the Streetwear Bubble About to Burst?

2. Because time by time you just need a tongue-in-cheek anarchist essay: The Abolition of Work by Bob Black.

3. And a reminder that gender has always been what people made of it: A Brief History of Unisex Fashion + a contemporary high fashion example: Céline, Hedi Slimane, and the Grown-Up Woman.

4. And one of the beautiful contingencies when technology and new social mores attached to them push away the old: How Cycling Clothing Opened Doors for Women + a contemporary experiment (mentioned in the article) that shows how far we’ve gone since then: Bikes and Bloomers.

5. And this stuff that I’ve never really understood – Hermès CEO: “People Still Want Things That Not a Lot of People Can Get”.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: Curating the 100% comfort wardrobe.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w44 + Sunday links.

*

What are the trends that you do not understand? Does it make you feel old or just out of touch, or just proudly individual? Are your arguments more about (a) lack of practicality, (b) ridicule, or (c) sheer ugliness?

#100wears: Rayon shorts

Luīze 2 Comments

#100wears is the most beloved garment section where I show off the longevity of items I’ve worn at least 100 times and urge to elevate the rather low #30wears aspiration. Basically, a love song, a poem, a “there are some garments so good I can’t stop wearing them”… These little rayon shorts are one of the unexpected – and often unseen, as I shall explain below – heroes of my wardrobe.

They came my way as an untouched hand-me-down from my mother. She actually bought them in my presence in Barcelona in 2016 just to realize that that was a complete impulse buy with the possibility to handing them over to me prominent in her mind. Or maybe that was her intention all along? Dunno. It took me some time to incorporate them properly in my wardrobe – 44 wears between 2016 and 2017, 67 wears in 2018 – but now they are a staple I’m afraid of losing.

So, this is probably too much information, but… I’d estimate that they are visible less than half of the times I’m wearing them. No styling surprises when you can see them: ultra-light pajama-like shorts for the Barcelona summers, like so:

However, these shorts have gained their special place in my heart with their capacity to also work like… underwear. Here, I said it. Looks like that (if I would ever show it):

If you have been following my writings, especially the summer themed ones (see a sample here), you have been informed by now that I am the ultimate chub-rub person. My tights touch alright, I walk a lot and sweat a lot while doing it. And conventional underwear makes it even more painful. Enter these shorts! I know other chaffers prefer more serious biker shorts in performance fabrics that cover more leg or, well, wearing actual trousers… But I’m a dress person most of the time and have a hate-hate relationship with performance fabrics, especially in summer.

So these are not moisture wicking but they dry really quickly (also see that point about this being about summers in Barcelona) which not only adds to wearability but also to sink washability and overnight drying. The ultimate little short that goes from outerwear to underwear to pajamas! Thankfully it shows little wear so far but I dread the moment of having to send it to the Beyond Repair category. My current plan is to make a copy of this model from the fabric of my old kaftan that was truly beyond repair and hence was converted into a pile of fabric again… I’ll let you know if that happens.

*

What pieces easily reach #100wears in your wardrobe? Do you have garments that you use for several, supposedly even incompatible, purposes? How did that came along? I blame the 1990s ‘underwear as outerwear’ slip trend that convinced my pre-teen self that such limits were unnecessary…

#whatiwore 2018w43 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

Here, feed the brain:

1. While most articles about uniform dressing emphasize reduction of decision fatigue and tech millionaires, this 2014 piece turns the argument on its head and talks about uniforms as ‘a stance against trends’ and ‘a consistent recognizable foundation’: The Case for Uniforms. The most inspirational example mentioned is Diane Pernet from A Shaded View on Fashion.

2. On disinhibited creation: Why you should make useless things.

3. I’m such a sucker for ‘look at this person who single-handedly and with great dignity revived an old industry and is doing great’, so: A Legacy of Production at Valley Oak Wool & Fiber Mill. Also, the microscopic-precision handiwork for high fashion as a solution for the youth unemployment (and stupid non-jobs of the digital economy): Teenagers, Forget Engineering. Your Future Is Craft.

4. And I cannot resist a detailed history of a classic and local working class garment when boy fashionistas are fangirling about them: The Other Fisherman Sweater.

5. For our scary future section, How to edit a human. This one comes with a side dish of the dirty business that science often is, in this case making clear also the difference in opportunities for worldwide recognition that funding/location bring to labs and research groups, or how a bunch of genius Lithuanians won’t ever get a Nobel.

*

What I was writing about a year ago: An Educational afternoon – The True Cost and Upcycling Barcelona.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w43 + Sunday links + Old #ootd.

Other old posts you might enjoy: Adventures of the spring 2017 capsule and The wardrobe ins and outs of spring 2017.

*

Do you have any favorite type of stories among the sustainability usuals? Are you more touched by stories of independent wool farmers in West or underprivileged women’s cooperatives in South? Materials, dyes, sewing – which stories you save for special weekend moments of enjoyment? Share some of your favorites, please.

Fix it! No Pasarán jacket and the ruffle blouse

Luīze 2 Comments

I started to learn to do proper textile stuff last year. And only now I’m finally starting to grasp – in tiniest baby steps – the basics of garment construction and textile properties. So this is a section of ‘look what I did to make this garment work better for me’ or ‘…to prolong its lifespan’. This post is a double feature of a t-shirt I loved so much I turned it into an applique for another well loved item and a blouse that kept opening at the bust so I sewed it closed.

A standard disclaimer: these are not detailed tutorials but inspirational pieces instead. However, my level is so basic that you can probably do this too. Here we go:

*

No pasarán t-shirt to jacket

No pasarán t-shirt depicting a ‘tropical uterus’ (as described by its author Elena Cuadrado) and the anti-fascist slogan from the Spanish Civil War ¡No pasarán! comes from a crowdfunding initiative that sprang as a resistance movement when the right-wing government kept threatening Spanish women with limiting their rights to abortion in 2014. Much care and love went into these, for example, the delivery to backers were delayed because the organizers had discovered that the t-shirt provider chosen didn’t have good enough labor standards, so they switched to 100% organic cotton from Stanley/Stella halfway through. If you love the design and want to make it into a desktop or whatever else, there are downloadable .png and .pdf at the link above.

So I loved it and wore it a lot. It got well over #100wears and it showed. After several fixes of the cotton jersey around the armpits, it became clear recently that something else had to be done. See, old fixed ‘welts’ in the background an a new hole + an overall wearout:

At the same time I was figuring out how to improve my old Street One jacket. It, being around 15 years old, was cut to early 2000s fashion – on the hip – as everything was extra-low waist back then. For real, I didn’t learn where my real waist was until the age of 25 or so! The overall design is nice, the fabric is pleasant and sturdy, but it lacked an ooomph:

First I added some patches Kristīne gifted me, but that wasn’t enough and the length problem was still there…

But at some point an idea of a feminist-biker-gang-jacket occurred, we did some brainstorming with Carmen at Opció Taller, and then magic happened. Scissor magic and applique magic, to be precise.


This is the result! Shorter hem without many complications because the lowest press button was originally a long way higher than the hem. Front patches. And the glorious back applique. My only little concern is how it will wear under the backpack, but I don’t wear backpack on my back that often (it’s mostly in the bicycle basket) and it’s great so far! So 15 more years for the jacket…

*

The ruffle blouse

I got this flimsy piece of plastic as a hand-me-down from Kristīne in 2015. It’s originally Asos, but knowing Kristīne I would bet that it has passed through a charity shop in Cambridge before she acquired it. It’s transparent, so an undergarment is needed. That’s one of the reasons why repairing the little lace blouse was so important, because I wear these two together.

I had worn it with no second thought about the buttons even this May. Then summer came and it’s too plastic for Barcelona summer, so we met again this week. And there clearly have been some body changes in between because I spent all day buttoning it up because the buttons kept popping. 0 fun even with an undergarment. Evidence below, May 2018 vs. October 2018. There is now just this little bit more tugging on the buttons now… that makes all the difference for the ease of wear:

Every busty person will have met this problem with button-downs, it’s one of the reasons why the only one I have is quite oversized… but this one, which is not even a true button-down because it does not button all the way down, now played this trick on me! See?

But I want to keep wearing this one! I like the cut, I like the pink hue, the exaggerated femininity of it, dude, it’s a nice little blouse for my brand of ‘tame-looking-librarian-that-will-crush-your-bullshit-once-you-have-underestimated-her’…

The only reasonable fix that occurred to me was to sew it up. I measured that leaving open only the top two buttons was enough for me to get it over my head, which meant that all the problem area can be neatly stitched together and nobody will know. And nobody will have to remark on my buttons ever again.


I sewed together the inside part of the button detail, as that was a neater way to do it. So the buttons can still be opened and the stitches are behind them. That’s why it’s not perfectly fixed from the outside and looks ‘natural’. The difference is subtle but I don’t have to monitor those buttons anymore. Great! More mental energy for the actual life.

*

Have you done any life-giving fixes recently? Made any garments? Or is there something you would like to fix and don’t know how to?

#whatiwore 2018w42 + Sunday links

Luīze Leave a Comment

The Friday outfit is a story of comfort vs. stupid ideas about what’s appropriate… That hoodie, well, actually two of those – organic cotton, made in India, stamped with the corporate identity of the company C works for – appeared in our home after a work event that C went to. First I tried to get him to discard both of them because ‘you don’t need them’, then I accepted that he really was using it around the house, then I started to wear the other one myself noting how warm and fluffy it is… and on Friday I went out on the street with it.
Only to the swimming pool and back, and it was raining, but I had sworn to myself not to wear this one outside… But knowing winters in Barcelona and how all I want to wear to the pool – and that’s three times a week and just down the block – is something comfy and adequate for weather, it will now be my gym uniform. And it has a hood to make up for my unwillingness to blow dry my hair. A win for the ‘relax and be casual’ team.

Lesson learnt I consider myself a tiny step closer to: Letting go, of course, and following the sirens of comfort.

*

Now that you are all comfy, under a blanket and with a cup of warm something, here:

1. The typical reminders of all the offshoring problems and onshoring complexities: Why Is It So Hard for Clothing Manufacturers to Pay a Living Wage? and American Manufacturing Doesn’t Have to Die. And just to put a sinister spin on that, out of the Dark side a big consulting company: Is apparel manufacturing coming home? The ironic part is that for them – and people they serve – it’s not about ethics but about a balance between production/shipping costs and timing. So their conclusion is that producing in Mexico for US market or Turkey for EU market makes a lot of sense (and customers love it, too) but not really on situ production, that would be waaay too expensive…

2. In the news of ‘animals we are not exploiting yet that have a great potential’- New Artificial Spider Silk: Stronger Than Steel and 98 Percent Water. Be calm, it’s about replicating ‘the spider technology’ not cramming masses of spiders together and making them work for us, no, we do that mostly with mammals, humans and otherwise, not spiders. Not yet, at least.

3. History time! And about the seasonal wares, no less. The Trench Coat: Before, During, and After the Trenches and From Cavalry to Coco Chanel: The Cardigan Unbuttoned.

4. To bring you back – or for the first time – to William Morris and ‘Some Hints on Pattern-Designing‘ (1881) among his other writings, here are some guidelines from him:

“We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of men’s hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough, rather than the unintelligent work of machines or slaves, though it be delicate;
to refuse altogether to use machine-made work unless where the nature of the thing made compels it, or where the machine does what mere human suffering would otherwise have to do;
to have a high standard of excellence in wares and not to accept makeshifts for the real thing, but rather to go without;
to have no ornament merely for fashion’s sake, but only because we really think it beautiful, otherwise to go without it;
not to live in an ugly and squalid place (such as London) for the sake of mere excitement or the like, but only because our duties bind us to it;
to treat the natural beauty of the earth as a holy thing not to be rashly dealt with for any consideration;
to treat with the utmost care whatever of architecture and the like is left us of the times of art.

I deny that it can ever be our own to do as we like with; it is the property of the world, that we hold in trust for those that come after us.”

5. And I encourage you, yes, repeatedly, to do some pattern play. It’s not 19th century anymore and any basic image editing software can bring you and your doodles a lot of joy. Here is one way to do it: Pattern Play with Jeanetta: How to Create a Pattern in the style of William Morris. As a proof, my 5-minute pattern from mandalas that were in my 2017 agenda:


Or how this:

Becomes that:

*

What I was writing about a year ago: #100wears: Veja Taua… Oh, I miss them dearly! And I am stalking some random leftover pairs on Amazon hoping they will still be there when my October salary comes in. Those sneakers were so good, I’m now ready to buy two new pairs and just have them sitting in my wardrobe waiting for the current Wata to wear out. After three pairs worn to shreds, I think that’s an informed decision.

What I was wearing a year ago (see how many items coincide!): #whatiwore 2017w42 + Sunday links.

Other old posts you might enjoy: We shall swap again and May Swap recap.

*

Have you had any comfort vs. ‘propriety’ dilemmas or insights lately? Which one do you typically gravitate towards?

The urge to acquire

Luīze Leave a Comment

Sometimes the urge to acquire knocks at your door and says ‘hey, you really really need something new… no, you *deserve* it… how could you possibly go on without a mustard cardigan’, and your shopping fast goes out of the window. Sounds familiar?

Since I started pruning my wardrobe in 2014, I’ve mostly observed others going through these dynamics: friends telling that they just *need* to buy something new every month, seeing how some wardrobes fill up immediately with new things once the old ones are edited away, people digging through swap piles frantically to take away something, anything. And, no, I am not immune. It happens rarely but I had a recent flare-up that got me thinking…

Let me set the stage for you: September, Porto, late afternoon, vacations. After lunch C went back to the apartment for a siesta and I went to see an exhibition on Frida Kahlo photo archive. Nice. After coming out of the museum I just walked around and ended up in front of a Humana, suddenly having it very clear that I was going to buy something there.

After a short mental scan of my wardrobe for possible need, I proceeded to meticulously review every top and dress in that shop to select my winners. As after the September swap, I touched the garments, looked at fabric composition tags, scoffed ‘ugh, 100% polyester, of course’, looking for something nice in at least 100% cotton or viscose. While linen or silk would have been nice, Humana in Iberian peninsula is not that kind of place; as with the swaps, what goes around, comes around. And after several trips beyond the fitting curtain I had two garments that made sense for my wardrobe for €12.78. Both of them can be assumed to be functional replacements of a ‘beyond repair’ garment I said bye bye this summer, like so:

To make it even funnier, both are Zara, made in Portugal (the black one) and Morocco (the white one), and the black one even had its tags on: from the original €17.95 to €7.59, even less than the price tag said because in Humana they do all kinds of ‘sales’ – all for €4, all for €1 – and that day it was the -20% day. And on top of that – just to make fun of my fabric composition obsession – none of them has that information. The tags on the white one have been cut off, and all the intact tags on the black one does not reveal the material… my guess would be a cotton and elastane mix + synthetic lace for the black one and no clue for the white one, except for the synthetic lace panel.

Although I can rationalize this episode of the urge to acquire much better than the previous time I heard the the little voice of ‘oh, you are so buying something here’ in the WAG shop in Cape Town last year which cost me €160, I am still curious about that voice and where it came from. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t need a lift-me-up. But I needed a garment, and I needed it now.

I can think of two different but resonating dynamics for this. First, food cravings! Assuming that food cravings can be similar to shopping cravings not only in the good way of ‘my body is smart and wants natural yoghurt / comfy shoes, so I shall provide’, but ‘my body is weird and wants pickles in ice cream / a giant pack of chocolate chip cookies / another supermini dress I’ll never wear…’

The cravings story I like to tell has a morality subplot to it – as does garment acquisition after you have learnt enough about the harmful ways of the fashion industry – and involves anchovies. I’ve been an ovo-lacto vegetarian since 2006 and mostly vegan since 2011, but there were episodes in late 2000s when I just wanted a can of anchovies (always when it was already sitting in my mom’s fridge, never in shop). So I would eat it and move on. With no remorse, btw. And nowadays I act similarly around cheese and ice cream. If it feels like a good idea, enjoy it and relax. If it happens rarely enough – and only you can feel what’s rarely and what’s bingeing – just do it. Relaxing your standards occasionally to improve your quality of life is a good idea. And helps to not get too caught up in the purity politics of holier-than-thou. Note to self: Nobody needs another judgemental and suffering martyr.

I considered a photo of anchovies to illustrate my point but that somehow seemed too triggering. Here, look at this moldy piece of milk robbed to calves instead:

Second, selecting from a fixed set. Contrary to Clarissa trying to expand our horizons thinking beyond the given – look up her smorgasbord analogy; in a nutshell, even if you are presented with a multitude of readily available options to chose from, think about what you want without looking at the buffet as your true wish might be on another table – we tend to treat the given set as final, even in fleeting situations. I’m sure I’m not the only one who, when unpartnered and open to encounters, would enter a bar/party/class and without even thinking about it, do a hypothetical potential mate selection along the lines of ‘if this bunch of people would be the last bunch of people on earth, who would I…’ Why? It’s ridiculous. If you are somebody doing this with garments at shops or swaps, play the game, but try to keep in mind what you already have in your wardrobe. For example, when you have selected a winner at a swap, ask if you would swap anything out of your wardrobe to bring this one in. If the answer is no, reconsider taking it.

I keep reassuring people that it’s fine to bring their swap finds back the next time. The frantic buzz of the swap – as in shops during the sales – alters our decision making and sends it into a post-apocalyptic mode of thinking. Relax! Just shrug and bring it back on December 1.

As for me, I think I’ve found the perfect pastime that allows to open a safety valve for wanting things and prevents me from the scarcity-mentality browsing: sewing magazines! I stroll to my local libraries, fetch a pile of Burda and Patrones, and leaf through, annotating via phone photos and sketches things I like. As I’ve taken up learning to sew, these are fantasies that could be made reality but not immediately. The results look like this and may or may not turn into real garments, but I had my hour or two fantasizing and evaluating along the lines of ‘oh, this is nice… yuck, who thought that that was a good idea? …wow, I could totally enjoy one of these…’


*

What’s your relationship with that little voice? Do you have it? Do you indulge it or ignore it?