I know I spend too much time looking at clothes I want, and not enough at ways to wear the ones I have.
There are many reasons for this. There’s the familiar retail fix, the fact I wear a range of styles, the fact that I can afford them (and remember vividly the years I couldn’t). And on top of all that, the fact I can justify it because covering menswear is my job.
But I’m aware of this, and I’ve recently been trying to spend more time with my existing wardrobe – taking style inspiration from books, from Instagram, from friends, and then organising outfits so I can remember them in the future.
This last bit of organisation is particularly useful when the seasons change. Suddenly it’s hot again; the olive-linen overshirt comes out of the wardrobe; but I can’t quite remember what I really enjoyed wearing it with last summer.
Instagram is great for inspiration, given the range of people and accounts. It’s not quite as good as Tumblr used to be, in my book, but there’s no shortage of imagery.
A problem is that once you’ve saved images you like, they’re not easy to download and organise. What I tend to do is dip into my saved images – using it more like a filtered feed – and then organise my outfits that come out of it.
So I’ll find an image I like that relates to clothes I have – perhaps a pale-green gilet worn with a white T-shirt and chinos – and then try it out. I have a gilet in a similar colour from Rocky Mountain but usually wear it with blue jeans. So I’ll try it with the tee and chinos and, if I like the result, snap a selfie and save it in an ‘Outfits’ folder on my phone (above).
Sometimes, I won’t like the result. Sometimes I’ll play around with other options, but it still won’t work. That’s fine, the outfit just doesn’t get saved – the folder is one more filter on the world of inspiration: a set of looks I know works and I can reach for any time I need it.
A few years ago, I then categorised this folder according to formality and to an extent by weather (there is a separate ‘summer’ category; there should be a rainwear one).
You can see my categories above. Casual jackets has proved to be the most wide-ranging category, and that has been further broken down (second image).
The first time I did this it took hours. In fact, the first time I did it I categorised everything during time off at Christmas, backed it up on iCloud, and then found it had been deleted when I ran out of space.
That won’t happen again – the folder is on my laptop, on my back-up hard drive, and on Google Drive. I tend to download a new set of images and categorise them every six months (a season). The only pain is when I realise I really need a new category (the aforementioned rain one) and that requires going through all 1467 images.
But it’s so worth it. When the weather turned cold a couple of weeks ago I started going into my Overcoats folder and reminding myself of new looks I really liked – my Ciardi coat with black for instance (the taupe is dark and muted enough) or my Chapal leather jacket with the Adret knit (short enough to work with that rather short jacket).
As I said, I only need this because I have a lot of clothes, but it is satisfying making full use of them – every browse is a reminder of a great piece I have neglected (eg my hand-dyed Mandarin jacket, below) as well as an outfit.
I also work hard to keep all my inspiration images in one place.
So often I’ll be in Ralph Lauren and see a great look on a mannequin – that will be snapped on my phone, but then get put in a Google Drive folder. Sometimes I take a screenshot of something on my phone or computer – that goes in the same place.
Even that annoying thing on Instagram when you like the second image in a post but hitting ‘save’ gives you the first one too: then I take a screenshot of the second image and put it in the folder.
Pinterest is something I’ve started using a lot more in the past year, simply because I found more inspiration images there. It tends to work more with archive pictures than new ones too, which with classic menswear is an advantage.
But there’s no easy way to get decent-sized images downloaded as far as I know (if a reader does know, do shout) so this has become my third inspiration folder (Instagram, Pinterest, Drive).
Organising outfits like this has had so many knock-on benefits.
It’s helped me identify tendencies in how I dress. An early example was our ‘Cap and cordovan, felt and suede’ article, which came out of me realising I nearly always dressed in one of those two for the rain.
Another, more comprehensive example was the ‘Three wardrobes’ article about my working week (above). Not only did that help my identify a tendency, but it gave me a starting point any day depending on what I was doing. I don’t always stick to it, but it’s always nice to have a default.
These are also benefits for the blog of course, and hopefully they’re of use to readers. The other clear benefit for the blog is that we’ll soon have the entire Lookbook page (below) categorised based on similar ideas of formality and weather – which readers have asked for in the past.
My system will necessarily be more wide-ranging and complicated than anyone else’s. But if you have any suggestions, or methods you’ve found helpful, please do let us all know.
