As luck would have it, I won a prize at a school dinner last year and that prize was, would you believe it, a consultation with a wardrobe editor! Yup that’s right someone who does what I do. Crazy but also really lucky and timely I think.
I had four hours with Madeleine Park who happens to also be a mum at the school my kids go to and it was four hours of laughs, chatter and the most blissful fashion play. That’s the way I look at a good wardrobe edit, it’s play time for people who love clothes and want to create fabulous new looks and outfits. Furthermore, it’s an opportunity for people like me, who know their wardrobe intimately, to get a fresh pair of eyes on pieces and workshop untried outfit combinations.
So firstly Madeleine ran me through a look book of images she had put together after our initial over the phone briefing chat. It was a good starting point and got us chatting about what I like, how I see my style and what I wanted to get our of the session. We spoke about my style and I gave her my three style descriptors:
Preppy
Unexpected
Put together
And despite having not met yet, Madeleine did a pretty good job of coming up with some shapes and combinations that really appealed to me so off to the wardrobe we went.
We started by looking at pieces that I like but don’t wear and Madeleine created outfit ideas for me. Some of these items included an old Carla Zampatti rust coloured silk skirt which I haven’t worn in over 10 years, a Scottish kilt that I love but only wear one way, a leather Willow tank that I wanted a modern take on, a new belted jacket style I hadn’t experimented with before, two evening dresses were re-imagined into a fresher take on day wear, a white shirt under a Ganni tight print polo… the list goes on. I tried on tens and tens of outfits.
Having gone through all those pieces over three hours, we then spent the final hour planning my wardrobe for my upcoming trip to Europe. I wanted to workshop outfit ideas and Madeleine proved invaluable in helping pair back my desire to take a swathe of different styles and colour ways, and instead shape my choices into “colour stories”. She also managed to convince me to limit the number of shoes (they are heavy after all) I’d be taking with me. We’re down to 3 pairs with maybe a possible 4th, we’ll see.
So I now have a selection of outfits for the various holiday moments I’m planning for. These moments include day wear (tours and sightseeing), day wear (sailing), evening wear (casual island nights), evening wear (mine and a friend’s birthday dinners), a week of lazy beach resort wear and some city dinners.
This process also enabled me to work out what I need to add to complete the looks. I am now on the hunt for some very well cut singlets and t-shirts as well as some gold sandals. But all the big ticket items are already present and accounted for.
My next job is to photograph the various combinations and give myself a digital look book to flick through when I’m away to choose outfits. So simple. So fun and soooo satisfying…
