“I’ve always believed that clothing is a great way to tell your story.” -Carson Kressley
Well there it is, y’all. The good, the bad, the… ugly? Maybe not ugly so much as jarring. Completely out of place. Mish mash and mismatched. The current state of my closet. Now. This closet reflects my journey- and I love it for that. I’m going to talk a little bit today about how and why my closet looks the way it does. We all have stories we tell ourselves about our lives, our circumstances. I’m going to start putting mine down here, with an eye to seeing what needs to be tweaked, edited, revised, improved.
I used to have a lot more clothing than this. My home has three bedrooms. It was built in the early 2000s, so it’s got the sort of typical suburban layout of two small bedrooms with small closets and one huge master, with walk in closet and attached bathroom. When my ex and I bought the house, this was, of course, our room. It served us well through the birth of our son, who stayed in the same room with us from day one- plenty of room for all sorts of baby accouterments as well as both of our dressers, etc etc. One of the smaller bedrooms was the (unused) nursery, the other was originally our guest room.
A few months after our son was born, I launched a business as a direct sales clothing retailer with the company LuLaRoe. Our guest room was converted into an office/boutique area for my inventory. I quickly outgrew the small space, and my inventory racks ended up in the garage. Pain in the butt, really. My personal wardrobe began to reflect my new boutique, gradually shifting to a greater proportion of LuLaRoe clothing- if I was selling it, I’d better be wearing it!
LuLaRoe is known for their bold, crazy, unique prints, lots of which I loved. I was learning as I went- I had no business or entrepreneurial experience and was sort of figuring it all out somewhat blindly (we can get into all that on a different day). I realized in time that, while I loved the connections I was making with women via this endeavor, the brand of clothing itself wasn’t really fitting in with my mission of helping them create a simple, cool, streamlined wardrobe. Pattern-mixing is the bomb dot com and I love it, but let’s be honest, it’s a concept a lot of us just don’t have the time or energy to become comfortable with on the grand scale that was necessary for such a print-heavy line. I looked for other options, and I found my current company, Agnes & Dora.
About the same time I was looking for a new company to partner with, my wife and I were separating. (We can get into all that on a different day, too.) She moved out, and I needed to make the mental shift from “our home” to “my home.” I stuck my giant king sized bed into one of the small bedrooms (effectively turning it into a nest- I can reach everything in the room from that bed) and took over the big master as my boutique and office. In the process, I also downsized from the big walk-in closet to the small one in my new bedroom. THAT felt great.
So, I’m coming into this new life and this new line of clothing with some changes already made, like paring down the amount of stuff in my closet. BUT- it’s all still really LuLaRoe-centric, and a lot of those pieces weren’t ones I pulled for myself out of love and desire. They were things that had a small flaw, or that I wanted to show were wearable, but not necessarily ones that reflected MY aesthetic or true self. In addition, there’s lots of stuff in there that doesn’t fit me at the moment. I’m making such big shifts in rediscovering myself these days, and I’m ready for my clothing to come along on the ride.
Day zero was taking a look at where I want to end up. Day one is taking a look at where I am and how I got here. Excited to see what the next step is?? Me too.
Mimosas & Pockets 