I had the opportunity to attend a presentation on chronic hoarding. The presenter was Dr. Reinardy, who has a plethora of experience, including working on the show Hoarders. During the presentation I kept thinking "omg, I can't wait to get home and work on my closet".
Dr. Reinardy mentioned that there are 4 levels of value that we attach to our possesions.
-Platinum/gold- These are the items you reach for everyday, the favorite items that always look great.
-Silver- The clothes that are ok, but not great. Maybe they aren't the right color, or don't have the best fit.
-Aluminum- These are the items that could be useful if they were repaired. Maybe pants that need hemming, a blouse that needs a button sewn on.
-Rusty tin can- This would be the stuff that should be thrown immediately- socks and undies riddled with holes, that sort of thing.
I went through a few of the items in my closet that were ok, but not fabulous and wanted to see if a few simple tweaks could elevate them from silver to platinum.
Excuse the horrible mirror selfie- any day now Audrey will be ready to be my photographer, but until then selfies it is. Anyways, they were not the most flattering of jeans, in fact they seemed downright dumpy. As a bit of an aside, I prefer to exclusively wear skinny jeans with flats. So could these jeans be fixed? All it took was a bit of a cuff. A bit of ankle makes them much more flattering. I've heard straight leg jeans are universally flattering, but I have to disagree. I'm sure these would look better with a heel, but the length they are hemmed to makes a heel impossible (remember when I've mentioned I only wear flats or 3-4 inch heels? I stand by that. And wearing a high heel would expose way too much of the shoe. If you wear a skinny jean, your entire shoe can be visible, but as the silhouette widens, your shoe should disappear. You won't be carted away to fashion jail if you wear bootleg jeans with your entire shoe showing, but next time you get jeans try having them hemmed to just touching the floor. It will look a million times better).
Clearly I could do an entire post on hemlines. Which brings me to the next picture. Justin actually spotted this dress when we were shopping together. I was hesitant to try it on, as it was a larger size than I typically wear, but the belt worked wonders. The only problem was that it was knee length, which paired with the blousy cut of the dress added pounds. I took a few closet selfies with the dress at regular length and "hemmed" with a few bobby pins and texted them to Amanda and she confirmed my suspicion that it looked better with several inches chopped off.
I got this dress and a few other items ready for my tailor mom and she worked her magic (I had the idea of altering a few items before the presentation, but while she spoke I kept thinking "hey, I've turned silver to platinum!" (if you were truly a chronic hoarder, you would probably be encouraged to get rid of the items that needed work, but thankfully I'm just a clothing enthusiast, not hoarder).
I should have saved the before picture so you could see the contrast, but you'll just have to trust me that it looks much better short.
My mom is working on a few other items for me. I'm especially excited for my pink tweed blazer to be ready. I absolutely loved the blazer when I bought it a few years ago, but it has long (as in hitting my palms) sleeves, and was a bit cropped. That just wasn't the best combination. I instructed my mom to chop several inches off the sleeves and I anticipate it will really modernize the blazer.
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