Call Backs

Call Backs

I recently told my significant other that I felt like I had been wearing only a capsule wardrobe for as long as I could remember, and it’s been less than a month. Thinking about it more deeply, I can remember other times in my life when I wore a very small amount of clothing, and those times may have laid the groundwork for my comfort level with Project 333 now.

Month long trip to Russia, age 13 (with a group, but not with my family, so alone, essentially)

Like many things in my life, this seemed totally normal and not worth commenting on until I mention it casually to people and they seem very intrigued and surprised. You did WHAT? At WHAT AGE? ALONE? Seemed like NBD at the time!

My mom worked on and made by hand (!!) a mix and match wardrobe for me (that I can’t recall much of now, sadly) and living out of a suitcase seemed not only normal, but preferable. This desire to have very little and travel light never left me.

Catholic High School: Uniform dressing

My uniform was navy blue pants or skirt, or uniform skirt, and white or blue top, with optional navy sweater. Those were the choices, and yet there seemed to be endless ways to combine them and make them my own. Vintage silk blouse with men’s slacks, knee high socks with tassels and brogues, preppy layers of white over navy polos, and so on.

Assistant Store Manager, Body Shop: Uniform of all black with business casual (yet functional) expectations

I had about 12 pieces I wore day in and day out (once a week we had to do an open to close, that was 9:00 AM to 10 PM so those clothes had BETTER be comfy). I was *always* looking for cute, comfortable, stylish black clothing, but this was a kind of dressing with restrictions that I see now as “practice” for my current lifestyle.

Moved to Philippines with one suitcase and one carryon.

Yeah, I really did! Also seemed like NBD at the time? Not sure where I get this sangfroid about up and ditching all my possessions (helped that my mom stored most of them at her place, too) but I was somehow totally cool with moving *permanently* to another country with one suitcase. I had one or two workhorse pieces, like a shrimp pink linen sheath from Chicos (a gift from a co worker) and a grey tunic top, that I wore TO DEATH as I slowly purchased more items. I remember talking to my coworker Ryan on my third or fourth day in-country and saying “I am so stress free right now! Maybe it’s because my apartment could burn down with everything in it and I would be okay with that.”

Moved home to the USA with one large suitcase, one small suitcase, and one carryon.

This time I had considerably more clothing (I mailed two cartons home as well, before I flew home). There were so many irreplaceable items—handmade by local tailors or found in thrift shops, I just couldn’t conceive of letting them go. But overall, it was a limited wardrobe.

Throughout my life, there has been a theme of dressing with less. It just took until now for me to see that at some of the most comfortable times in my life, I was dressing minimally, deliberately, and with less.