Dressing is an act of creation. Like any art form, it requires the alchemy of order and chaos. Possibilities, personalities, references, preferences, intentions, and accidents swirl as you weigh your state of mind and vision (chaos) for the day ahead against details like weather, travel, activity, dress codes, comfort, schedule (order). The outfit is a manifestation of these factors, plus time and iteration. As a social necessity, an outfit swaddles your body and acts as its barrier to the elements. Beyond this, outfits communicate with others before you open your mouth, alternately serving as invitation or protection or belonging. An outfit can bring out some essence of you, changing how you feel about yourself, along with your gait and demeanor. The impact of what you’re wearing — what it says or how it feels — can alter the course of your day, which is to say it can alter the course of your life.
If you try to tackle all of that in the half hour before your plans, getting dressed can be a stressful and loaded experience, mired in a destructive sense of urgency and pressure. But my punctuality and peace of mind have improved significantly since I developed and adopted the organizational system I’m sharing with you today. It’s a foundational style tool for me, a zipper to pull together my creativity and corporeality. Even if you don’t experience an inner maelstrom when getting dressed, this system can get you out the door in something you feel good in. I’m talking about a Look Library, and I think everyone should have one.
Building a Look Library
Of course, many do. Social media is dotted with GRWMs, fit checks, and “lately” carousels documenting outfits. There are also plenty of apps or spreadsheets that will, for $1.99 and two weeks of your time for data entry, represent your closet and suggest clothing combinations a la Cher Horowitz’s wardrobe technology. But your Look Library needs to be more efficient than this if you are hoping, like I do, to maintain your personal standards of expression in getting dressed every day.
Start by snapping and gathering photos of outfits you’re wearing, especially if you like the ensemble, and are open to repeating in some form. These shots form the foundation of your Look Library. The combinations you’re already pulling and wearing with confidence can tell you a lot about what garments you have, feel good in, and make sense for your life. Only once you have a solid base of these kinds of photos, you might decide to add in photos of functional outfit inspiration from other people.
Here I want to define functional inspiration as someone else’s outfit that you could easily recreate or riff off of using the contents of your own wardrobe. Note that I’m referring to a specific, more activated version of outfit inspiration, as it’s extremely rare that someone out there in the world is wearing a combination of clothing that you possess, with the same specifications like proportions, colors, materiality. An aspirational outfit (or “Pinterest fit,” shudder,) consisting of designer or one-of-a-kind wares that don’t connect to the reality of your closet contents has no place in your LL. (These more aspirational looks are noteworthy, but you must store these elsewhere.)
Look Library (Visual)
Designate an easily accessible space to store your LL: Pinterest, your Camera Roll, Notes app, Dropbox… something you can pull up on your computer and phone. Instagram or TikTok Saved folders won’t work as well, as you can’t as easily save your own outfits, which I repeat, must form the foundation of the LL. Additionally, using TikTok and Instagram as your containers will prove more challenging to keep free of aspirational outfits. I use Pinterest, but I also have folders on my phone’s Camera Roll, which is a crucial and iterative part of my creative process and not at all redundant.
It helps to sort your outfits into folders or sections; the more organized (and seasonally reorganized¨) your library of outfits, the easier it’ll be to avoid overwhelm and get dressed. Ideally, your folders offer a quick reference of options sorted according to the weather, or your mood, or the occasion, or any considerations that most heavily influence your attire. My own folders are labeled hot, warm, cool, and cold, for practical climate concerns. I also have sections for work, events, airport, rain, hat day (outfits where a hat doesn’t look like a second thought), runway (for those designer references less tethered to reality), accessorizing (examples of accessory combinations that make the fit), and colors (unexpected combinations that help me expand the colorway when an outfit feels too monotone for my mood).
The look library is an ongoing, cumulative process. For best results, I recommend making and remaking it and turning to it when you believe you have nothing to wear or feel the urge to overhaul your entire wardrobe and buy new things. Before you “back to school shop”, start with a clean out and revitalization¨ of the LL.
Look Library (Text)
A text version of outfit ideas comes in handy for recording inspiration you come upon when out and about. Spot some functional outfit inspo in the wild, but don’t feel like you can stealth-capture the ensemble (for logistical or ethical reasons)? Jot down the look’s formula or components to bring home and reenact with your closet at a later date. I keep an ongoing list in my Notes app, but if you carry a planner or diary, its pages would suffice. Some recent ideas:
— white tank or tee + black mohair cardigan + KNWLS yellow plaid tube worn as midi skirt + black knee highs OR black mesh knee high socks + black shoes + cherry red leather bag
— Y2K rose graphic long sleeve tee + grey cardigan buttoned up + indigo chore jacket + charcoal pin-striped trousers + maroon plaid scarf + cherry red leather bag + silver ballet flats OR red/beige Nike Daybreaks
— pink mohair sweater + black trousers + red socks and ballet flats + straw or tan woven bag
— Adidas track pants + Liz Claiborne granny square cardigan OR black wool vest + Birks and socks OR black Mary Janes
— fussy ruffled white button up + chain necklaces + loose fitting ripped Moussy jeans + black leather blazer + any sneakers/sock combo that adds a shock of color
— fitted white button up + black mohair cardigan + white INC trousers + black belt + camo army jacket + black Mary Janes
— Robin’s egg blue tie dye hoodie* + black bomber jacket + Levis + green/blue liberty print bucket hat*
Asterisks in this case indicate my weakness, which is to say they are for the items I lack. These elements are by definition aspirational, nonfunctional. However! This is can be a subsequent step in your pre-seasonal shopping program; If you repeatedly find you are “missing” a specific garment or accessory, the asterisks can be indicators that justify purchasing something new. On the flip side, if one of the outfit idea bullets contains multiple asterisks, it’s a pretty solid sign that it’s not functional outfit inspiration and you shouldn’t be adding these items to your cart any time soon. We the fashion junkies need to normalize appreciating the look of a well-dressed stranger (online and IRL), getting lost in the reverie of that person’s rizz, and doing absolutely nothing further about it. This occurrence highlights how someone else’s amazing outfit is usually a specific articulation of their interests and desires and experiences, which is to say their personal style, not yours.
¨Reorganizing your Look Library
Remember when Marie Kondo told us to stop everything and throw out any garment that doesn’t spark joy? Or perhaps you’re familiar with the hanger method of facing all your hangers’ hooks in the same direction, turning hangers’ hooks around after wearing each garment for visual clarity on which clothes you don’t actually wear, warranting their removal. However you pace or structure your closet edit, your LL needs to be edited all the same.
Seasonally —or more accurately, in the liminal space between seasons—, take time to thumb through the coming season’s LL folder and audit its contents. What are the outfits you’re excited about wearing? Drag these to the top of the folder. Are any of the outfits (from a year ago now) giving you the ick? Delete or archive these looks, maybe noting which pieces that comprise the outfit are still enticing you. If you’ve donated or sold clothing, the outfits depending on these pieces can be archived or re-styled without the retired garments and replaced with a new mirror outfit shot. Outfit inspiration revolving around similar garments can be filed close together, or you can sort within folders by color or wardrobe sections.
Whittling down your LL is another crucial part of reorganization. The more voluminous its contents, the more unwieldy; It’s not very likely you’ll see the bottom of 900 pins.1 Check for repeats and delete. Outfits that don’t feel personal — whether because your style has shifted or it turns out the inspo was aspirational, rather than functional — don’t belong in your LL.
P.S. Bonus Folder
Out of all of my cold, cool, warm, hot folders and those of other occasions, there is a clear favorite. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not hot! Whenever I assemble an ensemble off the top of my head or through a patchwork series of my own iteration, I drop photos of these into a folder titled PS Leona. When I nail a balance of energies or capture my mood or above all, express myself in an ensemble, it goes in this folder.
I think of this folder as containing outfits that are entirely of my own creation2, with many outfits that could’ve only been put together by me. As such, this folder’s photos are more potent indicators of the shape of my personal style than any descriptive words, defined aesthetics, or discrete identity could ever be. They also provide immense wardrobe appreciation, arguably the most crucial building block to confidently getting dressed every day.
There you have it! I hope you find this tool supportive.
I have a ways to go on this front. Do not scroll up to check the capacity of my Pinterest folders.
That is, I am not explicitly or intentionally referencing any other style than my own. Any color or textural combinations, references, or styling tricks that I’ve internalized are of course expressed in the contents of this folder.