As if we had to remind you, 2015 is here.
Which means it’s time to spend a little less time dashing through the holiday snow and a little more time making yourself look dashing.
The new year is usually a time to clean up your life and set your personal goals, but for many, cleaning out your closet and polishing your personal style is one of the first steps to reaching a fresh start.
From leaving your sweats at home to avoiding impulse buying, here are a few fashion resolutions to help you live a truly stylish life in 2015.
1. Clean Out Your Sock and Underwear Drawer
Nothing is worse than seeing a man take off his pants to have him proudly present his “lucky pair” of underwear from his frat boy days. And how embarrassing is it when you’re asked to take your shoes of at the door and you realize your unpedicured toes are peeping out from the holes in your socks? Torn, tattered, stained, and ill-fitting underwear should be discarded and all underwear and socks should be replaced every few months.
2. Two Years Without a Wear = Goodbye
Make sure your wardrobe fits your current lifestyle to make room for what you really wear. If you spend 80% of your time in a professional business environment and 20% of the time kicking back, your wardrobe should reflect this. If you haven’t worn it in a year, then you should keep an eye on it, if you haven’t worn it in two years, then it’s time to say bye, bye.
3. Get Rid of Those Unflattering, Outdated Duds
Gentlemen, toss those square toed shoes and ladies, burn those Uggs. 2015 is your year to look fresh, polished, and up-to-date and you’re not going to look like that wearing your “comfort clothes” and archaic digs. Ask yourself if you would buy it now. If the answer is No, then let it go.
4. Damaged Goods
Many people can’t bear to part with their favourite pieces and hang onto to them even when they’re stained or damaged. It’s time to dispose of them and make room for some glam new garbs.
5. Organize Your Closet
De-cluttering your wardrobe seems like a fairly simple task, but it can quickly become daunting. Check out our tips on converting your wardrobe from orderly to systematically “shoppable.”
6. Hanger Patrol
While you’re at it, now’s the time to start making a gradual switch to matching hangers. That’s right, toss those bent up, mismatched wire ones for a matching set of hangers to keep everything nice and tidy. Believe us, both you and your clothes will thank us later.
7. Think Before You Buy
No more impulse buying. Surprisingly, online shopping helps you to make more responsible purchases because it gives you more time to look at other options, compare prices, and go through your closet to see if you already own something similar. No more walking into a store and purchasing something on a whim because it “spoke to you” and then having it sit in your closet with the tags still on a year later.
8. In and Out Rule
If you bring a new piece into your closet, an old item has to come out. Something’s gotta give. That’s the incentive to keep control of a potential closet overload. This will also keep your buying impulses to a minimum because if you can’t sacrifice something old, then you probably don’t need something new.
9. Sweatpants Should Stay at Home
You should never wear something that you would wear in bed out of your house. As Miuccia Prada said,“What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language.” Wearing sweatpants out of the house just shows a lack of effort and tells the world that you don’t care. Putting yourself together before you leave the house shows that you keep yourself at a high standard.
10. Dress for Your Body
Develop your own fashion formula, know your proportions, and have fun. If prints are big on the runway, that doesn’t mean you should incorporate them into your wardrobe. Fads come and go and clothing shouldn’t emphasize parts of your body that make you self-conscious, they should always focus on your assets instead.
11. Take Care of Your Clothes
Taking care of your clothes makes them last longer and makes you look better. Dry cleaners may be expensive but so is buying new clothes more than you have to because you ruined them by washing them yourself. Hang your clothes at the end of the day, don’t throw them into a heap on the floor. An iron and steamer should be your best friends.
12. Get Rid of Shoes You Can’t Walk in
Too big, or too small – if the shoes don’t fit, don’t wear them. Even if they’re your favourite pair and they complete your look and make you look astonishing, if you spend the entire evening limping around, it’s time to get rid of them. No one is paying attention to your shoes when you look like you’re dragging yourself home from a St. Patty’s Day college party.
13. Don’t Mix Too Many Trends at Once
Every season, there are a seemingly infinite amount of trends. Prints, silhouettes, and fabrics, and more it can all be confusing to know when more than one trend is stylish and when it is just too much. Though there is no specific guideline, sometimes you just know… and if you are unsure, then play it safe or you usually come off looking like you are trying to hard.
14. Buy Less, Spend More
You all know what we mean: Quality vs. quantity. Start choosing pieces that will last for years to come. Pieces that you will be able to pass onto your children. These pieces must be timeless and classic. You may be spending more in the moment, but you will end up saving in the end.
15. Don’t Over Accessorize
Less is always more. Coco Chanel advised us best, “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.”
16. Don’t Overlook Your Outerwear
Us Canadians live in our outerwear for more than half the year and it’s the first, or only, thing people notice about you, so make it count. Now is the time where stores are desperately trying to get rid of their winter stock, so take advantage.
17. Finally Deal With Your Ill-Fitting Clothes
We’re all guilty of hanging onto things that don’t fit well with great intentions of having them altered, yet somehow we never seem to get around to it. Now is your time to either take them to the alterationist or donate them so that someone else can enjoy them.
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