Five Lessons from Overhauling My Wardrobe

Jennifer Mackey-Mary (0:00)

Have you ever looked at your closet and just wanted to start over, burn it all to the ground, and completely start from scratch? Sometimes the idea of building a whole new wardrobe sounds really good. You could get rid of all of those shopping mistakes and the clothes that you can't part with, even though you haven't touched them in ages. You have visions of only putting the right things into your closet. Maybe even having a minimalist chic wardrobe, like all the Parisian style experts claim to have. Well, friends, over the last couple of years, that's basically what I've done. I've rebuilt my entire wardrobe from underwear to outerwear. And today, I'm sharing what that really looks like. The good, the bad, the costly, and what I've learned in the process. Let's get started.

Welcome to The Everyday Style School. The show that teaches you everything your mom never did about getting dressed. I'm your host, Jennifer Mackey-Murray. After 25 years of dressing women with real bodies, real budgets, and real lives, I know great style isn't about following one size fits all advice. It's about learning what works for you. And if you want to learn more about what works for you, you can go to our website, it's about learning what works for you.

Hello, gorgeous. This is an episode I have wanted to do for a long time. Literally, every time I do another round of closet edits and add more of my favorites to the discard pile, I've thought, I can't wait to talk about this. And it's kind of funny because all of the lessons I'm sharing today are things I've known, right? I've been helping women rebuild their closets for over two decades. So this is nothing new. But there's a difference between doing something for someone else and actually doing the thing for yourself. But truly nothing I'm telling you today is any different than what I would have told a client going through the same thing. And there have been some times over the last couple of years where I've had to stop and remind myself of that. I've had to say, okay, Jen, what would you tell someone if you were on the other side of this? And that is a theme that will come up later in this season and a bunch of episodes. But it's a really good reminder that often we are too close to the problem and our feelings and our overwhelm get in the way of what we know, right? That knowledge that would actually make the problem a whole lot easier to handle. We just have to step back and look at the situation and ask ourselves, what do we know about how to fix it and then take action? That is the reason we teach the five fundamental skills of style inside of our membership. Yeah, finding pants is really hard until you learn what to look for when you buy pants. Building a fabulous functional wardrobe is hard until you learn how. When you have the skills to solve the problem, everything is figure outable. When you don't though, everything feels hard and unsolvable. So today, we're going to talk about five lessons you can learn from my ongoing quest to rebuild my wardrobe. But first, I just want to acknowledge why I had to rebuild my wardrobe. As long time listeners probably know, my weight has been something I have struggled with my entire life. Over the last couple of years, my size has changed a lot, which has meant my wardrobe has changed a lot too. I'm not going to get into the specifics of my weight because that's not really what this episode is about. It's about the experience of rebuilding my closet and what you can learn from it. I just think it would be kind of strange to talk about this major upheaval and not mention the reason for it. So there you have it. I weigh less than I used to, and I had to get new clothes a few times. Let's move on.

The first lesson from me rebuilding my closet that everybody needs to hear is that overhauling your entire wardrobe is not as much fun as you might have envisioned.

I think that when we imagine a total wardrobe transformation, it's like a glow up in a movie, like from Bridget Jones' diary. There's the before, and everything is bad, and everything is terrible, and you want it to change. And then there's like this three to five minute montage set to a really catchy song where the transformation happens. Maybe it's shopping, carrying pretty boutique bags, or trying things on in a fitting room, where of course everything looks fantastic on you. And then there's the end with a well-organized, well-lit closet full of beautiful things and scene.