I’m at my local nail salon and my nail tech starts our appointment off with, “pick a colour.” Those three words incite an anxiety like no other. How, out of all those beautiful hues in the rainbow wall of nail polish bottles can I pick just one? How, I ask you, can I even begin to choose between strawberry red and coral red. And don’t even get me started on nudes. There’s an entire spectrum of nudes and every single shade requires a moment of silence for its unwithered existence.
FML.
I’m beginning to understand the restraint that minimalism requires.
So, I’ve started practising by dedicating a different colour palette for every trip I go on. I realize that is probably the bougiest thing I’ve ever said in a while and yet it is also the most truthful. The past year, I’ve traveled to a different place every month – albeit within the confines of North America – but nonetheless I was faced, monthly, with the challenge of editing my wardrobe down to a week’s worth of OMG-Instagram-worthy outfits. Which, let me tell you, is no easy feat.
The problem is, you can’t keep taking your “greatest hits” with you on vacation over and over again because it turns into the sort of “oh look, there’s Justine with her LV Neverfull yet again in Palm Springs – is that the only bag she owns? So stale. Aiyah. Unfollow. Let’s passive aggressively make Facebook comments about her lack of style…” and so on and so forth. Well, you guys would be right if you read an earlier blog post this week. My LV Neverfull is the only designer bag I truly love – but not the only bag I own.
Not to mention, that Palm Springs starts to look like Miami, starts to look like Montreal and the Loblaws down the street from me when you wear the same bag everywhere.
Instead, I begin by meditating from anywhere between a few hours to a few days. During my meditation, I picture what the place I’m going to might look like in pictures. What kind of colours are the buildings? What’s the vegetation like? The weather? The mood?
Once I’ve decided that Las Vegas is patently shades of pink and white with a J4 desert haze it’s so much easier to pack. I just hold up each of the items I own and think, does it fit the criteria? If it does, it comes with. I don’t spend time worrying about what t-shirt is going to go with what pair of pants, instead I put my full faith in the system I’ve developed, which also affords me the sweet element of surprise when I get dressed while on vacation. I don’t like to know what I’m wearing too far in advance because I love to relish in the process of deciding what to wear based on how I feel. Which is a style faux pas and I love doing it.
Perhaps I can extend this method into seasonal dressing? Might be hard but I’m going to try. Like what is my colour palette for Fall 2015? I did some “pretend” shopping the other day (you know, filling my bookmarks bar with items I’d love to own) and for some reason there is tons of black, white, grey, camel, red and navy in there. But what I really want for Fall 2015 is Forest Green and Pale Blue. You see, this is where the discipline comes in. It’s like I gotta slap my wrist every time I gravitate towards something grey.
And you thought being a fashion blogger was easy…
liked the pop over hair, its pretty cool