In the few years since I started to take an interest in what I wear, I’ve acquired quite a lot of clothes. (This is probably relatable to some of the readers.) What I wanted to share today was that I found a new holistic and professional way to organize my closet.
Some clothes are easy to wear: if I’m thinking ‘what would work with these bottle-green corduroy pants/navy sweater/white linen jacket’ and the answer in all those cases is: ‘why, this faded denim cowboy shirt would look great with that’, then that shirt makes all my clothes more valuable. A high performer, in the parlance.
And conversely, the reason I’m not wearing my grass-green bird’s-eye cotton chore coat, is that it goes with nothing else I own. It’s a beautiful piece yet a low performer.
You can have beautiful things on your clothing rack that are impossible to wear with anything. And you can have workhorses that make the rest of your wardrobe functional and without which you’d get arrested for streaking.
These 4 qualities can be arranged into a talent quadrant (guess my day job), with potential (beautiful vs. ugly) on one axis and performance (wearable vs. unwearable) on the other.
With more and more clothes accumulating and closet space not keeping pace, it was time for a comprehensive review of the high-low potential/good-poor performers in my team.
Once I created this overview, the next steps were obvious:
- Shine: Wear the hell out of the beautiful wearables
- Study: Look for new inspiration (Putthison.com, Pinterest, books) for beautiful unwearables
- Swap: Replace the items in ugly wearable
- Sell: Find new homes for the ugly, unwearable column
This approach gave my #malefashionadvice hobby new purpose and vigor. I hope it helps you troubleshoot any issues you have with underperforming wardrobe sections as well.