Details: Babaton turtleneck, Everlane sweater, Gap skirt, Nocona belt, Ralph Lauren jacket, Frye boots (all thrifted)

Thoughts: I love how well this outfit came together thanks to the colour palette. Muted but still mighty, with a good mix of textures. Recently, I was able to manifest a portion of my “shop list” and added a bunch of coloured tights to my collection. I am looking forward to putting them to good use with the rising temperatures. More short skirts to come!

Details: Black Brown 1826 sweater, Paul Smith scarf, Theory jacket, homemade skirt (all thrifted)

Thoughts: This was a perfectly nice outfit but I felt it was missing something. Turns out, that something was this floral scarf. I know that adding a third pattern to the mix might seem risky, but the colours here work so well that you almost don’t notice it. To me, the outfit doesn’t look “busy” at all; it’s just right. It was a nice way to re-wear this skirt, which is still one of my fave thrift finds of all time. The length is a bit tricky for me now (I prefer longer) but I could never bear to part with it.

Details: Ines de la Fressange x Uniqlo shirt, vintage vest, Ralph Lauren jacket, Topshop pants, Cotton Ginny belt (all thrifted)

Thoughts: Another outfit with fun pattern mixing and a subtle southwestern flair – my current style sweet spot. I’ve been remiss in wearing my vests recently, so I decided to rectify that. Vests are such an easy and versatile layering trick. I think of this as my “three piece suit”-made-casual formula: a knit, unstructured jacket + vest + pants.

Details: Ralph Lauren sweater and skirt, Stella & Dot necklace (all secondhand)

Thoughts: I’m calling this “rich b*tch vibes” and I love it. It’s simple — just a sweater and skirt — but the pieces here elevate it. I decided to mirror the sumptuousness of the skirt with this decadent necklace and statement cuff bracelet. I wish I had two matching bracelets in this antique, hammered gold finish but, alas. The thrift gods haven’t delivered yet. I love the look of matching cuffs, Wonder Woman style.

Details: French Connection sweater, Prairie Trail Goods jacket, Gap jeans, vintage belt

Thoughts: I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed the 70s boho vibe here. In the past, that hasn’t been my decade, style-wise. Maybe that’s changing now, with all the prairie influences that I’ve been accumulating. These jeans have been my stand-in alternative for palazzo jeans, the perfect pair of which I still haven’t found. I find the top part to be more snug that I would like; I would prefer a pleat front cut that goes out right from the waist, not from the top of the leg. The hunt continues.

Details: Zara shirt, Eddie Bauer sweater, Ines de la Fressange x Uniqlo pants (all thrifted), Steve Madden shoes (retail)

Thoughts: I threw this outfit together mostly because I’m trying to figure out how to wear these massive platform loafers I recently impulse-purchased at Nordstrom Rack. They are a major style risk for me, because I had no real plan for them; this is not my usual approach, as I like to have a very clear picture in my mind of how I’m going to style a piece before I buy it. But I’ve been hearing so much about how exaggerated+chunky are fashion keywords this year, and I was intrigued by the colour and double platform. It remains to be seen if this risk pays off. I do enjoy the extra height boost (I’m nearly 6 feet tall in these shoes) at no cost to my comfort.

You know what we haven’t talked about in a LONG time?

Wardrobe statistics!

This was a topic I was super into back in the 2010s (it feels weird saying that, but pre-2020 times are all starting to blend together in my mind) and fell out of the habit of chronicling on the blog at some point. But – surprise! – it’s something I’ve never stopped tracking, mostly out of habit. I haven’t done any analytics on this information in years though, so I thought it would be fun to have a look at that now and see what could be gleaned from it.

My wardrobe tracking system is a very, very, very basic Excel spreadsheet. I track the year of purchase, the price paid, the estimated retail price, and the number of times I wear each item. I’ve got everything organized by category of items to make the list easier to use and update. Items that are in my “archive” closet (i.e. not in current use but kept for sentimental reasons) have their own separate list. Once I get rid of an item, I delete it from my spreadsheet.

This means that my wardrobe tracking system is only a reflection of my current closet, not of my historical purchases. I keep a separate spreadsheet to track clothing purchases by year. I prefer to have them separate in order to make the wardrobe tracking sheet easier to navigate; there is a lot of turnover in my closet, and I want to be able to easily see what’s actually there now, versus all the stuff that’s been in there over the years. [Note: all of the stats below include clothing only, not shoes, bags or other accessories.]

Speaking of turnover, here are the stats:

• 5% of the wardrobe was purchased pre-2018
• 21% was purchased between 2018 and 2020
• 74% was purchased between 2021 and now

This doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. Fashion is one of my hobbies and I love to experiment, which is possible thanks to thrifting. The vast majority of things I discard from my closet are still in great shape and are simply pieces that I don’t love wearing anymore. I end up selling, swapping, or donating them, to make sure that they stay in circulation for as long as possible. I have been working on being more selective with the things I buy – and I think I have made lots of progress since my early days as a thrifter – but the reality is that there will ALWAYS be new (to me) pretty things that will catch my eye and spark joy. My goal now is to make sure that any pieces I add to my closet are 100% “HELL YES” – not just “this has potential” or “I could see me wearing this”. I can see me wearing a lot of things; I only want to buy things I’m hella excited to wear.

More than 90% of my wardrobe is secondhand. This is reflected in the following stats:

• Average purchase price: $22/item
• Average estimated retail price: $225/item

In my experience, thrifting prices used to be around 5-7% of estimated retail cost. In the past few years, that’s inched up to 10-15% on average. In contrast, consignment and Poshmark have always had higher percentages – 25% and up on average. Because I have been using Poshmark since 2020, my clothing purchase costs have definitely increased during the past 3 years as compared to the preceding 3 years. Obviously, Poshmark is nowhere near as a good a (financial) deal as thrifting, but I do like using it to find things that are unique or hard-to-thrift, and still a good bargain overall.

What about value though? Here are some cost-per-wear stats:

• My most worn item is the Oak & Fort cocoon coat that has been my go-to winter coat for the past few years (since retiring my beloved MaxMara camel coat). I bought it in 2020, paid $33 for it at the thrift, and have worn it over 400 times. I have started to look for a replacement on a sort of informal basis; I think I’ll get one more winter out of this coat, but thrifting can take a while to deliver the goods, so it’s a good idea to start a new search early.

• The next few items on the most-worn list are also coats (see a trend?). The most worn non-coat item is my Madewell jeans. Although this is a pair I haven’t worn a lot lately, I’ve held on to it for now because it still fits. I bought these in 2017 at consignment for $26 and have worn them 47 times.

In general, because I have a large wardrobe, most of my items (even the older ones) don’t get a high amount of wears. However, there are certain staples that do. Here’s an example of 2 pieces I bought only last year:

• Babaton black turtleneck (used as a base layer) purchased in 2022 for $8 (thrift) and worn 23 times.
• Tommy Hilfiger kick flare jeans purchased in 2022 for $10 and worn 27 times.

In both cases, the cost-per-wear is well under $1.

Wondering how my most expensive pieces stack up? I got you:

• Issey Miyake dress purchased in 2019 for $580 (consignment) and worn 5 times [no regrets though, it’s a “forever” piece for me]
• Dries Van Noten dress purchased in 2018 for $300 (eBay) and worn 8 times
• Rachel Comey skirt purchased in 2021 for $210 (Poshmark) and worn 5 times
• Dries Van Noten skirt purchased in 2020 for $190 (Poshmark) and worn 6 times
• Burberry trench purchased in 2017 for $180 (consignment) and worn 47 times

And what about some of my favourite pieces?

• Acne skirt purchased in 2020 for $80 (Poshmark) and worn 7 times
• Issey Miyake skirt purchased in 2020 for $10 (thrift) and worn 15 times
• Liz Claiborne dress purchased in 2021 for $20 (thrift) and worn 7 times
• Ralph Lauren skirt purchased in 2019 for $7 (thrift) and worn 13 times
• Saint Laurent skirt purchased in 2019 for $13 (thrift) and worn 9 times
• Topshop dress purchased in 2021 for $64 (eBay) and worn 8 times
• Vanessa Virginia dress purchased in 2016 for $17 (thrift) and worn 14 times
• Wilfred sweater purchased in 2018 for $140 (retail) and worn 17 times
• Reitmans sweater purchased in 2023 for $9 (thrift) and worn 6 times

Overall, there were no surprises (for me) in these stats, but I still found it a fun exercise. On the whole, consistent with my cost-per-wear analysis, I do try to limit how much I spend on “statement pieces” because I know that I won’t wear even my favourite ones that much. I like variety too much. Ironically, I still find it easier to justify spending more money on those statement favourites than I do on staples like coats or jeans (which I wear a LOT more). It’s a habit I haven’t been able to break, but I’m working on it. Seeing these stats helps to reinforce the message.

If you also do wardrobe tracking, I would love to hear your thoughts on your experiences with it. What have you learned? Does it help you to make decisions about clothing purchases? What are some of the biggest surprises or takeaways from your experiences?

Two weeks ago, I flew to Montreal for a 5-day visit to see my best friend, who moved there in 2021. It was almost exactly 3 years since the last time I was on a plane back in March 2020, though that feels like a lifetime ago. I was thrilled to be seeing my bestie – the last time I saw her was a year ago when she came back to Edmonton for a visit – and excited to be in Montreal again, but I also felt plenty of anxiety. I was never a frequent flyer even in pre-pandemic times, but it’s safe to say that I’ve lost my “muscle memory” for plane travel in the intervening three years. Thinking about going to and through the airport, getting on a plane, and repeating the process all over again made me feel a little nauseous.

To make my life easier, I decided to do something I’d never done before: take only a carry-on. This might seem like no big deal for some of you, but I have never travelled by plane without checked luggage. If it takes a plane to get there, I need a suitcase of clothes to come along with me. While I’ve gotten better over the years about not over-packing, I still need the security blanket of extra clothing options, “just in case”. Well, not this time. This time, I had to prepare a bare-bones packing list – a new challenge for me, especially considering how out of practice I’d gotten.

I started by breaking down my needs. I had 2 travel days and 3 city days to cover. To help pack light, I decided I would wear the same outfit on the plane both ways, and that I would only bring one pair of shoes to wear the entire time. Because I knew I would be doing a lot of walking (and it would still be fairly cold), the shoes would be a pair of flat-heeled, black boots that could be worn with both pants and skirts/dresses. That left me with at least 3 outfits to figure out.

While my bestie and I didn’t have plans to do anything super fancy during my visit, I was still going to be in Montreal; I wanted to look nice, but also needed my outfits to be comfortable since I would be wearing them all day to a variety of activities (mostly museum hopping, dining out, and shopping).

I started with the bottoms. One was going to be a pair of jeans; easy to dress up and down, comfortable enough for the plane, hard-wearing. The choice of jeans was a no-brainer: my kick flare Tommy Hilfiger pair. The pant leg is wide enough to accommodate the (knee high) boots I planned to wear, and the cropped length meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about getting them wet if there was snow on the ground.

Technically, I probably could have brought only the jeans and a bunch of tops, but I wanted some variety so I decided to bring a second option: a skirt. Picking which skirt to bring seemed daunting at first – I have a lot of skirts! – but in the end it was actually pretty easy. I knew I wanted a long skirt and something that wasn’t too “precious” (i.e. I could wear on snowy/muddy streets without worrying about it). I ended up choosing my Cleo plaid wrap skirt. It’s black but has a nice pattern – not too loud, not too subtle – to make it more interesting. It’s a lightweight wool blend material, which is easy to wash; plus, I paid $5 for it, so even in the worst-case scenario — total destruction — it’s not a huge loss.

By the time I got to tops, my decisions were already much easier, since the bottoms I had selected helped to narrow down my options. Well, the skirt did, anyway. I picked tops based on what would work with the skirt, since I knew they would always work with the jeans too. I ended up choosing 2 sweaters, 1 cardigan, and a button-down shirt. This might seem like a lot, but I had to consider layering options – I would be outside a fair bit, and my winter coat isn’t super heavy. For that reason, I also added a thin (cotton) turtleneck; this functions as a base layer in the winter and I don’t count it as “real clothes”.

Lastly, I added the “functional” items: a sweatshirt (for the plane, and for lounging at my friend’s house), a pair of leggings and a long sleeve t-shirt (also for lounging), plus of course PJs, socks and underwear, hat, scarf and mitts.

With this packing list, I was able to create 6 easy outfits (double what was strictly necessary, as insurance):

I ended up wearing 4 of these outfits and was pretty happy with them all: