I’M IN A STYLE RUT

hello, my name is lauren, and i have nothing to wear.

I stared at my closet, and thought: fuck. I have nothing to wear. Despite buying pieces I liked, despite purging, and organizing and curating and all the other buzzwords associated with finding closet nirvana, I still faced doubt, indecision, and outfit paralysis every morning as I contemplated what to wear. Is having too many perfect options a problem? When you give yourself 10 minutes to get dressed and out the door it is.

It’s not like my lifestyle demands fancy clothes. I work for a restaurant group, and my leadership is mostly men whose uniform is a branded tee-shirt and jeans - clothes you could actually work in, if you found yourself in the kitchen, behind the bar, or at the butcher shop. I can’t exactly wear my new quilted Chanel ballet flats and feel good about my life choices. So I find myself wanting to reach for things that are too nice and freaking out scared I’m going to damage them depending on where the day takes me. Or I counter too much, and throw on a sweatshirt and jeans, sambas, and off I go. Who am I when I step outside my front door? Who do I want to be; who do I want to project?

Wish I could answer all of these pressing questions so I could go about my day.

You know another thing, that I keep experiencing? I convince myself if I just had this one pair of tall brown boots or this one slip skirt or this one burgundy bag, my closet would finally be complete, and by extension, I would be complete. What kind of fucked up type of bank account-draining logic is that? And the thing is, I will obsess over this thing until I get it, be satisfied for about 30 minutes, then look for the next make-believe hole in my wardrobe to fill. It’s a never-ending cycle. Aside from cutting my credit cards and disconnecting from the Internet forever, what’s the solve here?