Forcing what you wear

This morning while doing my usual routine of pulling random clothes out of the closet and somehow turning them into a wearable, office-appropriate outfit, my sister, who stayed over at my apartment the night before, turned around, looked at me in slight amazement, and said
- you always look so good when you dress for work, do you plan your outfits? It's so hard for me to get dressed, I always have to try things on the night before to make sure that the outfit works.

Now obviously I didn't have a tape recorder so I'm paraphrasing. And obviously I have my bad work-outfit days too. And although I don't try clothes on at night, I do think about what I want to wear the next day. And I also have plenty of days when I'm running out of my apartment at 8:50 screaming "I'm late" because I couldn't think of what to wear or because the outfit that I planned on wearing just didn't work. But the point is that the comment made me think about how long it takes me to get dressed and whether the time I spend getting dressed has an impact on the outcome of my outfit (very scientific, I know, but w/e, I'm bored at work).

And here's what I came up with: in general, the less time I spend on an outfit, the better it looks. It comes together naturally, showing my own unique style. On the other hand, when I spend two hours putting together a 'look', it becomes exactly that, a 'look' rather then something that's really me. It might look good, or even fabulous, but it's forced, and that always shows. The extra piece of jewelry, the over-the-top shoes, the scarves, belts, whatever it is, if you see a girl or a guy with just a little too much on, you know that they spent way too much time getting dressed before leaving the house and their outfit is forced.

Unfortunately amazing outfits don't always happen in 5 minutes and sometimes making something work takes forever, but here's the deal - after you're finally fully dressed and ready to go, get rid of as many accessories as possible, or at least take off the very last thing that you put on. Because after all, less is more!