I agree with the perspective you’re laying out here. These days, I take a slightly more concrete approach to choosing my wardrobe. It still fits the perspective, but the thought process is different.
To decide what to buy, I think about a specific purpose in my life for which I need clothes, and I try to get as specific as possible.
For example, I just started a new job, and I wanted to buy some new clothes for it. Because I already had plenty of suitable shirts, I started to think about the requirements for optimal pants for this application.
I bike to work, so I wanted pants that are:
Lightweight and moisture-wicking
Don’t get caught in the bike chain
I don’t make a lot of money, so I wanted pants that were < $40
I only feel comfortable in earth tones
I wanted multiple colors
I wanted pants that looked professional
I figured that there must be some sort of athletic pant in a professional-looking cut, and as it turns out, there are! I found what I needed at Nordstrom Rack and they worked out great for me.
The key here, however, is that I didn’t start by thinking about abstract qualities of ideal pants (i.e. by listing a set of attributes along which pants can theoretically be optimized). I started by thinking about a practical clothing problem in my life, then imagined the abstract qualities of pants that would make them great solutions to this practical life problem. Then I went and found real-world versions of those pants (and some moisture-wicking underwear and socks as well to complete the bike-communting-friendly wardrobe).
Likewise, I recently considered how to deal with shoes for bike commuting in winter. My shoes might get soaked on the way to work. Yet my feet tend to overheat and get sweaty and itchy over the course of the day. I didn’t want to carry pairs of shoes back and forth.
At first I considered waterproof sneakers like Vessis, but I found that water can sneak in through the top, and they are very hot on your feet. Then I considered biking sandals, while keeping a foot towel as well as socks and shoes at work. Then I realized that there are such things as shoe dryers, so I can potentially wear breathable shoes, put them on shoe dryers at work, keep a second pair of at-work shoes and some socks to change into, and change back into the dried-out bike shoes on the way back. This lets me get whatever biking shoes or sandals seem like they’d be most comfortable in a particular season, while picking shoes that are optimized for comfort or style at work.
This is how I used to buy clothes. At least in my case I got some hard advice from a friend: I was picking pieces of clothes that were fine in isolation but didn’t really come together to create a look/fit that was me and made me look unintentional and thus less good. It also made it too easy to optimize for function at the expense of form to the point of picking things that met great functional requirements but looked bad, like technical hiking pants that met tons of needs other than looking good or fitting my body well.
In order to actually look put together I realized that I needed to take a more global approach to my clothes optimization.
Yes, I agree that if “practical problem in your life” did not include “looking good” or “goes with my other clothes” as design parameters then you’d probably end up in a situation like that. I succeeded at avoiding this problem because I specifically set out to find pants that were good for biking and looked like professional work pants (fortunately I already had some that did). This can be useful: it puts a sharp constraint on the shirts I buy, requiring them to look good with these specific pants. That limitation can be helpful in making the overwhelming number of choices manageable.
I agree with the perspective you’re laying out here. These days, I take a slightly more concrete approach to choosing my wardrobe. It still fits the perspective, but the thought process is different.
To decide what to buy, I think about a specific purpose in my life for which I need clothes, and I try to get as specific as possible.
For example, I just started a new job, and I wanted to buy some new clothes for it. Because I already had plenty of suitable shirts, I started to think about the requirements for optimal pants for this application.
I bike to work, so I wanted pants that are:
Lightweight and moisture-wicking
Don’t get caught in the bike chain
I don’t make a lot of money, so I wanted pants that were < $40
I only feel comfortable in earth tones
I wanted multiple colors
I wanted pants that looked professional
I figured that there must be some sort of athletic pant in a professional-looking cut, and as it turns out, there are! I found what I needed at Nordstrom Rack and they worked out great for me.
The key here, however, is that I didn’t start by thinking about abstract qualities of ideal pants (i.e. by listing a set of attributes along which pants can theoretically be optimized). I started by thinking about a practical clothing problem in my life, then imagined the abstract qualities of pants that would make them great solutions to this practical life problem. Then I went and found real-world versions of those pants (and some moisture-wicking underwear and socks as well to complete the bike-communting-friendly wardrobe).
Likewise, I recently considered how to deal with shoes for bike commuting in winter. My shoes might get soaked on the way to work. Yet my feet tend to overheat and get sweaty and itchy over the course of the day. I didn’t want to carry pairs of shoes back and forth.
At first I considered waterproof sneakers like Vessis, but I found that water can sneak in through the top, and they are very hot on your feet. Then I considered biking sandals, while keeping a foot towel as well as socks and shoes at work. Then I realized that there are such things as shoe dryers, so I can potentially wear breathable shoes, put them on shoe dryers at work, keep a second pair of at-work shoes and some socks to change into, and change back into the dried-out bike shoes on the way back. This lets me get whatever biking shoes or sandals seem like they’d be most comfortable in a particular season, while picking shoes that are optimized for comfort or style at work.
This is how I used to buy clothes. At least in my case I got some hard advice from a friend: I was picking pieces of clothes that were fine in isolation but didn’t really come together to create a look/fit that was me and made me look unintentional and thus less good. It also made it too easy to optimize for function at the expense of form to the point of picking things that met great functional requirements but looked bad, like technical hiking pants that met tons of needs other than looking good or fitting my body well.
In order to actually look put together I realized that I needed to take a more global approach to my clothes optimization.
Yes, I agree that if “practical problem in your life” did not include “looking good” or “goes with my other clothes” as design parameters then you’d probably end up in a situation like that. I succeeded at avoiding this problem because I specifically set out to find pants that were good for biking and looked like professional work pants (fortunately I already had some that did). This can be useful: it puts a sharp constraint on the shirts I buy, requiring them to look good with these specific pants. That limitation can be helpful in making the overwhelming number of choices manageable.