EXPERIMENT | DONE Wearing The Same Dress For 30 Days

30 days, 15 washes later...

How does it feel like to have a fixed look, a uniform, an outfit planned ahead?
This was probably the best part. It was liberating to not have had one 'clothing-crisis' during this month, not once have I pulled all my clothes out of my closet in an hysterical nothing-to-wear-moment, not once did getting dressed take more than 20 minutes. Because of the limited options you have with one garment you automatically make a quick decision about what suits the occasion best. My typical everyday outfit consisted of cut off leggings, the dress + 1 piece outerwear, usually a light sweater.

Practical question: What about washing?
I washed the dress every other day by hand, in lukewarm water. It never went into the washing machine or dryer. It was handled with more care than the washing perscription instructed.

How is the quality of this COS dress?
After two weeks I started to hate the rag that was once a structured dress which I was obliged to wear every day. Putting it on made me feel like a mess, not put together, sloppy. It became harder to make an acceptable outfit with it as the quality continued to deteriorate.

After two weeks, the fabric was completely stretched out, had lost it's heaviness and the initial shape and design of the dress were completely ruined by this. On the 16th day, one of the seems came loose and the bottom had started to fray. By this time the garment was in such bad shape that it was (already) ready for disposal.

One positive feature about the fabric was that it seemed to be imune for stains. Just to name a few things that happened to it during the past 30 days; spaghetti with red sauce, green grass marks from a picknick without blanket, a drunk spilled half a glass of beer on it, accidental pen tripes and even some blood stains from a guy that was sitting next to me who got the most insane nose bleed I've ever seen. And it is still white as snow.

How important is a large wardrobe?
Halfway the experiment I came to the sad conclusion that a large wardrobe was important to me. But later I realized that the clothes I had been missing were only a few pieces: a button up shirt and trousers. Looking back, a basic white dress was versatile enough to be worn every day to any given occasion; it accompanied me to a few gallery openings, to school, on the couch on lazy sundays, during nights out aswel as to quick trips to the supermarket.



Personal conclusion
I love clothes and honestly speaking I want to have a big collection of them. There is a but; quality wins it over quantity every time. I want to keep all my garments for life and am sad that the great design of this COS dress only lasted for two weeks. This experiment made me realize even more that I don't actually need as much clothes as I initially thought. With this in mind I can be even more critical about what I am adding to my collection. Because that is what I'd like to built: a collection of great quality, beautifully designed items.

The idea of a fixed look, a uniform that doesn't change every season but is a reflection of ones personality is very interesting, though a close to impossible thing to put together. Perhaps by the time I'm 50 I'll be done dressing up and I'll know myself good enough to be able to find an outfit that perfectly resembles my personality that I could wear every day for the rest of my life.