The Contentedness thread

[lmaozedong]

Inspired by this thread, I made an excel document to categorize all the clothing items I already own. I have so much extra **** and nice things I hardly ever wear, really don't need to buy anything again.

 

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]

My TOJs. The 2010 brown calf bomber I've been wearing since 2010 and my VTG. They're my go-to outerwear since I got them and work so well. I thought a lot about finally getting the classic black lamb dr from TOJ in those last weeks, but these 2 do everything I need.

 

[surrender]

It's weird - I've become more minimalist with almost everything else in my life, but I'm still buying clothes. It took me a while to find an aesthetic that I liked and looked decent on me, so at least I'm more selective instead of buying stuff based on brand name or forum hype.

I'm actually wearing my favorite item right now - a Rag and Bone Oval cardigan that I bought in New York (at Odin IIRC) almost two years ago. It's not the steeziest garment (hell, I'd call it boring), but it's ridiculously comfortable, fits well, and looks OK with anything.

 

[bosatlbwi]

y'all should include pictures!

 

[Zeemon]

I only have very few older pieces which i still like
one of them is this shirt from HUGO (Hugo Boss) when belgian designer Bruno Pieters was creative director

 

[hendrix]



There are a few things that I wear all of the time.
I have been wearing a Maine Guide jacket from FW08 since 08. It's been busted, fixed, and right now, I am trying to figure out how I can repair a tear in the actual placket. I may just do a homemade fix and wear it that way, without trying to actually hide the tear. I've gotten innumerable jackets since then, but honestly, excepting my RRL Gambler's jacket, which filled a hole for a Type III style jean jacket in leather, I haven't worn anything nearly as much.
That RRL Gambler's jacket, which I got myself as an early Christmas present, works as a jacket on it's own, as an underlayer in the dead of winter, and as a top layer in early spring. It is tough cowhide, is incredibly comfortable (I've worn in in a 9 hour plane ride, and it felt both cozy and protective) because the cut is so good for me, and the more wear I put on it, the better it seems to look.
And I think that of all the belts I own, the one I like best was the Number (n)ine belt that I got on a whim. I think that it gets wear about 3-4 times a week, which is a lot, especially considering that I have somewhere around 5 dozen belts of various provenance.
There were more than a few times this past winter during which I wore all three items.

That's quite a specific hole! most of my holes were 1. need leather jacket 2. Need waterproof winter jacket 3. need nice boots.

Honestly there are still 2 style of boots that I want to cop, but I feel like I should wait a while. Ive bought so much stuff in the last couple of years. Not buying things for at least 6 months will feel good I think.

BTW, this is a nice idea for a thread, hendrix. I've actually been reading Walden lately, and HDT rails against consumption of unnecessary 'stuff'. While I try to be content with owning a fairly minimal amount of clothing that I really like, I'm not about to go build a hut to live in.
I was just thinking about how much I enjoy wearing my Cabourn Cameraman and Mallory jackets, and how they are ideal for most of F/W, and another Mallory in a beautiful Harris tweed pops up for cheap
I think about half of my closet is outerwear at this point.

Haha, the Cabourn stuff is just so you, I almost want to enable you right now. But then, you already have a mallory and a cameraman, is there an actual hole?

At least it's something that would get a lot of wear I guess. no. no enabling ITT

This is a great idea for a thread. I've been trying to be more content with what I already own and only buy things when it's 100% necessary. Probably, spending less time here would help that, heh.
I've been wearing this cotton Rick intarsia a couple times a week for the last three years when the weather's right. My Bless hoodcoat, I wear multiple times a week during the winter. I've realized I only need three or four pairs of jeans at the most, and anything on top of that simply doesn't get worn. I probably have 20 button down shirts, but I usually pick the same five or six to rotate between. Same with pants.
I always tell myself that I'm going to sell off/donate everything extraneous that I don't wear all the time, but every time I sell everything off, I end up with $x,xxx more in my savings account... then tell myself I can afford to buy new things, and spend it all again. It's a never-ending cycle.
How do I stop, Styleforum? I just want to be content.

Inspired by this thread, I made an excel document to categorize all the clothing items I already own. I have so much extra **** and nice things I hardly ever wear, really don't need to buy anything again.

Gotta see a screenshot of this! 20 shirts is a lot of shirts I think. I have like 4, although I don't work in bizcash. that bless coat is amazing.

I think that sometimes you have to remind yourself:
a) the item might be on sale, but this is not the first nor the last time items will go on sale
b) there will always, always be something nicer that you like, probably within a year. People don't just stop designing after you've bought the item.

I think b) is the big part for me. 75% of my justification to myself is that, hey, that's such a great jacket and I'll never be able to buy anything like it again if i don't buy it now. Just such a bad thought process.

My TOJs. The 2010 brown calf bomber I've been wearing since 2010 and my VTG. They're my go-to outerwear since I got them and work so well. I thought a lot about finally getting the classic black lamb dr from TOJ in those last weeks, but these 2 do everything I need.

pics! Do you wear them as SF uniform (raw denim and sneakers/boots) or do you find other ways to wear them?

I only have very few older pieces which i still like
one of them is this shirt from HUGO (Hugo Boss) when belgian designer Bruno Pieters was creative director

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

nice shirt

 

[Spatlese]

One more piece I want to write about: W+H zip cardigan from 2009. I have one each in grey and navy, and wear them a ton both in and out of the house. I've picked up some loopwheeler pieces and a Cabourn clip jacket in the past year, and these are a significantly lower pricepoint but I just love them.

Pic borrowed from Johnathan + Olivia.

 

[zissou]



Haha, the Cabourn stuff is just so you, I almost want to enable you right now. But then, you already have a mallory and a cameraman, is there an actual hole?

At least it's something that would get a lot of wear I guess. no. no enabling ITT

Hah, well I keep telling myself that robin has, like, four Mallory's and I only have one. In the end, though, someone else bought it. Just as well!

Seriously, though, I've been pretty content with my wardrobe overall- so much so that I've only bought five things so far this year. I think I've moved away from the sailor man style to a bit more British explorer. But overall, I have plenty of clothes that I like. I'd say that at least half of my wardrobe are favorites, and the other half I simply like. I'll try and post some photos next week.

 

[povatix]

buzz rickson's loopwheeled sweatshirt

softest garment i've ever handled, wear it constantly. one of the few good things that i got out of my short-lived stint with that workwear/denimbro aesthetic.

 

[London]

Great sweatshirt. I've worn mine for the last few years and it gets better with age. My favorite piece right now is probably the EG cruiser shirt jacket from s/s 2011 that I found a couple of months ago. I wear it damn near every day. My Unis chinos in multiple colors are also a daily staple.

 

[tgaith77]

Inspired by this thread, I made an excel document to categorize all the clothing items I already own. I have so much extra **** and nice things I hardly ever wear, really don't need to buy anything again.

I've done this, actually for the past few years. I have columns for each years' purchases, then greyed out the items that I would eventually sell/ get rid of. It's really revealing when you have most everything you own written down in front of you, to see what you can easily weed out/ what you actually use. I've gone from over 200 items (excluding socks, tees, accessories, etc.) about 3 years ago, to right around 60.

So much better to have a small wardrobe with Dries, OG Lang, Ervell, Schneider, than a closet crammed full of garbage...

 

[*#..]

I found out about superfuture from lurking hypebeast, as kids were into nike sbs and jordans. At the time, I was just a private high school kid who wore a uniform 5 days a week. I didn't have many clothes for going out (1 pair of gap jeans, some band t's/hoodies, a few threadless shirts), and whenever free-dress days came, I felt out of my element. The other kids didn't dress well either, but I wanted to dress better. If I wanted to spend money on clothes I liked, I knew I had to buy the good clothes or it would be a waste of money. I was taught that if you used something all the time, then the high price is justified. My friends may give me crap about how I spent $300 on a pair of shoes or $100 on a shirt, but I'm not the one who consistently buys crappy clothes that get thrown out a year later.

Anyways, I lurked superfuture a bit, but didn't really like the vibe people gave off in photos of themselves. I did like how selvedge denim faded compared to my gap jeans, which was the catalyst for me getting into more high-end clothing. I'm pretty laid-back and optimistic, and I wanted my wardrobe to complement my personality. More and more lurking led me to find out about styleforum and more clothing brands. By nature, I'm very thrifty, and I don't believe in budgeting a lot of my money on clothes. I'm the complete opposite of an impulse buyer. When I see something I like, I give myself some time to think about it and see how it would fit into my wardrobe. I look for reviews and read anything I can before purchasing, even sending an email to the retailer. I've tried on so many things and know the measurements of all my clothes, which gives me an intuitive understanding of how items I don't own will fit on me. I know that if I miss out on something, there is always another piece of clothing that I would like to have or it may even be found in BS another time. I've gained this knowledge from years of lurking, and seeing the things other posters wear in their fit pics. This way, I minimize errors, and in turn save money in the long run to spend on more clothing pieces I'll enjoy. I can't remember the last clothing item I bought that didn't meet my expectations.

Case in point, I keep going back to my apolis x context x styleforum shirt jacket. It's the item of clothing I wear the most, aside from my selvedge denim. The jacket fits well, looks sharp, a great conversation starter, and the best part is I got it secondhand for less than a third of the retail price. I remember seeing the thread when it first came out, thought it looked awesome, and then 3 years later, I end up purchasing it off BS.

The way I view my wardrobe, I see it as another hobby and something I hope to complete, in a sense, as I save/work for more money and as clothing brands release their collections. I enjoy managing things, seeing what holes I have in my wardrobe. I have the basics down, so I'm ready for any social situation that may come, and now I'm zeroing in on the smaller things I'm missing from my wardrobe. The apolis collab filled the void I had for a lightweight jacket (got tired of wearing hoodies), and now I'm looking for another jacket to add some variety. In another 6 months - year, I'll be in the market for another pair of jeans to wear in. The best part about my wardrobe is I'm very pleased with the purchases I've made, and no longer worried about how bad my clothes look.

 

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]



pics! Do you wear them as SF uniform (raw denim and sneakers/boots) or do you find other ways to wear them?

The flexibility of the bomber is one of the reasons I wear it so frequently. I can do, and do all the time, the SF uniform--white T and everything--but it actually gets the most compliments when I wear it in business environments on top of a button-down with gray or navy wool pants. I've thrown a tie on with that look too for that George HW Bush steez:



The other reason I wear it so frequently is its weatherproof nature.

from the toj gallery:



And the VTG:





The VTG is less flexible as a staple; you kind of shape an outfit around it. It does do well in a variety of settings, and yes, I've worn it as a business casual item with a white shirt and gray slacks, but this thing does not **** around. It demands a strong outfit underneath it. There's a lot it won't work with that the bomber will, like longwing bluchers, most cardigans, or ties. You do what it wants or your outfit will fail.

 

[Bam!ChairDance]

For blue jeans, I've been wearing only my Helmut Lang skinnies for almost two years now. They're amazingly hard wearing. They fade at a glacial pace and develop holes even more slowly.

Also, like three years ago, I bought a pair of Varvatos burgundy chukkas. Originally intended them for MC ish, but once I stopped working in places that called for trad formal wear, the chukkas just sat in my closet unused. So after a year of ignoring them, I busted them out again to wear with the sort of mostly-black-everything goth-lite stuff I'm doing now. Works really well. Burgundy + black is a winning combo.

Sometime last year I realized I had a bunch of nice tailored stuff that was not getting worn. Mostly because I mentally separated "tailored" from "casual" and would only wear the nice stuff when I had to "dress up" for a special occasion. One day I was like "I need to wear some of this **** more often, it's just sitting there." So I just started mixing the two together (with varying degrees of success). Now I have more choices and most stuff gets into the rotation at some point. I've also stopped compartmentalizing my wardrobe into "suits only for formal occassions / tees only for washing car" and try to think of the whole thing as one cohesive unit. Though as Fuuma put it there is still some "wardrobe noise" that I could edit out and a few things I'd like to add.

That's awesome. Though wait-- you've only been doing your formal/casual mixing thing for less than a year? Interesting

 

[snake]



Inspired by this thread, I made an excel document to categorize all the clothing items I already own. I have so much extra **** and nice things I hardly ever wear, really don't need to buy anything again.

I ought to do this too. There are probably things in my closet still new that I've hardly ever worn.