The Significance of Simple Staples

Shortly after graduating college, I ventured into the Big Apple to start my first big girl job.  No longer would I spend my summers in a red bathing suit saving neglected children from drowning in the swimming pool or cleaning other people’s sweat off of acrylic at a tanning salon, which I still hold responsible for me needing premature Botox.  Goodbye funky tan lines & minimum wage! Hello free coffee and health insurance!

Trying to figure out what to wear at my new fancy pants job wasn’t exactly easy,  considering the fact that for the past 4 years the only outfit I was familiar with was the Hot Girl College Uniform; a crop top that left absolutely nothing to the imagination and shorts so short that merely looking at them gave me an early onset yeast infection.  Off to the mall I went!

My company informed me that the dress code was “Business Casual.”  Got it, so I don’t need to be in a snazzy suit but I can’t wear sweatpants…right?  I purchased some pieces I thought to be fashionable, but by the end of the week I was somehow already out of things to wear.  I returned to the mall for round 2 and within an hour of being there managed to blow my first paycheck.  Luckily, thanks to the flattering “You’ve Been Chosen!” letter and very generous interest rate of 45.59% from Discover, I was able to spend it before the direct deposit even hit my account! 

I spent the majority of week 3 contemplating “borrowing” the family water jug filled with loose change and taking it down to the local CoinStar machine as well as googling how much I could sell one of my kidneys for on the black market. After all, you only need one!  (Oh please, like you’ve never thought about it.)

 

Well, turns out I didn’t have the heart to steal the family water jug..also CoinStar takes 20% (f**king ripoff) and the recovery time for a kidney removal was more vacation days than the company offered.  I decided to just suck it up and live out every girls worst nightmare..repeat the same outfit.

It didn’t make any sense.  How was it even possible that after 3 mall trips in 3 weeks I still felt like I had absolutely nothing to wear?  And why when I looked at the new pieces in my closet did I feel the urge to bring it all downstairs and throw everything directly into my fireplace?

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have enough clothes, but that I was buying pieces too distinct and individualized.  Floral blouses, patterned pants, bright colored sweaters and blazers.  Things that I could only wear once every couple of weeks and that I couldn’t style properly in the first place because I didn’t have the basic staples to wear them with.  I ended up pairing my new items with whatever I already had in my underdeveloped closet which later resulted in a resentment towards them as I then associated each with an ugly outfit.  Sound familiar?

Influencers and bloggers alike style and post a plethora of cute outfits featuring new and trendy pieces every day.  When we see something we like and that also seems to be trending, we want to buy it because it’s cute and we’re afraid of it selling out.   But do we stop to think about what pieces we have to go with it or how many times we will actually wear it? 

Cost Per Wear Method (CPW): This is something I made up a couple of years ago to control (and justify) my spending habits.  When I found something I liked at the store, I ball-parked around how many times I would wear it in a given year and if it was reasonable, I  would buy it.  Hopefully this is something you will think about before buying the pair of neon pants posted by your favorite influencer, as me and you both know that once you get an Instagram picture in them, they will be tucked away into the deepest parts of your closet, only to inevitably end up where all clothes go to die: the goodwill pile.  Or to that weird 2nd cousin on your dad’s side who always wants your hand-me-downs.

For the money spent on the risky trendy piece that you will likely only wear once, you could have easily bought 2 or 3 staple pieces that not only will you wear all the time, but that won’t ever go out of style. 

So what staples should you buy? Luckily for you, I learned this the hard way!  The very expensive hard way.  And for 3 easy payments of $500, I will tell you exactly what staples and where to buy them…

Just kidding.

Rule #1: Buy. Neutral. Colors. 

  • White, Black, Nude, Cream, Grey, Brown, Navy, Army Green (hooah.)  Those are your staple colors.  Why? Because they have the potential to go with literally everything. 
    • Pro tip: I personally don’t like to spend more than $50 on tops that are white/cream.  Reason #1: Pit Stains.  Reason #2: Pasta Sauce (where my Italian babies at?)

(There will soon be a complete list of staples published in my next article, but here are a few off the top of my head to start you off.)

    Tops:
    • Turtlenecks, long sleeve & short sleeve shirts, tank tops, sweaters & button downs.
     Bottoms:
    • 1 nice pair of dark denim
    • 1 nice pair of light denim
    • 1 nice pair of black denim
    • 1 nice pair of mom jeans
    • 1 nice distressed jean
    • 1 nice pair of light denim shorts
    • 1 nice pair of dark denim shorts
    • 1 nice pair of black denim shorts

    *Notice how I said nice!!? You should be investing your big girl money in your denim.  Hopefully this illustration will help you understand the importance of the importance:  If you’re wearing a pair of cheap, ugly jeans but have a designer bag around your shoulder, your bag will look fake.  Because if you can’t afford a nice pair of jeans, then how are you affording a $1,200 bag?  If you’re wearing a nice pair of jeans, however, and a fake designer bag, no one would think for a second that the bag is fake. 

    This isn’t to say that you have to spend money on jeans if your budget doesn’t permit it.  I have $40 Zara jeans that are almost identical to my pair from Alice and Olivia that I paid $300 for.  If you can hold off and save up for a nice pair, do it, but if not just know that the cheaper jeans don’t hold up nearly as well as the better brands do.  You may find yourself back at the store a couple of months later when the elastic stretches out or at the seamstress after you ripped the crotch attempting the “bend and snap” in front of your crush.  I’m not saying that I know anything about that second part from experience, all I’m saying is that it never happened to me with the expensive kind. 

    Bottoms (cont.)

    • A pair of leather leggings/A leather pant (buy black first, then experiment with more neutrals.)
    • Form Fitting Dress pants (I would recommend starting with tan/black first.)
    • A leather skirt

    Shoes:

    • A white sneaker
    • A black sneaker (the basic vans are really the only ones I like)
    • A pair of black leather heeled booties
    • A black or brown flat bootie
    • Basic black pump
    • Basic nude pump
    • Black/Brown Loafer 

    If you’re having a hard time deciding what to buy first from this list, use the Cost Per Wear method.  For example: my company’s dress code is business casual.  I wear sneakers every day to the office and heels only on the weekends.  Because I spend more than 70% of my week wearing sneakers or a flat boot, It was much more important to me that I bought that type of shoe before investing in any kind of pump or heel. 

    This doesn’t mean you have have to be boring all the time or only wear neutral colors.  Fun and trendy pieces can and should eventually be incorporated into your closet, but it’s important that you have a decent amount of staples FIRST.  This not only allows you to better style the new trendy piece you bought, but to wear it in more ways than one…which results in you wearing it more…which results in the Cost Per Wear going down…which results in you being able to justify your purchase. 

    Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.