Chapter One: The Circle of Your Life -- Family, Business, Fun, and Romance
Fantasy and romance play a huge role in fashion. I have seen women buy clothes and say, "This will be wonderful to wear to Ascot," even though the chances of their going to Ascot that season are very, very slim. It has to do with fantasy.
Bill Blass, designer
The scene is all too familiar. It's 8 A.M. and Kay is running late. She has an important meeting and luncheon today. She is in front of her mirror, pulling on one thing, trying another, rejecting as she goes, delving deeper and deeper into her closet as she searches for the elusive ideal ensemble. Now she is tugging a hopelessly snug olive green skirt over her hips. Forget it. Next comes the cranberry pantsuit -- too much, too loud. The green gabardine suit worked a long time ago, but where is the blouse that goes with it? The gray pants are too short. (She'd promised herself she would get them altered.) The new paisley blouse is gorgeous, but it doesn't work with either the gray or green pants. (Come to think of it, it never seems to work with anything.) Kay presses on.
Jumbled among these seemingly unworkable work clothes are several colorful ski sweaters. She passes the ski pants and several colors of lightweight fleece turtlenecks, remembering that she never went skiing once this season, and in fact has rarely gone since she decided to learn three years ago.
Kay impatiently pushes aside three beautiful cocktail gowns in her effort to find her trusty brown blazer. Where is that thing? Oh, no! It's at the cleaners. She avoided taking it there as long as she could, fearing a morning exactly like this one -- when nothing else would please her and she needed to turn to that staunch dependable. Now, at this critical moment, it is missing in action. Maybe the dotted skirt and black jacket will work with a white shell blouse? No, that's too summery. Okay, how about the brown pants and blouse with a muted plaid jacket? Yikes! She just wore that Monday.
Two more skirts are way too tight. In fact, they've been too tight for a couple of years now. Wasn't she going to buy another black skirt? Hmmm. That was the day she bought the beaded evening bag instead. Which, come to think of it, she's never had occasion to carry. It's stunning, though.
Well, what's it to be? Looks like the black wool crepe suit with a black turtleneck. Again. Kay has exhausted herself trying to put together an outfit that gives her the right click of confidence. Surrounded by heaps of discarded clothes on her chair, bed, and floor, the thought once again crosses Kay's mind: I don't have a thing to wear!
Does any of this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself in a similar scenario? So have we, and so has every one of our clients. But guess what? There's a simple reason why. Get ready to discover the answer by playing the "Circle of Your Life" Game.
A simple circle is the key to solving the age-old mystery of why women have closets full of clothes but nothing to wear. The Circle of Your Life Game is the first step in getting your wardrobe in sync with your life, and ladies, it's no exaggeration when we say that this exercise is a life-altering experience. Time and again, when we go through this exercise with our clients, they are stunned. They come away enlightened and inspired, and they certainly never look at their wardrobes in the same way again. Here's how it works.
The Circle of Your Life Game
You are going to create the Circle of Your Life. This is the first step to finding the real you in your closet. The goal is for you to discover exactly what parts of your wardrobe are missing. Your Circle of Life also enables you to make a shopping list and helps you to understand why your closet needs to be in harmony with your life.
The game takes about one hour, so plan to concentrate, and get ready to find out more about yourself "sartorially speaking" than you ever dreamed. Okay? Here we go!
Step 1. On a blank piece of paper (we recommend 8½-by-11-inch), draw a circle. You are going to create a pie chart, a simple circle divided into slices of various sizes. The size of each portion is based on your life's activities. Step 2. On a second sheet of paper, list every category of activity you perform (clothed!) in your waking moments. These activities should be comprehensive -- evening, weekend, seasonal, and even occasional activities go on this list, along with those you engage in every day.
Step 3. Estimate the percentage of time you spend on each activity. To get a true picture, base your circle on a four-week period, about one month. We find using a month as a guide gives people a broader sense of how they spend their time, as weekend diversions may vary.
For instance, suppose your average waking day runs from 7 A.M. to 11 p.m.
7 A.M. to 11 p.m. = 16 hours
16 hours x 7 days = 112 hours in a week
112 hours in a week x 4 weeks = 448 hours per month
Now, figure out the hours you spend on each activity in a four-week period. Then use this figure to calculate the percentage of time you spend on that activity. For instance, if you work forty hours a week, you work 160 hours in four weeks. Divide 160 hours by 448 monthly hours: you work 36 percent of your circle. Suppose your social life totals forty-six hours in a month. Divide forty-six hours by 448, and the percentage is 10 percent for social life. If you have children, your activities with them may take, say, forty-two hours a week, or 168 hours. Divide 168 hours by 448 hours, and your percentage is 38. Estimate your activities and percentages until your circle represents 100 percent of your life. Write these percentages next to the activities listed on your paper. You may need to further subdivide these percentages after you have completed your circle.
Step 4. Returning to your circle, divide it into slices according to the percentages you have just created.
Step 5. Within each slice of your pie, list a life activity. Next to the circle, list the types of clothing you wear to perform this life activity. For your work slice, write what you wear to work. For some women this means corporate suits, trousers, twin sweater sets, and knit layering pieces, while for others it may mean a more business casual mix, such as khakis and sweaters, with dresses, skirts, and suits only occasionally.
Note: If your work tends to neatly divide itself into casual and more formal corporate dressing (for instance, if you are a consultant who works at home in jeans 60 percent of the time and dons designer suits for meetings with clients the remaining 40 percent), you might want to subdivide your work pie slice accordingly. With the changing rules about workplace dressing and the millions of people now working out of their homes and in flexible work situations, the individual variations on work dressing requirements are endless. That's why we have devoted an entire chapter to the nuances of business casual dressing.
If you work at home and commute electronically, list that percentage and what you usually wear to work at home. If you dress in business clothes to work at home, put that down. Many people do so to mentally get in the groove of working. We know men and women who get up, get dressed in a suit, walk to their office at the other end of the house, and take their jacket off. On the other hand, many businesspeople working in their homes plop down in front of the computer in jeans, slouchy cotton knits, or pajamas. If that is you, put it down.
And speaking of pajamas, if you come home from work and immediately change into loungewear or jammies, we would categorize that as casual. Sleepwear to us is a different thing.
Next, list your clothing choices for your other waking activities in the appropriate pie slices. You might wear similar things while doing various family duties, such as grocery shopping, carpooling, and volunteering, so write those in one slice of your chart. You may need dressier things for club meetings and luncheons. Working out may mean leggings and a sports bra for aerobics classes, but khaki shorts and tees for your daily two-mile walks. Write those down in separate slices and assign percentages. Here is where you may need to divide your percentages further to reflect this breakdown.
On the other hand, feel free to cluster types of clothes. For example, if you wear similar things to go antiquing and attending club meetings, list them both in one pie slice and determine a percentage. Beach and boating clothes are often similar and could share a slice. If socializing means going with friends or colleagues straight from work and not changing your business clothes, you should note this under your business clothing pie slice. Clothing you wear when entertaining at home or going out with friends on weekends may be the same and can be combined in a slice.
Why You Have Nothing To Wear
Now for the moment of truth. Your circle chart should look something like this:
Work 38%
Suits, jackets, tops, pants, pantsuits
Exercise/sports 10%
Golf/tennis/aerobics/jogging
Evenings out 15%
Dresses, separates, long skirts
Social 2%
Evening gown, cocktail dresses, and dressy suits
At home casual 13%
Jeans, knit pants and big tops, shorts, shifts
Weekends 19%
Dressy casual tops, pants, skirts, tees
Now take the Circle of Your Life and go to the place where you start each day...the closet! Separate the clothing you actually wear into the categories that correspond to the pie slices on the Circle of Your Life. Create a separate category for those items that either don't fit into one of your categories, or are items you cannot or do not wear. Now compare the percentage of clothes in each category you have created with the percentages on your Circle of Your Life chart.
We guarantee the pe...
