Find your Clothing Utilization Rate

Not only did  Emily Post give  good advice on how to act like you came from the upper crust of society but she also gave some pretty nifty wardrobe tips.

Emily Post, circa 1922, "Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home"

'In the world of smart society—in America at any rate—clothes not only represent our ticket of admission, but our contribution to the effect of a party. What makes a brilliant party? Clothes. Good clothes. A frumpy party is nothing more nor less than a collection of badly dressed persons. People with all the brains, even all the beauty imaginable, make an assemblage of dowds, unless they are well dressed.'

Ms. Post was also brilliant on style.

1.Don't be a Sheep
are the dressed-to-the-minute women who, like sheep exactly, follow every turn of latest fashion blindly and without the slightest sense of distance or direction.

2. Chic is....
The woman who is chic is always a little different. Not different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it.

3. Chic is not....credit card debt
you must not buy clothes out of proportion to your income, or out of keeping with your surroundings.

HOWEVER
But a woman who has talent, taste, and ingenuity can be suitably and charmingly dressed on little a year, especially at present.

And a smart stylish woman with talent, taste and ingenuity (which you all have, believe me even if you don't) knows how to wear the same piece of garment over and over again in very refreshing ways. Need examples? Check the last post.

In fact, Emily Posts receommends against having too many clothes. And the best way of see if you have too many clothes is to calculate your Clothing Utilization Rate.

'A very beautiful Chicago woman who is always perfectly dressed for every occasion, worked out the cost of her own clothes this way: On a sheet of paper, thumb tacked on the inside of her closet door, she put a complete typewritten list of her dresses and hats, and the cost of each. Every time she put on a dress she made a pencil mark. By and by when a dress was discarded, she divided the cost of it by the number of times it had been worn. In this way she found out accurately which were her cheapest and which her most expensive clothes. '

I have too much stuffff to actually put it on one piece of paper but why not make a Look Book of your own closet?

Take your camera and take a snapshop of each sweater, dress, pair of jeans, shoes, belts etc... Develop the pics and stick into those clear sheets in a binder.

Might take a little bit of time but think of how knowledgeable you'll be about your own closet? I can testify that from starting this blog I have become so much more creative with my style after taking pics of my clothes.

'When getting new ones (clothes) she has the advantage of very valuable information, since she avoids the dress that is never put on, which is a bigger handicap for the medium-sized allowance than many women realize.'

Admit it, you've been there. And if you already have that dress/shirt/skirt you never wear, promise yourself to work it in. This week I played around with a semi-sheer floral top that I purchased back in high school from Delia's.