THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PERFECT OUTFIT

Interview Germany c/o Brianna Capozzi
Why does it so often evade our grasp? 

It was nine o'clock on a Monday morning. As my roommate hit snooze a [not so] unprecedented amount of times, I was rushing around the room, yanking open drawers, cutting the bottoms off of sheer tights, looking for that one shell toe sneaker that I had somehow lost. Every morning, it is like this: a grueling flurry of throwing clothes and exclaiming that, for the thousandth time, I have nothing to wear. It is a sentiment certainly not unique to me, but in the wee hours of the morning, it feels like an incredibly singular struggle, pushing out all other thoughts until its completion.

You see, I get high off of the perfect outfit. The ideal look—a duality of risk and comfort, newness and familiarity—has the power to transform one's day, leading to an increased sense of self, confidence and, as I have experienced this past week, an increased amount of comparisons to the Jenner sisters (warranted? no; appreciated? maybe). As cliche as it sounds, this ideal truly embodies the power of developing one's personal style; being able to consistently dress in a way that not only conveys your varying moods but also allows you to have fun with it gives one an unprecedented amount of power that, arguably, cannot be truly matched by any other medium.

Russh Magazine Fall 2015 c/o James Nelson

Once, when asking an enviably clean friend for organization advice, her response was remarkably simple: "everything has it's place." It's an assertion echoed by many others whom I've asked, most of whom have responded it in a similarly nonchalant tone as if to say "Lily, it's so obvious." But what stuck out to me in this interaction wasn't the matter-of-factedness in her statement but, rather, what followed it; "I always picture what I'm going to wear in my head before I go into my closet," she added, "never trying on more than a few pieces of clothing."

This concept came as a shock. How can she know that two pieces of clothing look good together without trying them on first? Why not take the same amount of time spent thinking about what to wear to actually try pieces on? And, perhaps most pertinently, how the hell can she picture all of the pieces of clothing in her wardrobe?!

For, despite the mess and chaos that often results, getting ready in the morning is a process that I look forward to, a time that truly has the power to change my day. Trying on variations of tried-and-true pieces and testing out different sartorial characters is almost a therapeutic process, consistently offering up an opportunity for reinvention. And, even if I end up wearing the same flared black jeans three days in a row because I cannot find any of my other favorite pieces under the piles of clothes I know that, come a few days later, organization will settle in and the inspiration will manifest itself once again—frenzy and all.

And that's just the way I like it.