Every October something in me tries to reinvent the way I dress, and every November I go back to the same nine things. So this year I stopped fighting it and simply wrote them down — a uniform in the plainest sense, chosen once so that a dark Tuesday morning does not have to be a decision.
Style Notes
Nine pieces, folded on one shelf
Two knits, two trousers, a shirt, a vest, a long cardigan, a coat and one pair of boots. Everything works with everything, which sounds like a boast and is really just what happens when you buy in a single colour family for three years.
The Nine
- Lambswool crew in undyed cream — worn roughly four days a week.
- Heavier ribbed knit in charcoal, for the genuinely cold fortnight.
- Wool trousers, wide, hemmed short enough to show the boot.
- Denim, one pair, dark and unfussy.
- Linen shirt, worn as a layer rather than a shirt from November onward.
- Long cardigan that doubles as a blanket on trains.
- Oatmeal wool overcoat, the single most expensive thing I own.
- Two cotton vests, replaced yearly without ceremony.
- Brown leather boots, resoled twice, better every year.
On wearing the same thing constantly
There is a quiet worry that a uniform makes you invisible. In practice the opposite happens: people stop noticing the clothes and start noticing whether you slept. Which is either liberating or alarming depending on the week, but it does mean that getting dressed takes under a minute from the first of November to the end of March.
A uniform is not a lack of imagination. It is imagination, spent once, somewhere more interesting.
— Linnea
Mornings, mostly indoors
Winter here is less about the cold and more about the dark — the light never quite arrives and the days run together. The uniform helps with that too, in a way I did not expect. One less thing changing means the small changes, the ones actually worth watching, become much easier to see.
✻ Note from Linnea
Resole the boots before they need it. A good cobbler will get eight years out of a pair that would otherwise last three, and it costs less than one bad replacement.
Loved this post?
Pin the nine-piece list, or send it to whoever is currently standing in front of an open wardrobe.