The wardrobe detox

It’s that time of year again. Too much over indulgence, richness, food and drink. January guilt kicks in, the scales clearly MUST be lying, and you realize you’ve worn the same outfit for the entirety of the break over Christmas.

SO. This is the time for what a great friend of mine calls her ‘Wardrobe Detox’. Stripping back to the necessities. Her method behind the madness involves pulling the hefty contents of her wardrobe onto a bed, and anything she hasn’t worn in the last year goes to a charity shop.  Brutal, yet effective.

If like me, however, you are more sentimental than this, I suggest a slightly different tack: Lay out your clothes, and if you cant think of an outfit that you could put the offending garment in you can make a choice. Either, you accept that you will never wear it (as you have nothing to wear it with), or you decide that you can't live without it, and get something made to wear with it. This is the time for ordering both your mind and your timeless classics in one!

I’ve decided, therefore to dedicate the first three months of this years blog posts to my stripped back essentials; my store cupboard wardrobe staples.

The start of the year is always a little grey with post-christmas-blues, so it seems only appropriate to start with Grey Flannel Trousers: I currently own three pairs of plain grey flannel trousers, and a great deal more pattern/variations.

These timeless classics are one of my most versatile garments, as they can be dressed up with a shirt and braces, or dressed down with a t-shirt and jumper. From country to city with ease, I would advise anyone who doesn’t already own them to jump on the bandwagon.

Imagine wearing your pyjamas to work, and looking shit hot doing it. Incredibly comfy and warm, my old boss used to describe flannel with the very technical tailoring term ‘snugglable’. So I’m going to borrow his terminology and turn it into a marketing phrase for January: ‘snugglable chic’. Welcome to the dark (grey flannel) side.