For readers joining this program already in progress...
What is 6 Scarves 2021? Who is Janice? What is The Vivienne Files?
I am a regular reader and commenter on The Vivienne Files, a blog in which Janice creates capsule wardrobes. She describes it here. I had joked a while back that I comment so much there that I should have my own blog. So when I decided that I actually did want to start a blog, my first thought was to do a play-along with Janice's 6 scarves project, in which she uses a scarf as an inspiration for a capsule wardrobe and adds to each wardrobe month by month. So I am posting a lot on that right now because I am a couple months behind and am racing the calendar to get aligned with real time. However, this blog will have a variety of fashion/style content (with a focus on plus size) with a generous sprinkling of rabbits coming up.
Who is Sally? Who are the Other Sallys?
I, Sally in St Paul, aka Sally Prime, am the writer of this blog. The Other Sallys are versions of myself that exist in parallel universes. Unlike me, these Other Sallys have been wearing pajamas 24/7 since the pandemic began and have forgotten how to dress themselves. I am building 6 wardrobes for the 6 hapless pajama-wearing Other Sallys who are wanting to start wearing their actual clothes again but who, through some strange twist of fate / mystery of physics / interference of trickster gods, have to share a single instantiation of the Sally closet rather than each having one of their own. To avoid the inevitable bickering and grumping that would ensue if every Other Sally believed she had claim on every item in this shared closet (and oh yes every Other Sally would), and to leverage the 6 scarves 12 months method of building capsule wardrobes, I am splitting my own inventory into 6 (mostly) separate wardrobes, one for each Other Sally. (And yes, all the while, I, Sally Prime, have access and claim to every single one of these items. Whether this is a benefit or a curse remains to be seen.)
Who is Kiwi?
What every capsule wardrobe needs is a good rabbit mascot! So there are 6 rabbit mascots in the 6 Scarves 2021 project. The inspiration scarves, color palettes, and rabbit mascots appear in the handy infographic below. You can also get the full rundown on these rabbits in my mascot post.
Here is a full rerun of the 6 Scarves 2021 project introduction:
Last Christmas, Janice at The Vivienne Files gave us a sneak preview of the scarves for her six months, twelve scarves project for 2021. If you're not familiar with this protocol, she picks out 6 scarves, creates color palettes for each one, and then builds capsule wardrobes by adding one outfit a month for a year. Then at the end, each capsule has the clothing and accessories of 12 outfits drawn from all seasons of the year.
I was very attracted to the blue patchwork scarf but I'm not in the market for an $85 scarf these days, no matter how appealing it is. (The terrifying truths regarding my current scarf collection will be revealed over time and just how much I do not need another scarf will become quite apparent.)
So I thought, Well hey, I should check to see if I already own a scarf with a similar color palette that I could use to play along at home building a capsule wardrobe from my own closet. And I did. Then I realized, Huh, I could probably build SIX capsule wardrobes from my closet, haha. And you know how certain ideas, once thought of, will simply not let you go?
I was on vacation from work, but of course stuck at home, the week between Christmas and New Years, so I picked out 6 scarves...and built out 12 months of additions to create the 6 capsule wardrobes in about 2-3 days. To make things a bit more challenging, I decided that each item in my own inventory can only be used in one capsule wardrobe...with the exception of boots, bracelets, and loungewear because I do not have a sufficient number of items in those categories to divide across 6 wardrobes. (I also ended up using one pair of shoes twice by accident.)
In a nod to Janice's penchant for storytelling about the heroines who wear her wardrobes, I imagined the scenario that in 6 parallel universes, Other Sallys had abandoned getting dressed to work from home when the pandemic hit, and thus had spent the previous 9 months wearing pajamas non-stop. Each Sally had decided, in the spirit of a fresh start with the new year, to start dressing in actual clothes again, but they were each feeling rather out of practice with this whole "getting dressed" thing. And when they went to their closets, they found that instead of each having their own closet, all 6 of them were mysteriously sharing a single closet! How strange, right? But there is precedent, in literature at least, for wardrobes to behave in magical and fantastical ways, and ultimately, what can a Sally do? In the end, you have to come to grips with the empirical truth of the imaginary situation.
Fortunately for these hapless Other Sallys, I, the original Sally (aka Sally Prime), have been getting dressed in actual clothing every single day so I remember how that works, I have been reading about capsule wardrobes...AND, due to fortunate happenstances the origins of which are unknown, I am able to communicate with them by standing in my own instantiation of the Sally closet. After having the Other Sallys try on a hat which ostensibly determines to which of the 6 scarves they are most suited (but that, in reality, was a distraction while I rolled a die...because there is magic and then there's magic), I assigned them each to a scarf and promised that I would help them start easing back into wearing actual clothes one month at a time.
For once, I didn't overthink things; I mostly went with my instincts to create 6 capsules that are (more or less) guided by a color palette, but otherwise kind of random...so very much thrown together and imperfect. (Of course, we will analyze the wardrobes as we go, with an extensive analysis at the end, so the flaws of my fast-and-dirty development method will not go unremarked. I guess this "we" is Sally Prime and the Other Sallys and whatever readers join us on this journey.)
So an interesting consequence of working quickly and haphazardly is that I put together all 6 full capsules before Janice introduced the January set of additions on January 1! This will allow me to compare my instinctive and rather unplanned choices from my hodgepodge of a closet to her deliberate ones from the marketplace.
Now that it's already March (!), I need to hurry and catch up! In my next post, I will show you the 6 scarves and the accompanying color palettes around which I have built the 6 capsule wardrobes.