Real days

Use cases

The situations people actually get caught by, grouped by when they happen.

Every one of these starts from something that goes wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with fashion. You could not see what you owned. Nobody told you what the dress code meant. The weather was different at the other end of the flight. The size on the label meant nothing.

They are grouped by when the situation happens rather than by which feature it exercises:

  • Every day is the one almost everybody has, and the one that costs the most time in total.
  • Occasions with rules covers the events where the rules are unwritten, or technical, or both.
  • Travel is where two sets of requirements have to fit in one bag.
  • Buying, swapping and letting go is the money and the waste: not ordering three sizes, judging a secondhand listing, and actually getting the bag by the door out of the house.
A hotel bed with outfits laid out in rows: folded shirts, shoes, a tote, sunglasses, a scarf.
Most of these are decided the night before, or not at all. AI-generated image

Every day

Getting dressed on an ordinary Tuesday

You have forty things and wear five. Not a taste problem - a visibility problem.

 A second opinion on what goes together

Colour is hard to judge from memory, in bad light, on a hanger. Seeing it settles the question in about two seconds.

Occasions with rules

The invitation said smart casual

Dress codes are a language nobody teaches you, and the penalty for getting one wrong is entirely social.

 Four days at a conference, one bag

Multi-day, photographed constantly, standing for nine hours, and one suitcase.

 Speaking on a stage

Stage clothing has requirements that have nothing to do with looking good - microphones, cameras and lighting all have opinions.

Travel

Working in three countries in one week

Different climates, different norms, one bag, and meetings on both ends.

 A holiday, and the things nobody mentions

Two weeks away, a suitcase of things you never wear, and one evening you are turned away from a restaurant.

Buying, swapping and letting go

Buying online without ordering three sizes

The photograph is a different body, sometimes not a body at all, and the size label means nothing. So people order three and send two back.

 Buying secondhand and vintage

Secondhand is one of a kind, photographed badly, sized by a system that no longer exists, and usually final sale.

 Swapping, selling and passing things on

Most people intend to sell or swap things and never do it. The barrier is photography, and it has already been paid for.

 Wearing what you already own

The cheapest wardrobe improvement is wearing the two-thirds of it you forgot about.