Picture this: you’re standing in front of your full wardrobe, fully dressed (or a little bit undressed) in the clothes you planned for an outing in a few hours. You’re staring at your wardrobe with dread and exhaustion because the clothes you chose from it earlier on for your occasion don’t bang the way they initially did when you put them on *in your head*.
So now you’re back to square one, and with less time to decide what you are going to wear. *Sigh* the underrated pressures of a woman that just wants to serve.
You think, “Ugh! I have nothing to wear” (while looking at your full, maybe overspilling wardrobe)— a quarter of the clothes in there might not fit the personality you plan to show up in for your upcoming outing. If it isn’t the right vibe, it isn’t the right vibe, period. The other quarter of clothes might actually be the perfect style or vibe for the outing, but sadly, you may already have worn it on several occasions, and right now, you don’t feel like being an outfit repeater.
You need to wear something new to feel fresh or to take pictures for Instagram. The girls that get it, get it.
The remaining half of the clothes in your wardrobe might be great clothes, but they are random pieces that don’t go together at all – you may have this gorgeous skirt, and then this stylish body suit, but the gorgeous skirt won’t bang when matched with the stylish body suit. Possibly, what will go exquisitely with the skirt is on your saved list on Instagram, ‘to be bought later on’. To round it up, the few other stray clothes in your closet belong to the category of:
- Has never been worn
- Will never be worn
- What was I really thinking when I bought this?
What you avoid thinking is, “Maybe I would have had something to wear today if I had physically tried on the outfit I planned out.”
The chaos of having to decide what to wear when the outfit you curated in your head fails to look as good as you thought it would, is a rite of passage for every woman. Let’s get into the 5 relatable stages of deciding what to wear when you mentally plan an outfit:
Stage 1 – The Certainty that You Have the Ultimate Fit on Lock
This first stage occurs after ransacking your closet—clothes have been removed from their hangers, your room is turned upside down littered with fabrics of different sorts, you rediscover clothes that you haven’t seen in a while, and you consult Pinterest or your favourite influencer’s Instagram feed to understand how best to style the fit you’ve chosen.
This is where you usually make your first mistake—from the clothes that excite you, you mentally create an outfit by picturing it in your head (after the online fashion consultation), but you don’t actually put on the clothes to see if the combination will make sense when you wear it. At this point, you believe you have successfully found the ultimate fit for your outing, so you feel like a fashion mogul for creating something out of nothing.
This stage ends with you rearranging your wardrobe, with the outfit you’ve mentally styled in a special corner (or even brought out to be laundered), then you shut the doors to your closet, certain that you have *the fit* that will have you looking and feeling good.
Stage 2 – The Realization that You Actually Don’t
If you’re lucky enough, this stage occurs at least a day before the occasion. If you’re unlucky (the more common scenario), it may be 1 hour before the actual event. I’m talking makeup done, edges laid, and jewellery in place. What’s left is to put the outfit on. As you wear it, excitement courses through your veins. You can’t wait to be the most gorgeous girl in the room.
It’s when you’re now fully dressed up, and you look in the mirror, or your sibling/friend/mom asks you, “What are you wearing?” that the excitement dries up and is replaced by:
- Confusion – “Wait. It’s like this fit isn’t fitting o”
- Anxiety – “Omg, I have to be at this event in the next hour“
- Betrayal – “But this outfit looked good in my head “
- Exhaustion and Frustration – “How am I going to start looking for something else to wear now”
I want to say things don’t get more chaotic than this, but I’m not in the business of telling lies.
Stage 3 – Denial
At the denial stage, all you’re trying to do is make the outfit work. You’ve invested so much time and energy into creating this look, so it must come out well. During this phase, if you have anyone around you witnessing how distressed you are by this rude awakening that your fit isn’t fitting, their anthem will be: but it’s not that bad, oh. Actually, sometimes it isn’t that bad, but the “what you wanted (the picture in your mind) vs what you got (the clothes on your body)” situation is just a huge vibe killer for your outing. What you begin to do is start picking the outfit apart to figure out the best ways to style it into what you imagined. You may pack your hair differently. You may change the shoes. You may pick out another piece of jewellery. If you’re wearing a two-piece, you may even switch up the top or bottom and still end up hating your fit.
If you have a coconut head like me, you might decide to wear the original outfit because, at that point, you’re not only in denial that the outfit isn’t giving, but you’re also too exhausted to look for anything else to wear. However, even if you insist on not changing clothes, reality sets in, and the denial swiftly disappears when someone who cares about you says something along the lines of, “Let me see your other options.”
My sister, that is the nicest way someone can tell you that your outfit is ugly.
Stage 4 – Defeat
You finally accept defeat. Things actually get easier once you decide that the outfit doesn’t need to be styled differently. It needs to be removed completely. At this stage, all that is left in you is sadness—sadness at the death of a slay that seemed promising. Time isn’t on your side anymore, so you take off your outfit and re-open the doors of your wardrobe.
Stage 5 – Clarity
Thankfully, this is the fifth and final stage. The clarity phase varies based on personalities. If you’re a perfectionist, you probably had a second option all this while, so you easily went with it. If you work well under pressure, you might not have had another option waiting but are still able to quickly find another alternative. In such cases, it’s probably something you’ve worn before that looked good or something you’ve never worn but doesn’t require so much effort to come out well.
If you are neither of the two personalities, the clarity stage won’t be all that clear for you. You may still feel let down by the events that happened earlier on, and it may cloud your decision-making process, so you end up picking out something you don’t really feel great in.
After all is said and done, the most hilarious thing about these stages is that they aren’t a rare series of unfortunate events, a lot of us will still go through it again, and again. Because why should I actually try out an outfit I plan to wear for an outing, way before the day of the outing, when I can mentally picture it in my head to decide if it’s cute or not? Girl math.
