Because excess is the American way.
Part deux of the holiday gorge-fest is coming faster than Karlie Kloss down a runway, and with it arrives the opportunity to again don all manner of oversized knits and elastic waistbands — never “stretchy pants” — to disguise a post-binge session bulge, then wallow in self-disgust while subsisting on nothing but dry brushing, meditation and servings of pulverized raw, green vegetables for three days (and that’s only a beginner’s cleanse, you know).
Whether you’ve resolved to practice extra-mindful eating or you’ve just reintroduced solid food to your diet, we can all aim to de-puff our closets as we’re trying to reduce enough to slither back into our slimmest trousers.
I suspect many of you will identify with the problem of stuffing a Suzanne Rogers-size wardrobe into a dorm room cupboard (even more wishful: that McQueen. Add in a maximalist ideology, and my closet becomes the Bermuda Triangle — only, instead of cruise ships, it swallows Creatures of the Wind. It might be helpful to have four seasons of options at your disposal, but when you take moving out at the end of the year into account, closet rotation is a smarter decision, if only to avoid excess baggage fees or straining your poor back.
The objective then is to head home for winter break with as much out-of-season clothing as possible and to come back with a suitcase stuffed with gifts and holiday sale purchases. For those hyper-committed to keeping their entire wardrobes at school, try traveling with a mostly empty suitcase — surely there’re enough reserves in your at-home arsenal to tide you over until the start of winter quarter. And even if you don’t, I should hope you’re spending most of your break with people who won’t care if you repeat a sweater anyway.
So what’s worth occupying valuable real estate in the woefully shallow drawers native to on-campus housing? Trade cotton sundresses, especially ones with splashy florals, and sandals of any kind for anything that’ll fit into the endless rotation of leggings, button-downs, knits, furs and boots Caroline Blomst and Jane Aldridge often (and rightly) advise. When you’re deciding which precious few scarves will make the cut, try everything on. Document particularly successful outfits in your Moleskine or Smythson (might I suggest the “Bright Ideas” wafer notebook?), take Polaroids like those in British Vogue’s hyper-addictive “Today I’m Wearing” feature or Instagram, if you’re willing to submit the carefully catalogued and Valencia-filtered contents of your closet to Cyrillic-obsessed scammers. And with retailers hawking bikinis in December, you could actually bring new warm-weather purchases back to Northwestern. Buy now, I-can’t-wait-to-wear-it-now requires strategic layering, like dark turtlenecks or heavyweight flannels under diaphanous dresses.
Don’t spend your entire time off waffling over which Heattech undershirt to pack. There’s always FedEx, but there’s no place like home.
