My Thoughts on the Wet Hair, Don’t Care 30 Day Outfit Challenge

Sorry for the delay on getting this out. Meant to post it earlier this week, but the Cubbies (yay) and being sick (boo) got in my way.

As you know by now either through the site or via my Instagram, I did a 30 Day Outfit Challenge for the whole month of September. This post here outlines the premise of the Challenge, but here is a quick lil summary of the “rules”:

• Each day in September I had to make a new outfit
• I could rewear basics (like a skirt or pair of pants), but the outfit itself had to be different from anything I had previously worn that month
• I could only buy three new things in September
• My outfits had to come entirely from my closet, except those three new things, if I even bought them

And I did it!!! I created THIRTY different looks for the whole month! Overall, it was actually really fun and slightly challenging at times. Along the way, I learned a few things about my clothes, myself and my shopping habits. So now, I would like to share my insights on the whole experience or as they would say in the corporate world that I mostly dwell in – the “key takeaways”:

1. This one is shopping related…I tend to wear like three brands with a few other ones intermixed in. I am sure you began to notice that every time I broke down a look it was the following: Old Navy, J. Crew Factory, Ann Taylor and then maybe some J. Crew, Zara, Gap, Banana Republic, Forever21 and/or Nordstrom or Bloomingdales. I’m cool with this. I don’t have a huge shopping budget at all so I really focus in on deals. Coupon codes are my best friends or stores that already carry affordable clothing. The stores I listed above generally have good staples and even better sales. I’m all for a good hunt on the occasion too at places like Marshalls and T.J. Maxx. I have to be in the mood for those stores, but they have some great finds (especially if your version is neatly organized – I feel like that helps a lot). I might start trying to expand my horizon other places though. More often than not I found comparable options for the outfits that I wore that were out of style at places like ASOS, ShopBop and Revolve Clothing – they have good coupons sometimes as well – ShopBop is having their Friends and Family sale right now with the code “INTHEFAM25”. Outfits below were entirely those three brands minus the accessories – that happened 10 out of 30 times so one third of my complete outfits came from 3 stores…That’s kind of telling.

2. Because of my tight shopping budget, I tend buy staples or classic pieces (in multiples) over trendier pieces. If an item fits well, looks good and can be worn for along time, I will definitely being scooping it up, probably in a lot of colors. Case in point, my Old Navy Pixie Pants. They usually cost about $20 – $30 depending on what kind of coupon or sale is going on so I have about five pairs of those pants. I think it’s important to pick pieces that travel through time, especially when it involves an office wardrobe. Obviously, if you have a cool job at a fashion magazine or something like that, you can get a little funky with your wardrobe; however, I don’t have that cool factor to my job. Therefore, when shopping, I look for two things: 1) Is this going to hold up for awhile (quality-wise but also style-wise)? and 2) Can I wear there is multiple facets of my life? It’s kind of one of the main reasons I’ve never splurged and bought a crop top because I could really only wear it maybe twice a year, max. For your main wardrobe, stick to staples and sprinkle in trendier pieces once in awhile to spice your life up. Pictured below – me in my Pixie Pants. I also have on a J. Crew Factory cami (here and here) in all three looks, too. Love those wardrobe staples.

3. That kind of leads to my next takeaway which I already knew but didn’t really apply in my day to day – accessories! Accessories are the best way to add fun to your classic everyday pieces. This is almost common sense for most people, like putting on a statement necklace will raise the bar of your look. I didn’t really practice this because well, I got lazy and my dinero for awhile was focused on more practical things in life (whomp whomp). Most of the accessories I sported during the challenge were very very very old…I want to try to work on expanding on what I have. A great place to start is Forever21. A lot of those pieces I had on were from there for probably less then $12 an item, and they have really stood up to the test of time (like 4 – 6 years old). Granted, some things are either too trendy and go out of style, get tarnished or break, so I’m not saying invest every dollar there, but it doesn’t hurt to check it out. (Also awhile back I pinned something on Pinterest about spraying your fake gold and silver jewelry with a clear spray paint to protect it from tarnishing – I might give this a shot and let you know how it works out!) I did most of my accessory round-ups in the first two summaries here and here.

4. This next one is specifically about my wardrobe…my color pallet. Ummm, I wear like the same colors: cream, navy, hot pink, blush and black. I actually noticed it half way through, and I’m like ugh, I need to change this up, and there was nothing I could really do about it. All my colors are those colors!! It was a HUGE eye opener…going forward I’m going to try to buy items outside just those colors. I feel like I need more green or red or like anything?? Purple? Lol IDK! I will work on this one! My round-up pics are posted below…you can see….lots of cream, black, navy and pink (especially round-up pic #2….weird).

5. Something else I learned was DIG DEEP, in your closet that is. If you go digging for gold, you just might find some buried treasure. The yellow sweater I wore on the last day I probably hadn’t worn in 4 years or so, and it looked so cute. It’s definitely worth giving all your clothes another once over every now and then. Yellow sweater look pictured below.

6. That leads me to my next point – when I was giving my clothes that double take, I was like wow…I have a lot that I am never going to wear again. I feel bad about this – I feel bad that I’m hanging on to perfectly decent clothing that I’m just like “no” about. Soon I am going to do a closet clean out!!!! WAHOO!! I will be donating good condition work clothes that I know I’m not going to wear again to Dress for Success and casual wear to probably Salvation Army. Hopefully, I will get the closet clean done soon; there will be a post about too :-)! I have no pictures of the stuff I don’t want (yet).

7. Number 7 is all about “Dress Everyday like a Fashion Blogger”. I really challenged myself to come up with new, fun outfits out of clothing I already owned and also really pushed myself out of my comfort zones. I’m going to tell you the truth about something in my life. Day 8’s outfit….I basically wear that every Monday. It’s my like “OMG, I ate and drank so much and just wanna be so comfortable outfit”. You can sub in different cardigans, but that navy blue dress…that dress is my everything. I’ve worn it multiple times in the same week before. Okay, so now that you know I’m a dirtbag…..lol….this challenge really pushed me out of that rut/safe zone. The zone of wearing the same like 5 – 10 things to work or on the weekends just because it was easy or they are comfortable or you don’t feel like searching – whatever excuse you can think of because it’s just easier than being creative. It made me use what little accessories I had to change outfits. I got to have fun with my looks again. I even bought a bold fun lipstick to play with, which I like never do. It was a really good time. I wouldn’t define Wet Hair, Don’t Care as a fashion blog or myself as a fashion blogger per se. The site and I are more of all around lifestyle-type, but something I worked hard in September was to “Dress Everyday Like a Fashion Blogger”. Now, I’m trying to continue doing that as we fade into the cold abyss of October (I do not like the cold and struggle with cold weather clothing lol).

8. Finally, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to look cute. This goes back to Number 6, but I want to touch base on the numbers since that’s my life in the real world – lots and lots of numbers. So, one of the rules about the challenge was I could only buy three things. I never placed a dollar value on them, but since I live in a pretty budgeted world, I pretty much could assure it would be a pair of Loubs or Prada bag. I ended buying three items at Old Navy. Two of which I wore during September – my overalls here and my flannel here. The other item I didn’t wear in September for the Challenge because I’m doing something with that later – stay tuned!! But in total all three items cost me $71.75….FOR THREE ARTICLES OF CLOTHING!!!! That is about $21.92 per item. That is not bad my friends. You can find really cute stuff out there for great deals. As you know, I post about big sales quite frequently so always stay tuned or feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about finding items at certain price points!

That about sums the Wet Hair, Don’t Care 30 Day Outfit Challenge. Thank you so much for following the different looks and hanging in there while I worked on this summary post. Here are links to all four round-up posts – go check them out!

Days 1 – 7

Days 8 – 13

Days 14 – 23

Days 24 – 30

As always, I promise more good things to come!

Peace out,

Wet Hair, Don’t Care