The Crazy Experiment

I’ve seen Kendi’s 30 for 30 Remix mentioned a lot in the blog-o-sphere lately, and making a month of outfits from 30 items seems like fun. Except I’m not very fashionable in my everyday attire, and even on a normal month, I might not cycle through 30 items. Instead, I signed up for SIOL.

That’s right, Six Items or Less. Six items. One month. Accessories, outerwear, underwear, exercise clothes, and loungewear don’t count towards the six. You’re allowed to have exact duplicates for laundry purposes – I have a back up pair of jeans, but I haven’t had to use it. And notable differences from the Remix challenge are that shoes don’t count towards the item count, and I am allowed to shop during this month, which I have done. :)

Why in the world would someone want to do this? The site asks you to choose your primary reason for wanting to participate when you sign up. The choices: anti-consumerism, personal uniform, curiosity, and creativity. I’m definitely in the curiosity camp. I wondered: how hard will this be for me? Will anyone even notice?

 
on the left: what I normally wear, on the right: SIOL outfits, outerwear included
click for larger images

Basically, the answer is no. The only people who see me regularly enough to notice are software engineers, almost all male. I still have two workdays left in this challenge, and afterwards, I’ll post this blog article more publically to see if people actually did notice and were too afraid to tell me. But I’m thinking not. The moral of the story is that people (men, at least) don’t notice when you wear the same thing. But they notice when you wear something different.

The only difference people noticed between my two sets of outfits pictured above was the dress shirt I threw in as one of my six items, just in case I needed to dress up during the one month. Two people noticed something different: “Something I should know about?” and “Is it laundry day? You normally wear T-shirts.” Hah.

It’s been a less interesting (almost) month than I expected. Basically, I’m tired of wearing maroon shirts and am eager to get back to my Threadless/Woot rotation. I still like the idea of wardrobe experiments, but I think the next one I do will need to be one that pushes me further out of my comfort zone. No T-shirt or jeans month? Hmmm…

~N