I can read your mind. I know that upon seeing the word "uniform" in the Style section, you raised an eyebrow and maybe even sighed really loudly. I totally understand why you did so... If you are British and have been to school you've probably had it up to here with uniforms. Bear with me though... I am French so I didn't have to wear a uniform to go to school. I am also not so keen on the idea of school uniforms as I feel like they hinder creativity and individuality - but this is another story altogether. What I am talking about today is different, it is about finding your own personal uniform, a sartorial formula that works for you and can be reinterpreted in many different ways.
We've all at some point been standing in front of an overflowing closet on the verge of a nervous breakdown thinking "I have nothing to wear" - insert puzzled boyfriend face here. I have dozens of perfectly lovely dresses, skirts, trousers, shoes and anything you could think about. I write about clothes for a living. Yet I still end up tossing things on my bed in a fit of rage when I need to pick an outfit. At least I used to until I figured out what my uniform was. Pre-uniform, when I needed to find something to wear for a specific occasion, my first instinct was to run to my nearest high-street shop and find something that "would do". Obviously that was never good enough and it just added more and more clutter to my already busy wardrobe. One day, I believe it was after a conversation with my sister, I saw the light. A streamlined, simple wardrobe is a more viable solution, both financially and style-wise. To quote the most obvious Fashion cliché "Less is More".
Think about all your clothes, then think about the clothes you actually wear on a daily basis. Are they always more or less the same? Or the same type of combinations? If so, it looks like you may have found your uniform already. Sometimes being faced with too many options, we get flustered. We should feel adventurous and experiment with wild layering, but the truth is we don't. At least I don't. Simplicity is key.
For this Autumn, after falling madly in love with the suits from the Emilio Pucci Resort Collection, I decided I wanted to go even further in this direction: suits would be my uniform. It is a pretty literal interpretation, but once again, bear with me. The idea is to take a pretty formal yet versatile garment and have as much fun as I can with it. I don't really need to buy anything: I already own tailored blazers and trousers as well as about a hundred blouses and tops. Coincidentally, masculine tailoring and heritage are two pretty big trends for the Fall so I may be onto a winner here. If you want to follow my adventures in obsessive uniform dressing, you can do so here.