There’s an active and an inactive side to every woman’s closet. There are those clothes and accessories that are in weekly rotation and others that still have the tags on them. My mom has boxes of hats she hasn’t worn, vintage Coach bags she’s never carried, color-coordinated suits she’s never put on. Some items she holds on to for sentimental value (so she says—hoarding sort of runs in my family!), while others are the emergency items; the pieces you might not need in the moment, but that will come in handy should and if a more appropriate time or event arises.
I have those items, too. Dresses I’ve bought for the impromptu weddings I might have to attend (both fall and summer; casual and black tie). Necklaces I purchased during trips that are draped on the corners of my mirrors and rarely around my chest. But most of the stagnant pieces in my closet can be categorized as aspirational; the pieces I keep around for the “someday” days.
I started shopping this way a couple of years ago. It was the summer after college. I was balancing trying to find a job while also figuring out what it is I wanted to do, and I’d just discovered eBay. I was caught up in a bidding war with another user over a pair of tan, platform, lace-up Loeffler Randall booties I’d seen a fashion editor wear in a street style picture once. They were impractical and not exactly my style at the time, but that didn’t matter. I needed them. They, I’d convinced myself, would be what I wore when I was in that editor’s (literal) shoes one day. They would come to make up the wardrobe of my future self.
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