no. 66: what I wore in Q1
a complete closet audit, my 2025 clothing tracker, and my most worn outfits of Q1.
Dying for Sex, Hulu. Michelle Williams is arresting as Molly, a woman diagnosed with end stage breast cancer. When faced with certain death, she decides to leave her husband to explore her sexual desires. Based on the podcast hosted by Molly’s IRL best friend Nikki (played by a phenomenal Jenny Slate), the show is equal parts funny and devastating.
Klara & the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in a dystopian future of the US, Klara is an Artificial Friend - the autonomous, humanoid robots that act as companions to the future children of the elite. The entire novel, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is an eerie, cautionary tale about our relationship with technology, medicine, and each other. Highly, Highly recommend.
Toxic Town, Netflix. If you haven’t gotten enough of Aimee Lou Wood, don’t miss her in the British miniseries Toxic Town. Based on the true story of the town of Corby, where improper disposal of toxic waste led to dozens of children born with birth defects. Toxic Town follows three of the mothers’ efforts to bring those responsible to justice. It’s very British, and a bit of a tough watch, but a compelling reminder of the importance of environmental protections.
As a creator, I’m constantly asked to define my niche. Platforms want labels, brands want clarity, readers want a snappy summary… even Substack, the platform where I write this newsletter, wants me to choose: Food & Drink, Culture, Travel, Parenting… (truthfully, I don’t even know what this newsletter is listed under, and I’m fine with that.)
That said, whenever I see the “fashion & beauty” box, I hesitate. Even at the peak of my instagram influencer days, I wasn’t a full-glam, photo-shoot-every-day kind of fashion person. I also deeply admire fashion writers like Erika Veurink (of Long Live), Viv Chen (of The Molehill) and Allison Bornstein who elegantly blend fashion with culture, history, personal style and critique. But that’s not quite me, either.
But I do care about fashion - what I wear, how it feels, and the quiet power of a great outfit. My version of fashion leans a little playful, and a little academic - personal style breakdowns, packing lists, closet audits and “style me for…” posts complete with moodboards and outfit formulas.
At it’s core, my interest in style is about chasing what I call outfit magic - that romcom moment where someone steps out into the sunshine in slow-mo, feeling completely themselves. It’s not about the clothes, exactly. It’s about they way they sync with your energy and environment. A good outfit doesn’t just look good – it changes your whole day.
Today, we’re digging into my complete closet audit, my 2025 clothing tracker, and what I wore in Q1.
Xx
for visibility: this post includes affiliate links, so if you purchase something through the links I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. besides the Q1 round up of what I wore the most, I focused this issue on the outfit formulas and item types I put together most often, rather than specific items.
the closet audit
This January, I audited my entire closet into a fully indexed “closet catalog” (I am a lot of fun at parties, I swear!) This included listing every. single. item of clothing I owned by type, assigning an auto-generated serial number (by category and subcategory), and to the best of my ability, documenting when I purchased it, and for how much.
From there, I also created a tab where I enter what I wear every single day. Each new outfit is added, regardless of how many clothing changes I have per day, and I include context for a number of different categories (sleep, errands, workouts, personal outing, parenting outing, etc).
Once I completed the catalog and the tracker, I also set up formulas and charts that would summarize closet stats like total number of items, items added (and subtracted) per year, cost per wear, most worn items, unique outfit combinations, and a whole bunch of other stuff. This took about two weeks - It was tedious and time consuming, and genuinely one of the more humbling things I have ever done.
And, I found the data enlightening, so let’s start there!
the results:
As of Q1, 2025 there are 297 items in my closet, 72% of which have been added in the last 5 years. This is missing a small selection of clothing that is currently in storage (formalwear, maternity clothes etc) and I was fast and loose with the accessories (eg. i didn’t categorize every earring), but I’m hoping to finish adding those by the end of Q2!!)
Activewear is far and away the largest category (37%) and with the rest all being roughly equivalent. Tops (18%), Bottoms (7%), Loungewear (9.5%), One pieces (dresses, rompers, etc - 9%), outerwear (8%), shoes (7%).
While I knew I had a lot of activewear, I felt a little stunned seeing the hard numbers (109 items!). Digging in, I realized just what a massive category it is, including leggings (18 pairs), tank tops (25) sports bras (25), shorts (6 pairs), sweatshirts (8) and specialty gear for skiing and hiking. A significant portion of these items are at least 4 years old or more, which both fully tracks to my fitness influencer / mega adventure travel years when most of these were gifted or purchased, but also speaks to their quality and continued utilization.
In a development that should shock absolutely no one, a whopping 77% of items in my closet fall into an extremely similar color family: blue, navy (which is obviously different), green, white, grey, denim and black. I like what I like and I’m sticking with it!
The most surprising parts of the audit:
The duplication I had of a few categories of specific item types - athletic wear, and then sweaters and jeans, to name a few.
The number of items I’ve added to my closet each year. I have always prided myself on “not shopping that much”, but between life changes, size fluctuations with pregnancy and postpartum and several gifting relationships with brands I work with, regularly adding even one or two items a month adds up fast.
I’ve already committed to a low- buy year, hoping to purchase less than 15 new clothing items this year. In Q1 I made three purchases (a sweater, a hat, and a pair of ski pants) and received three items (a button down, a sweater, and a pair of trousers) as a gift from a brand.
I’m planning to use the month of April to work on the closet cleanout, setting a personal goal of reducing the total number of items in the closet catalog to 250, and will be focusing on ruthlessly culling the categories with unnecessary duplicates (athletic wear, jeans, sweaters, etc) first.
what I wore - Q1 2025
With all that tracking and categorizing in order, let’s get to the good stuff: what I actually wore. Q1 is always a bit of a wild card and this year was no different: I had two ski outings, a wedding, a funeral, and a significant number of “everyday life” outings - errands, time with friends, parenting and personal.
I generally tracked every distinct outfit, but was extremely fast and loose in tracking accessories (meaning: I started and then gave up because I wear the same jewelry every day and 3 sunglasses and 2 bags 87% of the time).
In Q1 I wore 132 unique items - 44.44% of items in the closet - in 246 unique outfit combinations. The average wear count for each item worn was 2.4 times (high of 62x, low of 0) and the average outfit combination was worn 1.5 times (high 30x, low 1). All in all, I was pretty pleased - and there goes any self-delusion about wearing the same thing all the time!