A Tale of Too-Many Dresses

Hello! Thought you'd never hear from me again? It's been a strange last few months and, honestly, I have been in a bit of a slump. But, somehow between the first breath of winter cold, good friends, Zycam, and the fact that I finally figured out how to style my leather t-shirt, I'm starting to feel more like my old self.  This is a post I put together a while ago and, while it's almost too cold to be thinking about dresses, I still wanted to share it.

I need to ask a serious question  . . . how many dresses should one person own? Hypothetically speaking (of course), is 49 too many? Does that number become any more acceptable if that person went to say nine wedding weekends last year?

But back to the land of non-hypotheticals. This summer I decided it was time to tackle one of the darkest corners of my closet . . . Dresses. I had an inkling that I owned a lot of dresses (it's a weakness of mine along with shoes, denim, and high-end gin). But, I didn't understand how many I had survived my last closet cleanse. For example, I still owned a dress purchased for my bachelorette party three and a half years ago. There were also three work dresses that preceded Mr. C (which is impressive considering I started dating him a couple of weeks into my first job. . . in 2006).

Obviously, my closet tough love needed to get a lot tougher, which is how I ended up with I have two bags of clothes (plus shoes) to donate. What's left? 38 dresses. A 22 percent reduction but that still seems kind of high, especially since I don't wear that many in my daily life. So, how does one get to 38 dresses?

Dress Report | Create Infographics

Step 1: Have all your friends get married in one year (14 Dresses)

Step 2: Obsessively hoard summer/casual dresses just in case global warming turns New York into a tropical paradise (15 Dresses)

Step 3: Try on all your dresses (while drinking wine and watching Gossip Girl) . . . convince yourself you look great in all of them.

The first two steps account for 76 percent of the dresses I own. The last is why I still own 38. Everyone has their achilles heel gown. Maybe this is just mine? Before you judge too harshly . . . Remember, count the dresses in thine own closet . . . there might be more than you expect.