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I ended my Project 333 experiment after two months. This is a fashion challenge that asks you to choose 33 items and wear them for 3 months. Categories like exercise and sleep wear are excluded, but it counts most other wardrobe items. I discussed how I approached it in this post, and here’s my one-month assessment.

Overall, I enjoyed the process and learned from it. I didn’t clear out my clost of the non-333 pieces so I had to remember or look up what was in the list of 33 when I couldn’t quite remember. Most of my choices worked well, although I did swap out a couple of things because the weather turned out to be colder and icier than I had expected. I departed from it a couple of time to wear coats that were not on the list, but otherwise I stuck to it.

What I liked: I chose pieces that I knew I enjoyed wearing so I didn’t have any unpleasant surprises, i.e., discovering that the shirt I had chosen wasn’t going to go with anything and I was stuck with it for months. There were pieces that I didn’t wear in January but that I was able to wear (and was glad to have) in February. I also liked the way the limited options made me put things together in ways I hadn’t done before. A dress that I’d generally thought of as kind of dowdy became much more stylish when I added a belt and a scarf draped in a new way. Shirts rather than turtlenecks under casual sweaters made the overall look more polished. My bright olive green trousers looked great with a cropped navy sweater. And so on.

I was also able to rotate my teaching clothes enough that I didn’t feel I was wearing the same things over and over again. Yes they were the same pieces, but adding scarves and pairing them with the full range of complementary pieces meant they didn’t look exactly the same. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say so. And more importantly, I felt that I was mixing things up, so I was confident and I’m sure that makes a difference. I did wear the same pair of jeans once or twice a week, but they are classic skinny jeans in a dark wash so they’re basically uniform material anyway.