75 Day Style Challenge, Introduction & Preparation

If you're reading this - hey, thanks for checking out my little corner of the internet! I haven't actually done a proper blog post like this in such a long time... it feels nice to just have somewhere where I can share my thoughts and photos and if people feel like reading it, they can. ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭

I wanted to start these off by giving a break down on my thoughts regarding the current challenge I'm participating in, things I have learned through it, and what some of my process and method has been thus far! I want to break these posts up week by week for myself and for others since 75 days is going to be a lot and I would also like to pace myself not to take on more than I can chew.

What is the 75 Day Hard Style Challenge?

• You must get dressed up for 75 days and document it
• You must only use clothing from your wardrobe as it currently exists
• You cannot buy anything new (including thrifting items) to contribute to it
• You must wear a new outfit for each of the 75 days ("new" meaning it can be different clothes or even the same clothes but styled differently)

My own house rules

• You can fix-up, mend, and alter clothes but you can't make any from scratch during the challenge
• If someone gifts you a piece of clothing or you get it for free that's fine, but it can't be used in the challenge itself 

It originated from TikTok, but has since transferred over onto other sites like Instagram, where I am personally posting my own journey with it! I was really intrigued by this concept because it's friendly to just about anyone and any style! I also really love challenges that encourage people to get creative and focus on learning new skills rather than spending money and consuming. I personally have struggled with impulse control around buying clothes before and have been making efforts to pull back on my spending and consumption levels, instead focusing on what I have, creating more of my own stuff, and restyling outfits in slightly different ways! Plus, there's no shame in outfit repeating. If an outfit is good the first time, why would it not be again and again and again?

Planning and Preparation

So, going into this challenge I knew the real hurdle was going to be less that I wouldn't be able to style things for 75 days and more so that I needed to figure out a method to do it that was faster, less messy, and less stressful for me to do it each day.

(My Airtable layout)

Since mid-last year, I have started utilizing the site Airtable to keep track of outfits I have put together and liked. It also has acted a fully digital version of my wardrobe! With no exaggeration, this has been a life saver in helping me organize my wardrobe and keep track of what I already own! The specific template I have been using was made by fellow lolita Obsixwi. I have made some light modifications to it during my past few months of use, like altering terms like "OP" to include sub-sections that are for garments outside of lolita, as well as slowly updating it to have a lot of information about my clothes and accessories, including in any of them are in-need of mending, alterations, or that I'm even looking to potentially sell.

One of it's greatest features, and the part I have ended up leaning on the most, is it's outfit / coordinate builder! This allows me to take anything from my digital wardrobe and put together into one place to make building outfits easier and less messy! I also will often upload pictures after I have put the outfit combination on to show an example of it all looks like put together. 

(What the Coordinate Builder looks like)

Prior to my start date of July 1st, I began to put together some potential outfits I may want to wear or try out during the challenge. This made the process of coordinating something together for each day so much fun easier. It was a simple as pulling up Airtable, Looking at the Coord section, and then from there grabbing the items I had planned out to try together.

 It's only stipulation is that in-order to get full use out of it, you do need to enter all the data about each of your clothing and accessory items yourself. This can be a really time consuming endeavor so I highly recommend doing it a little bit out of time + adding in items as you get them so you don't have to do as much backtracking! I still highly recommend trying this out for yourself though, it's incredibly useful even outside of the challenge!

Documentation

I was really worried about this part of the challenge. I admittedly am very camera shy and even with getting into fashion more in recent years and trying to capture some of the looks I  put together I don't tend to relax well in front of the camera. But I really wanted to be able to show off things like details, weight of the fabrics, how an outfit flowed or responded to movement, and if you could move around easily in it. Because of this, I decided to go the route of video recording with a small snapshot each day that followed it.

I've very stubbornly refused to learn video editing the past few years because I'm admittedly not very fond of short form content as we know it currently and assumed I wouldn't have any reason to ever utilize it myself. I don't have TikTok and probably never will for this reason and I wasn't very jazzed when Instagram decided to shift it's focus on reels. However, despite my elder behavior and fist shaking, I cracked and decided to give making videos akin to TikTok / Reels a go, but instead opting to put them in my stories instead to avoid them reaching an audience outside of those already following me.

At the recommendation of my lovely friend Rory, I installed CapCut which was extremely straight forward and easy to learn to use! I am still technically learning how to properly use it and wouldn't say I've mastered it by any means, but I'm quite happy with how streamlined it's made the entire process.