Wear What When

In the Closet with … the Clean-up Crew Edition

Meet photographer and musician Jenny Jimenez and the closet that ate itself

Posted by: Laura Cassidy on Nov 03, 2009 at 06:00AM5 Comments

Slideshow: Jenny and her husband share a closet, and by that I mean poor Robin gets an inch to her yard. To wit: Some multi-rung hangers of gray slacks that Jenny insists she needs for dressier shooting gigs teeter precariously around the outer limits.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Slideshow: Jenny and her husband share a closet, and by that I mean poor Robin gets an inch to her yard. To wit: Some multi-rung hangers of gray slacks that Jenny insists she needs for dressier shooting gigs teeter precariously around the outer limits.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

We started by identifying what Jenny’s doing right; what feels good, looks better, and is easy to throw on and doesn’t generate headaches. Exhibit A was this Lauren Moffatt top paired with drainpipe Levis and a short heel.

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In this way, we arrived on criteria we could use to determine whether other pieces should stay or go. As it turns out, Jenny wants to look modern, feel comfortable, and throw a little sass and sex appeal around here and there, too. And, as a professional in her mid-30s, she definitely wants to reconcile her increasingly sophisticated future with her rock and roll past. One ain’t better than the other, but rather, where they meet is a really rad place.

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This is the jacket, upcycled by the lovely Erin Skipley, that needed to be freed of its hanger-partner. I can’t even remember what its hanger-partner looked like, but it’s now available in some North End thrift shop.

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The jacket also needed to be freed of its band buttons. I used to be as game as the next girl to sport an old school Echo and the Bunnyman badge, but we’re older and wiser now, aren’t we? Jenny swapped out her indie rock pins for a brooch her sweetie recently picked up for her at the Lakeside Rummage Sale. Sweet!

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The after photo from what was another unhelpful hanger combo. We tossed whatever used to be paired with this vest, which is also by Erin Skipley, and paired it instead with a really good basic (scoop neck tee with 3/4 length sleeves). We then tossed in a hair accessory Jenny hadn’t quite wrapped her head around. It was almost too girly for her, which is exactly why it works so well with the menswear-inspired (okay, yes, and corset-riffing) vest.

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Here’s that Paco Rabanne velvet blazer and the old man plaid — and Jenny’s “psyched” smile. Proof that a little irony here and there works. She’s pointing out her new necklace; it’s from the Lazer Nature collection, which you might remember reading about here.

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Sometimes you just need a friend, or a hired gun closet counseling professional (you’ve seen one of those on this blog before, hint hint), to tell you that something you like is indeed likable. This is Jenny’s third-week-in-October dress. She might have tossed it, but we saved its life. I think it’s sweet and charming—and it’s fun to have something so specific that you just wear it once a year. (Shout out to the daffodil tee my friend Lacey gave me.)

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Unless you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, it does pay to have a friend around. Jenny wasn’t sure about this drapey tunic; she felt it got messy and weird… confused. But I noticed something really pretty going on in the back, and we discovered that if she wears her hair up when she wears the top, not only will she reveal a sweet sexy spot, the cleaner look means less confusion, too.

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This is just one of two or three discard piles. You shoulda seen the gray slack discard pile. Out with the old, cheaply made, ill-fitting, and overly ironic. They’re just taking up valuable real estate.

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If this dress were made of a better fabric, it coulda stayed. But as it was – poly – it had to go. Sometimes a retro fit and some puffy sleeves can be fun, but not when the thing isn’t well made.

She tells some of the best visual stories in town. The Weekly and The Stranger both think so (the latter even named her one of the city’s sexiest people; it’s alarming that that yearly list has come up twice now on this blog), and so do we at Seattle Met Bride & Groom. Jenny Jimenez captures bands, brides, and fleeting moments with a thoughtfully modern, richly colored, romantic-but-funny style. Her personal style is somewhere between indie rock (think Jenny Lewis) and older and wiser; irony brightening into a wry, classy kind of sass (paging Mary Louise Parker).

She’s handling the transition just fine, thanks, but her closet was kind of a mess.

For this edition of In the Closet with, there is no video. Instead of touring Jenny’s closet, we cleaned it. Our goals were to kick out that which didn’t work, give new life to that which could, and make some new outfits along the way. In our quest to detangle, dismantle, reassemble, and basically kick ass, clothes were pulled on and taken off, and that doesn’t make for good blog videos. Not on this kind of blog.

Instead, I’ve put together a slideshow of our evening and teased out some of the lessons we learned. We did learn, and you can, too. Jenny reports that since our last meeting, her mornings have become more efficient and she’s dressing with confidence and good cheer. So here goes.

1. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Even if that rut keeps you organized. One of the really smart things Jenny’s done in her closet is to sort of merchandise ready-to-go outfits on the same hanger. Only problem: those pairings were outdated; they had ceased feeling interesting, so she wasn’t even pausing on them anymore as she perused her wardrobe. In other words, those pieces had almost become invisible.

Go through your closet every other month or so and take a look at how things are hung. If the shirt tucked under your navy cardigan is no longer as appealing as the sweater, donate the shirt and find a new way to layer the top piece. It’s fine to let pieces share a hanger, just be sure you’re being smart and current about the couplings.

You’ll see an example of this in the images. The jacket in question is still cute and current — military looks never really wash up — and now it’ll be her Beyonce-in-Balmain look instead of some not-quite-successful ‘oh sure, the late 90s are back, too’ kind of thing.

2. Forget what you know about ‘what matches’ and ‘what goes.’ As evidenced by designers like Dries Van Noten, current trends dictate that there is a not a pattern that can’t be slammed up against another pattern. Not a shade of salmon that a slice of mustard-yellow or cheery blue can’t mingle with. It’s crazy how freeing it is. If you’ve seen me lately, you know. I’m as free as a non-color coordinated freebird.

Next time a Tuesday rolls around and you’ve got nothing better to do, give it a try and see if you can’t get lucky pairing vibrant, saturated plum velvet with a muted, old-man plaid shirt. (That’s what Jenny did, and not only was she psyched, her husband was, too.) If it works, progress to paisleys mixed with abstract florals, and whatever else.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask for a second opinion. Sometimes all an outfit needs is a second pair of eyes. The one and only thing I miss about my college dorm year is padding around from closet to closet looking for someone with something helpful to say about my ensemble. Open a couple bottles of wine and invite the gang over to play judge and jury. Make it an event, and offer to do the same for them in return.

4. Meditate on the difference between quality vintage and thrift store irony. In other words, ask yourself, Is that joke really funny anymore? If you’re on my side of 30, retro 80s dresses only look good when they’re well-made and of quality materials. A nice dove gray silk, say. The days of teal poly are behind us. Leave them there.

5. Find a Dewey Decimal System that works for you. I organize mainly by color because that’s how I tend to sense what I want to wear. In talking it out with Jenny, we realized she’s more of a comfort girl. There are days when she wants to be really comfortable, and days when she’s willing to give a little of that up. We talked about her hanging the super cozy at one end and getting more structured and less comfy from there. And within that scale, she could group like colors together, too.

6. Want a rule about when to get rid of something? Most people do. I say give it a year. If you haven’t worn a piece in a year, take it out and hang it on a doorknob or an over-the-door rack. You then have two more weeks to work it into rotation. If you still pass it up, even when it’s in your face every morning, send it out into the world with a ‘good luck’ and ‘nice to know you.’

Jenny was a valiant soldier, I gotta say. She threw discards aside without a second glance — mostly on the basis that they didn’t fit well anyway, or they just weren’t quality pieces that conveyed either a point of view or a sense of polished style. Some lucky Value Village shopper is in hog heaven right now — let’s just hope she’s 23 and in a band, and that she too will recognize when it’s time to let the teal secretary dress go.

What did she do with the extra room in her closet? What do you think? She went shopping. We identified what did work, and what was used over and over again, and what she needed more of. With the noise outta the way, it was easy to see where the music was coming from.

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If you’re interested in seeing Jenny’s music images, she’s currently got a show up — Show Me Your Tiffs — at Sky Lark Bar & Cafe in West Seattle through Dec 14. (Hit their Sunday brunch, it’s good.) Here’s a short and super fun video showing off what its all about (and what a good time you missed at the opening).