kate spade's simple closet

Kate Spade is trying to help me out as I think about simplicity & an intentional closet. They have this "Key Pieces" idea that I think to which it is worth paying attention for a couple of reasons. Number one -- I think they are right & they have set this up in an artful way. At once they make fashion seem artistic & highlight that an article of clothing can be useful & function for multiple purposes, maybe even replacing two or three in an overcrowded closet.

The other reason, though, is that this is a marketing trend. On everything from Gilt Groupe to H&M window displays to J.Crew lists of Jenna's favorites this idea of simplicity (in one form or another) is popping up. Of course it is being used purposefully, to encourage us to buy something new, but the very fact that this -- simplicity -- is what will currently attract a consumer is encouraging! This is a cultural moment, mid-recession & economic downturn, in which we might get real.

This is an opportunity to reevaluate the way we think about shopping & clothes & style & art & fashion & beauty & money & how they are all connected to how we imagine ourselves as citizens, subjects, religious people, women, bodies, and participants in some kind of global economy.

How many different ways can one thing work?

I am starting in on my closet because I am suspicious of my fashion habit but hopeful that simplicity & style are not mutually exclusive. I want to inhabit art & live colorfully. I don't want to take the easy routes out of either never thinking about this and shopshopshopping OR shying away from the issue of consumption altogether and giving everything away, fearful of possessions and of planting roots in this world.

Better for me, I think, is to wrestle with the tension continuously -- with each desire honestly asking myself: what is good about this? What is scary? What is beautiful? What is ugly?