The First 10 Things You Should Buy to Start Wardrobe in 2023, Part 1

Starting a line-up of high-quality garms from scratch.

Welcome to this week’s Haute Garbaggio, a compilation of my thoughts and feelings about mostly clothes but also other stuff occasionally.

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Here’s a nice horror story and/or thought experiment to kick off your day: Imagine waking up one morning and every jawn you’ve ever known, worn, and loved, has vanished. Maybe they were lost in a tragic house fire, or, I don’t know, maybe you got the short of the stick in some Thanos-like plot but instead of your body disintegrating it’s your whole line-up of coats, shirts, jeans, and shoes. After a reasonable period of mourning, it would be time to dig deep, find your resolve, and rebuild. (*salutes into the distance*) But where do you start? Which items would you buy first, second…ninth?

In some sick twisted way, I actually enjoy this thought experiment because it really forces me to consider what items in my rotation are actually sparking joy. It also makes me wonder if I could actually get by on a super pared down wardrobe of just 10 items. (The answer is absolutely yes save for underwear and socks, but the thought of actually living this way scares me in the way getting bloodwork is scary. I’m fairly sure everything is fine…but a little insidious voice in my head keeps screaming out “but what if it isn’t???!!!”)

All of this is to say I put together a list below of the 10 items I think would be the perfect foundation for a collection of garms built from scratch in 2023. These are the items that are the top of their class in terms of quality, style, taste, and most importantly, repeatable wearability. There’s no room for one-season wonders in this scenario that will garner massive attention on the timeline one week then fall out of favor the next. These are all items you can scoop up now, break in, and learn to love more and more every time you put them on.

This is part 1 because as you’ll see, each section has a big chunk of text and information so doing it all in one post was gonna make this email too long to read by my own attention span standards. Check out the below, and know I’ll send out the second half of the list next week!