Three Things I Learned from Wearing Boring Ass Black Trousers and White Shirts for a Week

Stylistically-informed women are always telling other women that the crux of a good wardrobe is defined by a good pair of black trousers and a crisp white blouse. I have never understood this principle. Black trousers make me feel like I’m the kind of person you might find speaking with authority on genomics at a conference in El Paso. (I wish this was true. Two of my greatest life pursuits are learning more about genomics and going to El Paso.)

White blouses are great, but they mostly get to shine based exclusively on the wash of denim you pair them with. Maybe I am not of the ilk of “stylistically-informed” that we’ve grown accustomed to celebrating, but in my experience with both non-colors, they say nothing. When paired, there’s no room to read between the lines because there are no lines and you know what happens in the absence of fashion-ambiguity?

Lots

Of

Snoring.

Still, I was curious, you know, to see if there was something I’d been missing. So I committed myself to a challenge: for one week, I would only wear white blouses and black trousers in order to determine whether they’re all they’re cracked up to be according to the rules of style by [insert your fav magazine-delegated icon here]. Here are three important lessons I learned.

To be frank, I dreaded the week. I asked myself like eight times on Sunday why I was doing this. One of my favorite parts of getting up in the morning is putting an outfit together — determining who I’ll be for that day. With such confined boundaries, I feared getting up would feel like laying down. What I learned in a single sentence is (important lesson #1) that forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do is exactly where creativity gets to shine.

Example: yes, sure, I could have worn very traditional button downs with sleek trousers, but where’s the fun in that? Nowhere in this challenge did I cite that pants couldn’t have their own peplums, or that jackets were not invited to the party. What’s that thing they say? Necessity is the mother of invention?

Item #2. I put no sanctions on footwear (though many women live and die by the pump) and this culminated in the proof of lesson #2, which is a perspective I’ve long held: shoes are the easiest and more concretized way that women can escape from the banalities of life. It might be temporary, but sometimes, that’s enough.

Separately, I thought about things to layer under the shirts and over the pants and next to the sleeves. I forced myself to feel good and it worked. I arguably felt better because I was trying so hard at it. So my third takeaway was: work hard, give it your all, really believe that there’s a fruitful outcome on the horizon and you might not feel happy, per se, but you will feel satisfied. Fulfilled. Which I think is much more gratifying.

In conclusion, here’s the curve ball: white shirts and black pants are a metaphor for life which — by the rules of all that I call important — do, in fact, make them the best garments a woman could own.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis

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