I'm going to make you vote on everything in my closet

Thank you for your feedback on the Should the Dress Stay post. I have more planned (I have a lot of clothes I’m not sure about!), but I thought I’d talk about where I’m coming from first.

Most of the comments (including those via Twitter or email) said essentially if I don’t feel good in it, I should get rid of it. While this is good advice, how I feel is more complicated (and subjective). I wore the dress to church - that was when I took the pictures - and was feeling quite self-conscious. Then someone came up to me and said she had the same dress and loved how I accessorized it with a belt. She said I looked great, so suddenly I felt like I looked great.

I’ve had outfits I loved and wore all the time, then after months (or years) saw a picture of me in them and was horrified and embarrassed I wore it so much. Sometimes I get lots of nice comments on something I threw on and didn’t particularly like. Honestly, I’m not that great of a judge of what looks good on me. I think Elizabeth said something on one of her What I Wore posts about not really having any idea how you look in something unless you can see what other people see, via a photo.

I do realize if people thought the dress looked good, they probably would have said so and maybe those who said “don’t keep it if you don’t like wearing it” left out “…it makes you look fat” to be nice. (Don’t worry – I didn’t automatically assume that’s what you meant.)

I understand the importance of doing things for yourself rather than other people. I’m sure if I said I felt fantastic in that dress, but people at church thought it made me look fat, you’d say the hell with them, wear it as much as you want. I want to learn what actually looks good on me, though. Also, I want to figure out how tweak the stuff that doesn’t to improve it, so I don’t have to start a new wardrobe from scratch.

I didn’t start this “Should it Stay?” series in an effort to be philosophical and change my whole outlook on dressing. I just had a few things in my closet I couldn’t decide on. I really do want your advice, whatever it is. I kind of feel like I’m critiquing the responses you were nice enough to take time to give and I don’t want you to worry about giving the “right” answer or one that’s deep enough. Whatever you want to say is great! I’m looking into adding a poll, too, so if you prefer, you can just click “Keep!” or “No.” (Does anyone know how to do that?)