Simple Wardrobe | For Summer

I open the bin that holds my off season clothes and there lies my summer wardrobe. Hello, old friends. I’ve miss you. Can’t wait to wear you again. 

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It was several summers ago that I realized it didn’t have to be so complicated. So hodge-dodge. So smattering and disjointed. My summer wardrobe was, up to then, a jumble of things. Some paired well with others, some didn’t. Some were well-made, some weren’t. Some I liked, much I made do with. That spring, when I pulled my warm weather wardrobe out of winter storage, spread it out, and took a good look, I realized I had more of a heap than a well thought out collection of garments I loved to wear. 

I’d already given myself permission to have a beautiful wardrobe, but that slip hadn’t yet passed to my summer clothing. It was time. But before I did any purging or planning or purchasing, I took a minute. I wondered, who in my life, especially my younger years, had sartorially inspired or made an impression on me? Was there a through-line of style, color, and fabric that seemed to have guided me throughout my adult years? If I looked, might I find a thread of beautiful consistency in the midst of my wardrobe history that I could pull? A thread that would help define and become the foundation of a summer wardrobe that I truly loved? 

Turns out, yes. 

Her name was Kathy. She and her husband were from California and had bought a small farm on the edge of our town in northwestern Montana. Her husband was a talented carpenter and, together, they transformed their falling-down farmhouse into the cutest, true-to-period, most welcoming place, done in their casual, laid-back style. Kathy loved to garden and over the years, she created the most beautiful flowerbeds and gardens in the landscape surrounding their house, their barn, and their old farm outbuildings. I still clearly remember a blooming bleeding heart in her flowerbed by the kitchen. 

But it was her sartorial style that really made an impression on the young, impressionable, me. She had a laid-back, yet stylish effortlessness about her. I don’t remember her wearing anything tailored or sophisticated. She would wear a simple cotton skirt and tank top, or cut-offs with a white t-shirt, a sundress, or jeans with a loose cotton button-down. Several years later, in my teen years, she turned one of the small old outbuildings on their place into a little boutique where she sold home goods, garden things, and local artisan works. I had an epiphany the day she told me she was shopping for garments that she could wear from garden-to-shop in the summers, things that were practical enough to wear while tending her gardens, and pretty enough to wear while tending her customers. In my mind up until that moment, gardening clothes were the torn, stained, grubbiest garments in one’s wardrobe. But why couldn’t you wear something beautiful, yet practical while gardening? And, goodness, why wouldn’t you? 

Then, there was another Kathy. She was also from California, moved to our small town (yes, there were lots of them). She also had an effortless style, though different from the other Kathy. She’s the one who inspired me to sew. (I was at their house one Saturday when she was cutting out a new dress pattern. She wore the finished dress the next day in church.) And she’s the first one I remember wearing a silk scarf in her pulled-back hair.

And there was my mom. Her style was feminine and tailored. She had a small wardrobe made up of key basic pieces in cotton, silk, and wool that she could somehow make greater than the sum of its parts. One of my favorite things in her closet was a pair of heeled leather clogs. But it was her choice of wearing strapless tops to avoid getting a cross-hatch of tan lines while working in her garden in summer that I suddenly remembered, that suddenly made sense, that suddenly became my choice, too, all these years later. 

And, of course there was grandma. While I wasn’t drawn to her choice of wild, bright colored prints, or her love of polyester, I did pay attention to the straw hat she wore without fail in her gardens every summer. It was simply part of her. A straw garden hat became an easy choice for me, too.

So, I gathered all these memories, all this early inspiration and influence by stylish women in my younger life, and I translated it into my summer wardrobe. When I’m gardening or tending the lawn in summer, I wear a strapless top with cut-off shorts (or ankle length jeans), or a strapless cotton sundress, and always a straw sun hat. If I need to coverage from the sun, I wear a white cotton button-down over top. If it’s chilly in the morning, I’ll wear my wool fisherman’s sweater until it warms. In the heat of summer, after the gardening is done and I’ve showered for the day, I most often reach for a light, sleeveless sundress. I rarely wear shorts, and rarely t-shirts. I’ve learned that I like linen and cotton, that I love cotton gauze, and on my feet, in spring I wear garden clogs or my old Danskos, but by summer, I live in my thin-strap flip flops. 

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I lift each garment from the bin, shake it out, hold it up. Reconnecting. Reacquainting. Appreciating, again. I take a wooden hanger from the closet, drape the garment over, and hang it up.

Another summer season is upon us.