Cryptic Meg

A few months ago, I was on a walk with my family when my mum mentioned to me a “100 day dress challenge” she had heard about on the radio. Today, I finished that challenge!

The challenge was posed by a company called Wool&. The idea is that you wear one of their dresses for 100 days straight, to demonstrate that you don’t need as many different clothes as you think. As a reward, if you can show them 100 daily photos, they give you €100 (or $100) off the next dress. The dresses therefore cost a lot more than I am used to spending! But they are also better quality than my other clothes. They are made out of merino wool, which is soft, breathable, and doesn’t hold odour. So although you can, of course, wash the dress in the 100 days (and I did, a handful of times), the theory is that you shouldn’t need to too often.

The challenge appealed to me for several reasons:

• I have long berated myself for buying into wasteful “fast fashion” – getting many, lower-quality garments which do not stand the test of time. I liked the idea of this more eco-friendly option, which also had the environmental credentials of requiring less washing.
• I have often struggled to find my “look”, and was interested in trying this to refresh it.
• I liked the creative challenge of making the same dress look slightly different every day.
• I liked the idea of having an easy base “uniform”, for those days when I was in a rush or just didn’t want the mental load of choosing an outfit.
• I have often cared too much about what I wear and what it says about me: I wanted to try something simpler, and not agonise over that anxiety every day.

The choice of dress was quite easy: I wanted something with sleeves and with a waist to flatter my body shape, and I opted for blue as a favourite colour and one that would match my eyes. I started the challenge on 1st September and, many selfies later, finished today on 9th December.

It’s been quite the journey, in life as well as in the challenge. It started in a heatwave, and a few days ago we had snow. I was mostly healthy, and then at the end caught Covid. And, tragically, our dear cat Pebble died three-quarters of the way through, aged only two. The dress saw me through heat and cold, sickness and health, happiness and grief.

It was clear to me early on that this challenge was going to be a success. This dress is the most comfortable thing I own. It is soft and loose, like wearing a nightie! And it has pockets! It could be made smart enough for a wedding, but was also relaxed enough to wear ill. In the heat it was breathable, and in the cold it was easy to layer up. In happy times it was fun to accessorize, and in sad times it served me well as a default uniform. And whilst there were situations where I would probably choose a different outfit in the future (e.g. for long walks and gardening), it amazingly did work in a pinch!

The dress succeeded on every level of my expectations. It is a sustainable option that doesn’t need much washing. I really like the look of it, and have enjoyed the creative challenge. It has made my options simpler, and eased my anxieties.

If you need any further proof that I enjoyed the challenge: I was so positive about it that my husband Nicholas has followed my footsteps in a 100 day shirt challenge!

What next? I will be wearing this dress until I receive my next dress from Wool& (already picked out). Then I will have the basis of the world’s most comfortable capsule wardrobe. It will be nice to have another colour to work with, and to not have the requirement to take a photo of myself every day!