- Around the world, fashion is a $1.2 trillion industry.
Studies also show that 23.8 billion pounds of textiles
and clothes go into U.S. landfills each year.
Roughly equivalent to a metric (bleep) ton.
I'm Nina, and for the next five days,
I'm challenging myself to only wear five pieces
of clothing from my closet.
We'll see how that goes.
(slow music)
I'm a producer on As/Is, and I make a lot of fashion videos
and participate in a lot of fashion challenges.
I really enjoy fashion, and I like experimenting
with what I'm wearing and my style.
I'm very into what the trends are,
so I tend to do maybe a little bit too much shopping.
So on my Insta lately, I've been seeing a lot
of people testing out capsule wardrobes,
which seems like a really cool idea
and a great way to reduce your fashion waste.
These people who try it out seem sophisticated
and professional, which is not necessarily
how I would describe myself.
So I'm only gonna wear five pieces of clothing
for five days.
During the week, I cannot repeat any outfits,
and for this challenge, we are not including accessories
and shoes in the five.
Before I pick out my clothes,
I'm gonna talk to my new friend, Sally, for help.
- I run the Instagram called @callmeflowerchild,
where I share my thrifted, ethical, and sustainable closet,
and the occasional capsule wardrobe challenge,
which I know you're trying to do too.
- Which is why I have you here to help me.
(laughs)
- I'm excited.
So most of my closet, about 90% I would like to say,
is thrifted, so I used to shop aimlessly
at fast fashion stores.
I needed to really re-evaluate my closet.
That's when I found out about the 10x10 challenge.
You choose 10 items of your closet, tops, bottoms, dresses,
whatever you choose, and you wear that strictly for 10 days.
I said, okay, this is gonna be perfect,
since everything's laid out,
these are the pieces I can wear.
I can get creative with what I have.
- That's a lot of self-control.
- Oh, a lot, and it's taken practice.
It hasn't been overnight, either.
- Do you have any hot tips for me before I begin?
- I know you wear a lot of black,
so that's going to help you.
Throw a dress in there and get creative
with whatever you put on top,
whatever you put on the bottom.
Good luck.
- I'm gonna need the luck.
(laughs)
- No, you're good enough, and you're gonna do good,
and I'm excited to see what you come up with.
- Thank you.
I'm gonna try to make you proud.
These are all my clothes,
and now I'm gonna try to pick five pieces,
and hopefully create a somewhat nice capsule wardrobe.
Okay, I really like these jeans,
but I think they have too much of a statement.
I just don't think they're versatile.
(bleep)ing love this jacket.
It has all the cool gold dangly bits,
but it's way too hot for a full-on denim jacket.
I really like this dress.
Again, it's not versatile enough.
I don't think I could wear a shirt over this
and make it a skirt, you know?
(upbeat music)
I have this good cream colored linen top
that I feel like it's pretty easy to go with everything.
It's kind of loose and boxy fitting,
so I think we could make this one work.
Bottoms, I maybe want to go a little more basic.
A very basic pair of black jeans with little holes
in the knees, make it a little daytime grunge.
I have this piece.
Maybe it's a little too fancy for day, but I don't care.
It's this dress.
It's super sheer.
It can help elevate the less interesting pieces.
Let's see, I have this cheetah skirt.
I think that material's too thin to put stuff under it.
Here we go.
This skirt is the one that I think that I want.
Kind of safe and neutral, but it's stripey and sheer,
so it has a little bit of intrigue still.
How did I already get to four pieces?
(laughs)
I don't want to be super boring
and do just a black crop top.
I want something spicier, and so I think
what I'm gonna do is wear this faux blazer,
and I think I can wear a bra underneath this,
like a sports bra.
I have five pieces, but I feel a little nervous.
Pray for me.
(upbeat music)
So the week started off relatively tame.
I wore the crop top and the jeans.
Here's an outfit for you all.
I thought it was a pretty average outfit.
I wanted to elevate it a little bit.
- Don't forget your accessories.
Even your hair, honestly.
- Yeah.
- Get creative with your hair too.
- Okay.
What did you say about me?
(laughs)
- That I really like your hair today 'cause
of the little slidey clips that you have in.
- I have little clips in my hair
because I was trying to make myself not overly cute,
but slightly cute.
- It's cute, I really like this outfit.
- Thank you.
You'll have to monitor the rest of my outfits as (laughs).
- Yeah, on to it later.
- Your hair looks great.
- Thank you. - It's so wavy
and so beautiful.
- I felt kind of basic in this outfit today,
so I wore cute jewelry and did my hair kind of fun,
but I think it's good 'cause I was like, all right,
my outfit's a little basic, let me spice up the rest
of myself, so it forced me to get creative.
I'm basically just hanging out at work today,
doing work and going to meetings and stuff,
and I don't think there's anything crazy about today.
We're just dipping our toes into the capsule.
(laughs)
I ordered this before we started shooting this video.
(upbeat music)
Well, I have an event tonight.
This will be a good place to test the old capsule wardrobe.
One thing that I'm nervous about is
that this week in particular,
my social calendar is suddenly very active,
and I have a lot of day and night kind of events.
- You're gonna have to get creative
with your night pieces being used for daytime.
It can be fun, though.
It will make for interesting outfits.
You have it kind of easy here.
You guys seem pretty chill, laid back.
- Yeah.
I look crazy.
(laughs)
It's fun.
I think the bra and the shorts function as undergarments.
I think it's just like,
let's not see Nina's ass hanging out, which I think is fair.
- What a glowing vision.
You're like the makeup on "Euphoria" right now.
- I have been getting a lot of compliments
on this outfit today.
I mean, it definitely feels chic for work,
more than chic for work.
It feels weird for work.
- I freakin' love this outfit.
It's beautiful.
You look like yourself.
You just don't look like you're going to the office.
(laughs)
- [Nina] You, you're correct.
- You can wear it to the club, but with a blazer.
It's like office appropriate.
I'm pretty impressed.
- That was everything that I'm going for.
- It strangely goes together very well.
I would not expect it to,
but I keep accidentally staring at your boobs.
- That's fine, I like it.
(both laugh)
I feel like for most other people,
day five is where it starts to get a little zany,
and here I am, full wacky on day two.
(upbeat music)
So the event was a fashion PR event,
and people who come to these tend to dress very chic.
I also found out pretty late in the day
that this party was allegedly 80s themed.
I'm insecure around real fashion people,
and I feel like I'm going to walk in and look like a fool.
- I feel like you're zany enough.
- But what if nobody's zany?
(both laugh)
When we actually got there,
I noticed that everyone was kind
of dressed just how they wanted to be dressed,
and so I fit somewhere right in the middle,
and I felt comfortable.
Nobody there was really dressed that 80s,
so I fit in just fine.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so it's Saturday night.
I basically did not leave my apartment today except
to go to the gym.
Right, so I have all of my outfit options here,
and the only piece I haven't worn yet is this skirt,
but it doesn't feel right for tonight.
Pants with the blazer.
I finished my face, my hair.
I pinned my hair back like I did on day one,
because people seemed to like that.
I finally added the shoes.
This is good enough for a night out on the town, I think.
- You don't normally do your hair like this.
This is a fun little night on the town ensemble.
- This birthday party was at a bar in West Hollywood.
I knew everyone was gonna dress up a little,
because it was my friend's birthday, so I was like,
I gotta dress up a little.
- I think you wear it pretty well.
- [Nina] I got so many compliments on how I looked.
- Oh, my God, I love this!
- Yeah, this works!
- Thank you, do you think--
- I would wear this!
- Day three, much like day one and day two,
I'm shook by how fast I got ready,
so it's really nice just
to give me so much time back into my life.
This one, this one's a keeper.
(upbeat music)
It's Sunday.
Guess who's hung over from last night?
I have to decide on something to wear for both a kind
of brunch-lunch situation,
and fancy dinner at night situation.
I haven't worn the skirt yet, somehow,
so I think that's gotta be a thing.
So I chose the sheer skirt
and the cream button down crop top, because I figured,
I could leave it pretty cazh for the day,
but then I could add some accessories, a little more makeup,
and cuter shoes, and make it work for the night.
I tied up the crop top because it's hot,
and it still kind of looks cute.
For the brunch portion of this day,
I'm gonna keep my makeup real simple
because I'm a little hung over and I'm tired,
and I don't want to do anything.
I think I'm okay.
I think this outfit was well received.
I definitely got some unsolicited compliments
about how cute I looked, and it was nice
that I had something that felt cute that still breathed,
so I'm gonna go back home now,
and then I'm gonna try
to make this look a little more night feely.
So I transitioned to night.
Basically, I just put a belt on.
I put on a little more makeup, more of a lip,
more of an eye.
The thing that took me the most time was my makeup.
Usually, it is picking an outfit.
I kind of like that.
- Can I plead the fifth, because if I say
what I really think, I might get in trouble right now?
- You're not gonna get in trouble.
We can edit it out. - Yeah, so you're
taking far less time.
(laughs)
- All right, so now I'm gonna go to fancy dinner,
and hopefully, I fit in with all the other fancy people.
I thought by this point,
I would be more sick of this challenge than I actually am.
Normally, I'd need so many outfit options.
This has given me new perspective on what I actually need,
and turns out, it's not that much, I guess.
Who knows, maybe I'll wear these five pieces for 10 days.
Just kidding, I could literally never do that.
(upbeat music)
So it is the last day of the challenge.
I'm a little bit tired of it,
but not as tired as I thought it would be, honestly.
I thought, by this point, I would be like (bleep) this,
just let me go back to my closet, but I'm okay with it.
So for this last day, I basically just had to go to work,
and then come home and go to date night with my fiance.
I'm not usually a blazer and midi skirt kind of person.
This one is so much more creative and fun and cute,
I don't know.
All three together is a little bit weird.
It feels very fancy laundry day.
This really is the best problem to have,
where I still have so many combinations
that I want to try, you know.
One thing I always see capsule wardrobe people do
is tucking dresses into pants or skirts,
which I feel is impossible.
- I need to make sure that the material's pretty thin,
so that I don't get the weird tummy lump.
I tuck it all the way in the back, so no one sees it.
- I settled on something, which is, I decided
to just keep the dress on with the skirt and the blazer,
except I tucked the dress up.
Hopefully you can't see it.
It's balled up under my legs.
Yeah, I just decided to throw in everything at once,
because why the (bleep) not?
It's the last day of the challenge.
- You look great!
- Thank you!
- I love it. - I tried.
- Yeah. - I actually didn't hate it.
I feel like you hated it more when you did it.
- [Woman] I hated it.
- I feel like I could do it one more day, probably.
- You think so?
- Yeah. - Whoo.
I'm not good at it.
- You can feel all the sparklies on my dress.
They're hard, and it's sheer, so they're touching my skin.
Because I have it tucked into my skirt,
it's directly touching my thighs.
- I've never seen you wear this.
What is this, a dress?
- It's a dress that I've kind of tucked into my skirt
and folded up a little bit.
- [Woman] This is a great experiment to see what you can do
with your clothes, and I think you've nailed it!
- I know, I feel like I have five new outfits
that I didn't even think that I had before.
(upbeat music)
We had a lot of fun out tonight.
We went to a couple of places.
We had dinner and wine at one place,
and then more wine at another place.
I felt like I looked chic, and a step above
what I probably would have normally worn on a date night,
and I looked nice enough that I got complimented
by strangers, which is the (bleep) goal.
(upbeat music)
The challenge is over.
I'm done.
I think it went pretty well.
It was surprising in ways that I thought it wasn't gonna be.
I thought I was gonna struggle with looking
and feeling boring, but I went too hard
in the other direction, and I was like, okay,
everything's a statement.
It did keep me feeling a little more put together every day
than I normally do.
If you're trying to improve your fashion sustainability,
I definitely recommend giving this challenge a try.
I mean, I basically got five new outfits out of this thing,
but for now, I'm ready to go back to my whole wardrobe,
and hopefully apply what I learned
with these five pieces to all of the things that I own.
(upbeat music)