There She Wears Again: The 2025 Challenge
A look into my 2025 challenge!
Hi, hello,
Welcome to There She Wears Again!! If you missed my About Page, here’s the quick n’ dirty on this whole newsletter as well as the Instagram.
There She Wears Again is a personal style journey where I challenge myself to get dressed every single day. Each outfit will be recorded on Instagram, and every month I’ll be sharing my thoughts as well as general musings on fashion, style, and beauty in general.
The 2025 Rules
Get dressed every single day.
This is how I define “getting dressed”:
If I suddenly had to run out the door to meet someone for lunch, could I do it in my current state? Not just my outfit but my hair, face, and body too.
I’m mainly doing this because I know with working at home, I can very easily wear the same ratty sweatpants for days in a row and keep my hair in an embarrassingly greasy state. It can be pretty disgusting and, frankly, I just feel a lot less productive.
The outfit must stay on for most of the day.
I can’t just style an outfit to go to dinner and have spent the whole day in sweat pants. The idea is I get up and get changed and only undress when I’m ready to go to bed.
An outfit can only be repeated in full after two weeks.
I don’t know if this rule will stay forever but for now I have it to force myself to get creative. It’s way too easy to fall back into the same shirts and bottoms over and over again while the rest of my closet sits neglected.
Every outfit must be posted on Instagram.
I just want to get in the habit of filming and photographing myself more from a fashion lens vs. a travel lens. And also I think it’ll be fun to reflect on my outfits and see the progression through the year.
If you want to do this challenge too, don’t feel pressured to capture the outfit every day.
2025 is Taylor Swift-themed
Because I just love giving myself parameters, the theme for 2025 is Taylor Swift! She has such a huge discography and I know just about every single song (including unreleased ones from her early days) that I thought it would be fun to style outfits or create ootd videos to her songs. I’ve already catalogued all of them and started arranging them based on what season they envoke. If you want the playlist, I’m uploading each song to Spotify as I go. Basically, it’ll look like this:
Sunday - Friday: A Classic Taylor Swift song (no repeats)
Saturday Special: An unreleased TS song, a song from one of her inspirations, or a song from an artist who’s been inspired by her
(If I keep this up, 2026 is looking like a Beyoncé or 2nd Gen K-pop year hehe)
There will be little to no firsthand shopping
While I would love, love to do an entire year of no shopping (including accessories, shoes, clothes, beauty, etc), realistically I know I cannot. I’ve tried twice; it’s not happening.
Instead I’m giving myself shopping rules.
Firsthand shopping can only be done from the following brands during one of their major sales:
Anthropologie
Catbird
Common Era
Damson Madder
Doen
Encircled
Everlane
Farm Rio
GANNI
Girlfriend
Hill House
Hoka
J.Crew
Lezé the Label
Lululemon
Madewell
Nadaam
Reformation
Sezane
Staud
One of these days I’ll get more specific on how I approach buying from each brand and why, but that’s the list off the top of my head for now. They’re not all perfect (or even remotely close). I also won’t even necessarily buy from any of them this year. However, these are brands I own product from and have lasted even if they don’t 100% pass my own eco-grading.
When buying anything new, it must fall into one of the categories:
It’s something I need in my wardrobe - over time I’ll keep a list of wardrobe staples I feel like I’m missing and buy if applicable.
It’s incredibly unique - the design is something I’ll have a hard time finding elsewhere and my tailor cannot recreate when I make it back to Vietnam.
If I want to add a brand to the list, it has to pass the following rules:
ethical, transparent manufacturing
a sustainability promise and plan
offers a range of sizes
Secondhand shopping will be treated as a reward
A big point of the “wears again” part of the name is to combat my tendency to over consume. Secondhand is obviously the best option regardless and whenever I tell people I’m limiting my shopping, they always say, “Oh except for secondhand right?”
Unfortunately for me, I enjoy secondhand shopping way too much especially when apps like Poshmark make it so easy to narrow down. I could very easily spend hundreds on Poshmark monthly based on all I find in prices I’d be willing to pay!!
So instead, I’m treading secondhand shopping like a prize. If I can go a full 90 days without buying anything new, I’m allowed to download the app for a week long period to add items to my closet, look for deals, and potentially buy items I fall in love with.
When to giveaway a piece
If a piece of clothing is not worn at all in 2025, I need to find a way to wear it in 2026 or give it away.
Wish me luck!! If you want to join along, let me know by commenting or tagging me on Instagram so I can see your post. I’m sure I’ll come back to refine this post or add to it, but for now let’s gooo!