One Mile Wear
Do you wake up and immediately wish you could stay in your pyjamas all day? I’m with you! Which is why the Japanese concept of “one-mile wear” caught my attention.
Chances are you’re already familiar with the idea, even if you don’t realise it yet –
One-mile wear is clothing you wear at home and within a mile around it.
With more of us than ever adopting flexible working hours, working from home or juggling a day that doesn’t require a desk at all (like me and the team at Simply Stride!) most of us could spent the majority of our week in one-mile wear clothes – items that are comfortable enough to relax in at home, but chic enough for a trip to the shops, a coffee with friends or for running daily running errands in. With dress codes changing and becoming ever more relaxed, one-mile wear can easily be extended to cover social lunches and business meetings too.
No longer a choice of comfort OR style (or a change in outfits to go from one to the other) this concept is designed to fulfil both!
Dressing for one-mile days should be with purpose and intent, with the same amount of care and consideration afforded as we do for an event such as a wedding or a big night out. In Japan much of their culture is based around mutual respect – you should look neat and presentable as much for yourself as for those around you. An enlightening thought isn’t it?
So how do we achieve this effortless, comfortable, yet beautiful way of dressing ourselves?
Marie Kondo, a Japanese organising consultant, believes in creating a collection of things that spark “joy” in order to enhance our every day routine. While her method can be viewed as simply tidying, it’s really about discarding items that lack value which is a great place to start when trying to focus our wardrobe towards the concept of one-mile wear.
To streamline our clothes we need to sift out anything that doesn’t spark “Joy” ….yes, that would be the trousers that dig in seconds after putting them on, the top we keep having to pull down because it’s not quite long enough and the shoes we never wear because they are completely impractical!
Through this process we instantly become more aware of how we dress and how our clothing makes us feel – Is it comfortable? Is it practical? Do I feel good?
Once we’ve centred on a few pieces that we know we love and enjoy wearing regularly, this becomes our base collection to build upon when selecting new items to add to it. With renewed clarity around what works for us, we spend less and waste less! We invest in better quality items and wear them far more regularly.
Jo Hooper’s NRBY and Everlane are two brands which have created their lines with one-mile wear at the heart of their designs. The “Capsule Wardrobe” is another concept in alignment of mindful dressing by working with a reduced number of high-quality, affordable basics – perfect for mixing and matching.
The common objective behind these brands and ideas is to live minimally with greater thought behind the decisions we make and how our choices affect the way we feel.
The reason we want to stay in our pyjamas? Is often because it’s another decision to make!
I love the idea that the one-mile wear concept allows me another way to simplify and live life beautifully. An easy transition from night to day, minimal effort yet with style, function and comfort setting me up for whatever lies ahead during my one-mile day…..or perhaps “three”-mile on a busy day Striding 🙂
Ready to give it a try?
K x