The 75 Hard Style Challenge by Nahomi Diaz

A crucial part of sustainable fashion is to keep reflecting on the relationship we have with our clothes. Whenever I go through these processes, as a content creator and sustainable fashion advocate, I like sharing them with my audience. I think it's necessary for my growth as an activist to question a couple of times during the year what I'm doing with my garments, and if I'm learning new things about sustainability and fashion and I’m always on the lookout for them, so when I saw some of my favorite creators participate in the 75 Hard Style Challenge at the beginning of 2024, I was intrigued, but proceeded with caution (and a little fear) to see what was the challenge all about. Reading through the rules of the challenge I understood I should have a positive mindset approach to the challenge so that I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed or doom myself to fail from the beginning. I didn’t want to feel frustrated and leave the challenge halfway through, but I know now that to fully understand the challenge is to know that we can set our own rules to make it streamlined and accessible to you, but that in the chaos of life, one might break them a couple of times and that doesn’t mean we’ve failed and that we have to give up.

For those who don't know, the 75 Hard Style Challenge, created by fashion writer and analyst Mandy Lee is an exercise in which for 75 days in a row you create and document your outfits, you must not add clothes to your closet (neither new nor second hand) and you must not look for outfits inspiration on socials, this can be an opportunity to be your own inspiration. The challenge is for those who “want to save money, glow up, get in touch with your closet and personal style” as said by its creator. If you would like to give it a try but have reservations, I would like to share with you my process, my doubts, my motivations, my downfalls, and my conclusions, so you can maybe get an overview of the challenge and see if it's for you.

My wardrobe before the challenge 👗

My wardrobe has been through a lot of changes, in the last 5 years, not only in the clothes that I like but in the clothes that fit me today, these changes have been the result of my body and my life changing so much. For example, I used to go to college daily, but now I work from home almost every day.

During those five years, I’ve had the chance to develop my style and I’ve found great thrifted and locally and sustainably made pieces, so on that end I was eager to participate in the challenge, to mix and match my heart’s desire and dare myself to dress up a bit less casual to work from my living room. But some overconsumption demon possessed me right before starting the challenge and I bought some new-to-me pieces before starting, yes I needed these pieces and I was eyeing them for a while before buying them but I had this fake notion that I must have them before the challenge to create “actually good” outfits, I cheated and I almost tap out, but I allowed myself to introduce these pieces into the challenge and so the challenge began.

The beginning of the end (of the year)

I played with different times in the year that felt like good ideas (and maybe they are for others), yet my quirkiness with numbers and transitions made 75 days seem just right, though structurally challenging. I considered season beginnings, but living in a sub-tropical region where we don’t feel the seasons changing made that impractical. Starting on the first of the month or a random Monday also crossed my mind, but ending on an odd day like Wednesday felt completely off.

I was about to give up and let the new year start to participate (which wouldn't have been a bad idea at all) but I had an epiphany, I thought “What if I did the challenge the last 75 days of the year?” Even when the 31st of December happened on a Tuesday, the timing felt good, for one, the last quarter of the year is the most consumerist time, so I could use having that motivation to shop my closet, and on the other hand, those last three months are very busy months in my life, so I could use different activities and environments to test and try new (and old) things.

So I started the challenge on October 17th and finished it on December 31st, during the challenge I had many days of going out and many days of working from home that allowed me to explore new styles and talk myself through the groundbreaking thought that it's ok to wear a pair of jeans to work from home, and that it doesn't matter if I'm not going out at all, the outfit is not going to “go to waste” because nobody sees it, on the contrary I'm making use of the clothes by wearing them.

What I learned by dressing intentionally and without Pinterest for 75 days straight 

An agreement among people in the sustainable fashion sphere is that we don't have to put pressure on ourselves to make outfits that slay all the time, it's not sustainable, and applying this to the 75 HSC, it becomes tiring to think about 75 flawless, stunning, and Instagram-worthy outfits. I do fashion content and even to me that seems like the stuff of nightmares, now let's add the layer of sustainability, consciousness, and intersectionality. So,

I quickly learned that it's good to have a statement outfit as if you were a cartoon, change maybe the shoes, the bag and the hairstyle and it's already a different outfit.

One of the guidelines of the challenge is to daily document your outfits, this does wonders to support another guideline: being your own inspiration. To me, this meant realizing that I love playing with silhouettes and comfortability of clothes and how those two go hand in hand, and when I was rushed or creatively tired but still wanted to try something new, I could just take the items I knew would make me feel good and turn them into a functional and cute outfit for the day. For this part of the exercise, I recommend using the help of digital wardrobe apps, they help to have an overview of your closet, know what colors predominate in it, how many items you own, how many of those items you’ve worn, and allows you to create and plan outfits. Think of that scene from Clueless but real and on your phone. To make it less overwhelming I planned 5 days of outfits in the app that I use and then I just had to check it in the morning, pull the clothes out of my closet, and get dressed.

Day 76 – and beyond

I can say that this is a very good exercise if you set achievable goals and remain consistent despite having some setbacks like registering some outfits late or in a different way than other days.

At the end of the 75 days, I logged 72 outfits, wore 124 garments out of the 249 I have in my digital closet, checked Pinterest 3 times, and did not buy anything new.

Doing this at the end of the year sets a baseline on how I can plan and execute my outfit ideas for the new year and the rest of my life, even. A month after the challenge ended for me, I’m still registering and planning most of my outfits, I’m repeating outfits that I loved from those three months and a half and I’m more aware of what I have in my wardrobe, and that I don’t need something new to complete an outfit because I have what I need already at