Why Do We Suddenly Have Nothing to Wear in Our 30s and 40s?

There seems to be a point somewhere in our 30s and 40s when getting dressed suddenly becomes… hard. Which is strange, because it didn’t always feel this way. There was a time when you could wander into town, pick something up, bring it home and wear it. You could throw an outfit together without analysing every element of it, you knew which shoes worked, which bag to grab, and getting ready for a night out was exciting rather than something you started worrying about three weeks beforehand.

Then somewhere along the way, something changes. You open a wardrobe absolutely FULL of clothes and think:

I have nothing to wear.

So, what actually happened?

For most of us, quite a lot. Our bodies change, our lifestyles change and our priorities change. Careers develop, children might come along, hormones change, relationships change, our social lives look different and our responsibilities multiply. Suddenly there are a lot more people and things requiring our attention: work, children, homes, cars, families, appointments, school WhatsApps, social commitments and the never-ending list of life admin.

Something that once felt like an enjoyable bit of self-expression can very easily become another practical task to complete. Alongside all of that, our identity can shift too. You might look at clothes you once loved and realise they don’t feel like you anymore. Your body might be different and you haven’t quite worked out how you want to dress it now. Perhaps you know your old style isn’t right anymore, but you have absolutely no idea what the new version looks like.

Suddenly something that used to be instinctive feels like really hard work.

The good news is that fashion is still the same enormous playground it always was. There isn’t an age limit and there isn’t a size limit. Turning 40 doesn’t mean you suddenly have to start shopping in some imaginary Sensible Clothes for Grown-Up Women department. You’re still allowed to experiment, get it wrong, try something ridiculous, discover something new and wear things simply because they make you happy.

Sometimes, you just need to work out who you are now.

From working inside lots of wardrobes, I’ve noticed that when people feel stuck with their style, they tend to fall into one — or, quite often, a slightly chaotic combination — of three camps: The Keeper, The Safety Dresser and The Trend Follower.

Camp One: The Keeper

The Keeper has clothes. A LOT of clothes. Your wardrobe has evolved over years, sometimes decades, and rather than containing one version of your style, it contains about 17 previous versions of you. You’ve bought beautiful new things, you’ve invested in clothes, your life has moved on and your style has moved on, yet somehow underneath all of that you’re still holding onto the holey Primark vest top from 2011 and a little summer tea dress you haven’t worn for eight years.

There are clothes that don’t fit, clothes you don’t really like, clothes you’re keeping because they were expensive and things you’re saving in case they come back into fashion. There are clothes for the body you might have again one day, clothes from a job you no longer do and clothes that have survived countless wardrobe clear-outs despite the fact you never actually wear them.

Then, of course, there’s the bag. The Vinted bag. The charity-shop bag. You’ve done the hard bit and taken the clothes out of the wardrobe, yet somehow that bag never quite manages to leave the house. It lives on the landing for a while, gets moved to the spare room, gets shoved behind a door and, occasionally, you start rummaging through it and somehow half of it ends up back in your wardrobe again. We are a funny old bunch.

Quite often, though, we’re not actually keeping the clothes. We’re keeping the memory. That dress represents a different body, a holiday, a brilliant night out, a previous job, a stage of motherhood or a younger version of ourselves. Clothes are incredibly powerful memory holders, and I’m absolutely not suggesting that everything sentimental needs to go. Keep the things that genuinely mean something to you, but recognise them for what they are: memories rather than active members of your wardrobe. Store them accordingly, treasure them and allow your everyday wardrobe to do its actual job.

Because there comes a point when the past starts getting in the way of the future.

Hidden amongst all those things you’re keeping “just in case” are the clothes that work for you right now: the brilliant jacket you’ve forgotten you own, the trousers that make your bum look cracking, the top that’s the perfect colour on you and all the pieces that could be combined into outfits you haven’t even thought of because you can barely see them.

Sometimes you don’t need more clothes. You just need to be able to see the good ones you’ve already got.

Camp Two: The Safety Dresser

The Safety Dresser has almost the opposite problem. You know something isn’t quite working anymore. Your wardrobe doesn’t particularly excite you, some of your clothes don’t really feel like you and perhaps your body or lifestyle has changed. The problem is, you don’t really know what the alternative is, so you stick with what you know.

And I completely understand why. When you’ve lost confidence in your style, experimenting suddenly feels risky. You don’t want to waste money on clothes you won’t wear, you don’t want to order 15 things only to send them all back, and you definitely don’t want to walk into a changing room and leave feeling worse about yourself than when you went in.

So you buy another version of something you already own. The same jeans, the same-shaped jumper, the same trainers, the same colours. Technically your wardrobe works: you have clothes, they fit and you can get dressed. They just don’t necessarily make you feel anything.

It’s the wardrobe equivalent of ordering the same thing from the takeaway every single time because you know you like it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that until, eventually, you realise you’re bored.

This is where I think we can sometimes mistake safe for personal style. Your personal style isn’t simply a collection of clothes you’ve worked out won’t go horribly wrong; it’s discovering what makes you feel like you. That might mean introducing more colour, trying a different proportion, adding accessories, experimenting with shape or finally wearing something you’d previously decided wasn’t “for someone like me”.

And this doesn’t mean you suddenly need to reinvent yourself. Tiny changes to what we wear can make an enormous difference to how we feel. Sometimes we simply need to give ourselves permission to play again.

Camp Three: The Trend Follower

Then we have The Trend Follower. You want to feel fashionable and current, so naturally you look around at what everyone else is wearing. You see the jacket everywhere, so you buy the jacket. You see the trainers, so you buy the trainers. There’s a particular jean shape, bag, print, colour or styling trick all over your feed and suddenly it feels as though that is the thing your wardrobe has been missing.

And I LOVE trends. Fashion should move. It should be exciting and creative, and trends give us new ideas and encourage us to try things we might never have considered before. The problem comes when trends become the instruction manual rather than the inspiration.

Because that’s when you can end up spending an enormous amount of money building somebody else’s wardrobe. You own all the “right” things and technically you look fashionable, but when you put everything on, something still doesn’t quite click. It can look great and still not feel like you.

Being fashionable and having personal style aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Personal style is knowing which trends you want to take and which ones you couldn’t care less about. It’s being confident enough to know that something can be everywhere and still not be right for you. Most importantly, it’s being able to look at a trend and think, I like that — but how would I wear it as ME?

That’s when fashion gets really fun.

None of these camps is actually “wrong”

This bit is really important because I don’t believe there is one correct way to have a wardrobe. If you love having hundreds of clothes and they all make you happy, brilliant. If simplicity and wearing variations of the same outfit makes getting dressed easy and you feel fantastic, keep doing it. If you genuinely adore trends and buying the newest thing brings you joy, fill your boots.

If what you’re doing is making you feel good, there isn’t a problem to fix.

It’s when it isn’t working that we need to look a little deeper. Buying more clothes doesn’t necessarily solve a wardrobe problem, throwing loads away doesn’t automatically solve it either, and neither does copying what everyone else is wearing. Sometimes what you actually need is to hit reset.

What does a wardrobe reset actually mean?

For me, it means taking stock of the person you are now rather than continually dressing — or shopping — for somebody you used to be, might be in the future or think you’re supposed to be. What does your actual life look like? What do you want your clothes to say about you? What works on your body? Which colours make you feel brilliant? Which shapes and proportions do you love? What do you already own that could be working much harder, and what is simply creating noise?

This is where clearing and organising your wardrobe can make such a huge difference. And yes, I know what you’re thinking: surely I can do that myself? Of course you can. I’ve also had people book a wardrobe session with me, cancel because they’ve decided they’ll tackle it themselves… and then come back a couple of weeks later and rebook.

Because clothes are emotional.

You start with great intentions and then the little voice appears. What if I lose weight? What if it comes back into fashion? What if I need it? It was expensive. Maybe I could make it work. I really should wear it.

Before you know it, the should’ve, would’ve, could’ve and might-one-day pile is enormous.

Having somebody objective there removes some of that noise. The job of a stylist isn’t to walk into your bedroom, chuck half your wardrobe away and send you shopping for an entirely new one — certainly not in my world. It’s about helping you understand what you already have: what fits, what suits you, what makes you feel brilliant, what’s missing, what you’re unnecessarily duplicating, what can work together in ways you hadn’t considered and what you can finally give yourself permission to let go of.

There is a very particular feeling when you open an organised wardrobe and you know what’s in there. You know it fits. You know it works. You know how to put it together and, most importantly, you actually want to wear it.

You don’t need the wardrobe you had at 25. You don’t need the wardrobe Instagram tells you a 40-year-old woman should have. You need a wardrobe for the person you are now and the life you’re actually living.

Getting dressed shouldn’t feel like another job on the list. Fashion is a playground, and maybe it’s time we started enjoying it again.

So, which camp are you in? The Keeper, The Safety Dresser or The Trend Follower? Or, like most of us, are you a slightly chaotic mixture of all three?