NYC Woman To Wear Same Dress Every Day For a Year

There’s nothing quite like the little black dress- something not so much an article of clothing as an iconic staple of every woman’s closet and the limitless possibilities of the fashionable imagination. In New York City, one woman is taking this idea and running with it, while also benefiting a good cause. For one entire year Sheena Matheiken , creative director for a web design company and founder of The Uniform Project, will  be wearing the exact same dress and seeing how creative she can get within such strict guidelines. The upside? Matheiken will be using the project’s  site to round up donations for the Akanksha Foundation, a nonprofit that supports education efforts for underprivileged children in India

However, the main aim of this project, according to an interview Matheiken did for NYTimes.com, is artistic discovery:

“’It’s basically a creative challenge,’ Matheiken says. Already a fan of buying vintage, or from independent designers, she sees it as a way to ‘formalize’ some thoughts about sustainable consumption but also, and maybe more to the point, about maintaining fashionable flair within constraints.”

However, it isn’t just any Little Black Dress that Matheiken is wearing, but a custom designed Eliza Starbuck number, which is able to be worn backwards, forwards, or over other articles like a coat. As it turns out, Matheiken isn’t in this project alone- her site also requests donations of clothing and accessories readers no longer wear. So far she has receiving garments from online DIY crafts Mecca Etsy.com and clothing company Purple Bliss among others. While not explicitly mentioned in the interview, Matheiken’s project is an interesting social commentary on the blight of “fast fashion” (garments with less than a one year shelf life), which is wreaking havoc on our environment, textile manufacturers, and perhaps even the fashion industry itself. By showing that the fashion conscious can be endlessly creative with the articles they already have (without running to forever 21 or H &M for new pieces to be almost instantly discarded) perhaps Matheiken is trying to set an example for the post-recession era on stylish frugality. As a New Yorker who has worked in both the world of art and fashion, I know that the LBD is already the unofficial uniform of the creative class, but it’s thrilling to see such a conscious effort to document one year in the life of a garment.

To stay posted on Matheiken’s progess, be sure to visit her site at Theuniformproject.com