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Born in the Eighties and a teen of the Noughties, I never thought I’d live to see the day when I read the following sentence: Trinny Woodall wears the same T-shirt every day. It beggars belief that the Trinny I knew of – one half of Trinny and Susannah, co-presenter of What Not to Wear, fashion guru extraordinaire, and the woman who encouraged us all to bankrupt ourselves by buying Rigby and Peller bras – would pick one modest item of clothing and stick with it. But that is precisely the reality we now inhabit.
To be clear, it’s not the same same T-shirt – there’s no hygiene-related cause for concern here. Speaking to The Telegraph about her weekend routine, Woodall, who has pivoted from fashion to launching her own skincare and makeup line, said: “Saturday is generally a cool pair of jeans day. I like Me+Em barrel jeans. Many people don’t like them, I happen to love them. I wear a white T-shirt with shoulder pads from Zara, which I’ve worn every single day for about four months – not the same one, I must say – with a blazer and sunglasses.”
Of course, most of us will have favoured items that we can throw on without thinking: the one pair of jeans that properly hugs your bum, say; a loose Breton top that fits no matter what weight fluctuations occur; timeless brown boots that go with anything. I’ve got four identical black M&S vest tops because I wear them so frequently; two And Other Stories soft, funnel-neck jumpers in different colours; three pairs of Lucy & Yak dungarees (apparently obnoxiously ubiquitous for middle-class women in their thirties and forties). But “Every single day for about four months”? Isn’t that a boredom-inducing bridge too far?
Woodall isn’t the only person in the spotlight to create and embrace their very own unofficial uniform; the trend is often seen on entrepreneurs and politicians. Just think of Steve Jobs – synonymous with a black turtleneck, pair of blue jeans and New Balance trainers until his death in 2011. Donald Trump – rarely if ever seen in anything other than a boxy suit and red tie, whether on or off the campaign trail. US governor Josh Shapiro – who leant into his own reputation for constantly being in an identical navy suit and trainers by posting a Tiktok video of himself with the caption, “Did I mention I wear the same thing every day?”
Lest you think it’s just men, perhaps the best-known adherent to the uniform aesthetic is the late Queen Elizabeth II. Particularly in the last two decades of her life, the Queen plumped almost exclusively for coats and dresses in bold, block colours with matching hats and black Launer handbags (not to mention the obligatory pearls). “If I wore beige, no one would know who I was,” she once famously said, indicating that part of the impetus behind her style choices was visibility and recognisability – her clothing became a half-outfit, half-costume hybrid.
And the uniform approach can undoubtedly help with brand-building – not that the Queen ever needed help in that department. But perhaps for more people still, the motives for settling on an unchanging style are all about avoiding decision fatigue. “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m wearing,” Jobs is credited as saying in his eponymous biography, written by Walter Isaacson. “I have multiple same jeans and black turtlenecks.”
This became revered as a kind of productivity “hack”, and various other tech bros who worshipped at the altar of Apple followed suit. Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example, was once known for his incredibly limited wardrobe of casual wear. “I mean, I wear the same thing every day, right?” he told NBC’s Today host Matt Lauer back in 2012. “If you could see my closet at home...”
Said closet was revealed to be packed with “maybe about 20” identical grey T-shirts when Zuckerberg shared a picture of them hanging side by side next to a row of identical grey hoodies.
Barack Obama, while president of the United States, expressed a similar sentiment: “You’ll see I wear only grey or blue suits,” he told Vanity Fair in 2014. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” When your job is being one of the most powerful people on the planet, it’s a statement that’s hard to argue with.
In fact, if there’s an overriding theme here, it’s that successful people are often the ones who choose the single-lewk lifestyle. Decision fatigue is defined as a “state of mental and emotional exhaustion that occurs after making too many decisions. It’s characterised by a decline in the ability to make more decisions over the course of a day.” Too much choice, and we are often unable to choose anything at all – nixing life’s daily unnecessary decisions could make brain space for the more important ones. According to one oft-cited consumer psychology experiment, the Jam Study, 30 per cent of shoppers bought jam when presented with six different flavours. Just 3 per cent purchased jam if they were given a selection of 24 flavours. The phenomenon has been dubbed the paradox of choice, or choice overload; more doesn’t always equal better.
While it’s easy to sneer at the idea of a wardrobe steeped in sameness, it also sounds like a huge relief to eliminate the morning struggle – wrestling through hangers, eyes still stuck together with sleep, anxious that whatever you pick won’t look good or quite represent you in the “correct” way. Perhaps, then, Woodall and the rest are onto something; perhaps all of us could do with creating a stress-free dressing experience by cutting back our options to a limited but manageable array. The key to becoming the next Potus or tech billionaire – or simply a person capable of buying jam without having a nervous breakdown? It could just be finding your equivalent of the Zara white T-shirt.
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