I don’t know if anyone who has seen me recently has noticed… but I have just completed 100 days wearing the same dress! This was as part of the 100 day challenge by Wool&, a company that make merino wool clothing and have had over 7,000 people completing it.

For a self-confessed shopaholic, this was a huge feat. In fact, I put off starting the challenge for a long time as I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it, however once I got into the swing of things it was surprisingly easy and almost freeing to wear the same thing daily. Remember back to the days at school where you had to wear a uniform? The simplicity of knowing what you were wearing every morning. Possibly slightly annoying on the days that you wanted to wear your pink sparkly tights or octopus jumper to class, but wearing a dress for 100 days straight was kind of like going back to my carefree school days, where I woke up and put on my “uniform”, without having to think about it, but at the same time could also wear those sparkly tights or octopus jumper to accessorise it. Best of both worlds! It was freeing in a way, that I just got up and was able to grab my dress, which being merino wool is super comfy and heat regulating. I also bought myself a pair of their merino leggings, and this combo basically carried me through the 100 days as my base uniform which I could then dress up or down as required by the day’s activities. I also could easily have worn the dress and leggings combo for bed as pyjamas as well, they are so comfortable.

During the challenge, the dress took me through 5 different countries, some multiple times: Spain, UK, Italy, Turkey and Norway, with varying climates, from -20 degrees to +20 degrees Celsius. In Norway they say, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes”, and this dress was the perfect base for all my outfits, whatever the weather.  

I also didn’t need to wash it very often! I won’t say how often (or infrequently!) I washed the dress, but merino wool is excellent at not being smelly, so washing of the dress didn’t need to happen as often as other fabrics might need it –I did ask my husband repeatedly to check if I smelled, and he’s very honest so wouldn’t have had any qualms to tell me if I did! Specifically, I noticed that the day after cooking something like frying onions or with lots of spices, if the dress was hung up overnight to air, in the morning there was no trace of the smell of the food like it would usually cling to other clothes.

One negative I did find was that wearing a dress daily, there is no tell-tale pinching of clothes like when wearing trousers/jeans, to let you know you need to cut back on the cake a little bit! So that’s something I need to watch out for. However, now I’ve finished the 100 days I don’t really know what else to wear, and I’m still wearing the same dress daily 2 weeks after I finished the challenge!

I did find that I wasn’t very creative with my outfits. Some people doing the challenge wear a completely different outfit every day. I tended to stick to the same couple of cardigans and blazers on rotation. But this is a good thing as I can now definitely slim down my wardrobe to the pieces I gravitated towards during the challenge and focus on a more sustainable wardrobe whilst trying to stay away from “fast fashion” as I’ve just demonstrated to myself that I don’t need to buy every latest trend. Which brings me nicely onto a plug for the Annual Conference, where the theme this year is Sustainability and Working in Synergy – Meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations. I’m sure you’ve all seen the programme is out now and it is jam packed with excellent talks and workshops. While I’m not the biggest fan of the word “Synergy” – it’s a bit too corporate speak for my liking – I am really looking forward to the conference. Check out the programme here. We were last in Eastbourne for the Annual Conference in 2015. I remember it being such a sunny week full of walks on the beach with ice cream, cake baking and excellent fish and chips, so I have high hopes for this year too. Hopefully see you there!