In your opinion, what is the appropriate number of outfits to rotate through at work?

Assuming one works five days a week, my guess would be six “outfits.” This could be achieved minimally with:

• one pair of shoes,
• two or three pairs of identical pants, and
• six shirts.

With six shirts, rather than five, one shirt can be rotated out each week and another rotated in. This would hopefully combat the tendency - accidental or not - to wear the same shirt on the same day. Which would be noticeable, perhaps even more so than the person who wears the same thing every day.

So n+1 shirts is the answer, where n is the number of days in office each week.

If you wear ties, shirts could be treated like pants and ties could be rotated. I’d say n-1 or n+1 ties works, but not n because of the tendency to wear the same ties on the same days.

To be honest, if you're a guy, and you work in a place with a heavy uniform culture (e.g suits or business casual, but real business casual), you could probably wear the same thing every day as long as it's sufficiently boring and no one would notice because your clothes are inherently so boring and invisible that even if you did vary them slightly, no one would notice still.

Y'all are talking about a capsule wardrobe. Women have been talking about them for ages and now men seem to be interested in getting in on it, too. Dead useful. Essentially, you make a minimal, year round wardrobe with a set number of pieces that all mix and match with each other.

As an aside, reading some of these responses, I do feel like men especially in the US have this rut when it comes to fashion, where they see it as something either beyond them or beneath them, and I really think it's a missed opportunity. It isn't a universal constant - in the west, this can (sort of) be linked to the Great Male Renunciation, and the point really is that it hasn't been a constant in civilized human history that men wore muted clothing, certainly not across different countries and not even within "western" culture throughout time.

I liken it to eating only broiled chicken, broccoli, and rice every meal. It works, but you are missing one of the joys of life. I'm sure there are some for which a t-shirt and jeans and a hoodie is the right uniform for life, but just statistically, when you compare to, say, east asia, there's has to be people in the US that could be having more joy with their clothes than they are. In that respect, I think it's worthwhile just giving it a try - getting nicer clothes, experimenting more with style. Maybe it's for you, maybe it's not, but many people have never tried.

I worry about this from time to time, but also try to remember how often I notice what other people wear (almost never, unless it is very unusual, like a t-shirt with a printed slogan).

In an effort to get more mileage out of my clothes, I wear undershirts and try to get two wears (non-consecutive days) out of my shirts and jeans. I default to darker plaids and checks (think Duluth Trading Company or L. L. Bean). I have a lot of similar-but-not-identical shirts, but if you look at engineers, they were a lot of blue overall, so I am not outside the norm. I've never had anybody say anything.

Caveat that I work in engineering, primarily in casual environments where wearing a button-down shirt untucked with sneakers is on the more formal end for the office, and for "special occasions" I will tuck the shirt in and wear brown shoes instead.

The real wardrobe hack for me is buying exactly one kind of jeans, one kind of sock (grey ankle length), one kind of underwear and one kind of undershirt (in a mix of grey and black). Before, I would find myself hunting through the laundry for the newer stuff because there was a noticeable difference between new and old things, e.g. the new socks were less saggy. I buy enough of each for ~2 weeks all at once, wear that set for 12-18 months, and when it needs replacing, I replace everything at once. That way everything is the same age, completely fungible, and I can grab things out of the laundry without thinking about which one I am grabbing.

It depends on your workplace of course. It sounds like you're semi-formal with dress shirts and pants. I'm going to assume you don't wear ties or formal coats.

I think the trick is not to have distinct "outfits". Instead have flexible items that pretty much all pair with each other. Then you can grab things at almost random and it'll match and there will be many combinations.

As far as pants; one black, one navy, one grey, one brown (but a dark brown, like kuhl's "teak", otherwise you look like an insurance salesman or FBI agent). For shirts; white, black, light blue, dark blue, gray, light red/pink, dark green. I like solid colors because patterns make me feel like a cookie cutter product manager. Pockets and button down collars keep it casual. Black and brown shoes seem like enough.

That's probably 20 something outfits with 11 items. I'd skip some combos like blue on blue, or navy on black.

As far as a minimum number of outfits. Maybe 9? Depends how distinctive they are. People will remember the last time you wrote your neon lime Hawaiian shirt.

I mean, three pairs of slacks, three shirts of neutral enough colors to match with all the slacks nets you nine outfits. That let's you go almost two weeks without repeating. Most people probably won't notice with that set up. That'd be about as low as I would go. Even assuming somewhere cold enough for an undershirt I'd be too paranoid to get a stain on my one other shirt or something.

This post makes me so glad I both work remotely and work in tech where I can just cycle through graphic tees... I don't think I could emotionally handle having to put more thought into my daily appearance than I current do 😅

Throw a jacket on and you can do more with less wardrobe. I learned this from Steve Harvey. He said you need 5 suits. Black, navy, brown, tan, grey. Then 2 white shirts, 2 cream, and 2 powder blue. You can mix and match 75 outfits. Wear the jacket if you walk around the office so more people see you in what appears to be a pretty different outfit. Get a bunch of ties that go with everything for more options.

I feel that Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg ruined same-shirting for everyone. I don't care, though.

I have 12 identical white t-shirts and a bunch of generic jeans. It could be any color, the reason why they're white is global warming and the fact that I live in Satan's asshole. I vowed to never be bound to needlessly hot clothes ever again.

I wanna buy even more so I literally never have the option.

I WFH right now but if I got an outside job I would just rotate them. If you don't wish to be known as "the same clothes guy", just get different variations of the same t-shirt. You could be "metal t-shirt guy*, or the "random bird t-shirt guy", or the "white t-shirt with a tiny almost irrelevant detail guy".

The trick is to find a cheap store with a lot variations of the same model and buy 12 of them.

If you're in a non-casual culture or environment, just replace t-shirt with an equally generic and reasonably comfortable formal equivalent.

Oh, I can answer this one on the extreme end pretty easily: I have one "outfit". Exact same look every day, and it's distinctive.

At any place I've worked it's lasted about 2 days of "look he's wearing the same thing as yesterday! haha". After that, people just didn't care unless something weird happened like GASP I wear a sweater and obfuscates my normal look, and then I get compliments on my sweater.

Really, nobody cares except that it gives them an opportunity to point out something unsual in their day, and once it's no longer unusual it simply doesn't matter to them.

I can also say that I received a promotion citing very clearly that everyone knows who I am and how to find me. Am I a very important person? No. Critical? No. But everyone knows me, partially due to my dress.

So wear whatever you want. Nobody cares unless/until it affects how easy it makes their day.

p.s. I wear it at home, at work, after work, on vacation. I am distinctly recognizable even though it's not particularly unusual. I'm a shy person, introverted and I spend most of my time at home... and yet it's never caused me issue despite those facts.

I wear slacks or jeans and a polo with either a bomber jacket or some button-up I have. The polo changes, but I even wear the same slacks all week (tuesday/Thursday. Washed weekly, don't smell/get stained). I generally break things down to be the same size/brand in different colors.

I wear black shoes black pants black tshirt and a black cap every day but I work in a kitchen lol

The office culture I am in is pretty varied and as such I can be in meetings with people who wear suits every day or people just wearing sneakers, jeans, and a polo.

I had the same annoyance picking out an outfit each day. My solution was to adopt a uniform:

• white dress shirt of good fit and quality, I buy 4-5 at a time from Men's Wearhouse. Though I wear it fairly casually, two buttons undone with a white v-neck t-shirt underneath.
• dark jeans.
• Nice dress shoes.
  With this outfit I feel comfortable meeting with anyone in the business. It fits my station so to speak.

It's also a nice middle ground. I can dress up or down if I feel like it and it fits within the overton window of my style.

I rotate through about 3 pairs of pants, 4-5 shirts, two pairs of shoes (I've been told they last longer if they get a day of rest).

I basically have two, which are actually almost identical (different color stripe down the side of the track pants, and the same tshirt but in different colours) but sometimes one will be in the laundry.

I have a lot of other clothes but I have basically stopped wearing them for anything other than formal events.

Either nobody has noticed or nobody cares enough to have mentioned it.

If you wear a suit, probably just one outfit. There was a news anchor who wore the same outfit every day for a year and no one said anything.

But I generally agree with your idea of 6/7 shirts and maybe 3 pairs of slacks would be more than plenty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq3FcMTHqPs

Depending on the workplace, I think you could get away with one good suit if you travel? Jeans and any button-down shirts are fine where I work and I have probably 12 shirts I rotate through frequently against 3-4 blue, black, and maroon jeans.

If I could have my way, though, I've got a tropic pattern Vermont Flannel shirt I bought 8 years ago and I'd wear it every day like a cartoon character. I've got a coworker who wears pretty much the same thing every day and he doesn't get any flak for it, but I think wearing pink every day would be a little more noticeable than a slightly off-white button-down...

All of these feel too complicated to me, but I also absolutely hate putting any thought into "what should I wear today for work". I also somewhat recently just stopped caring at all about whether anyone notices me wearing the same thing over and over again. It's been amazing.

Gray slacks, black shoes, no belt, whatever shirt I pick. Shirts range from dress shirts to even simple solid color crew neck t-shirts.

Multiples of the same underwear and socks minimizes thought even further.

When I was in the office daily my general target was four or five pairs of pants and 10ish shirts so I could go two weeks without any repeats.

Are you in a four season climate? Three season? Two season? The former two tend to require two sets of outfits, while the later you can probably get away with just one.