My eighth grade science fair project was about REM sleep and dreaming. I don’t remember what I proved exactly, but as you can see, ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by what the mind sees even in a restive state. For all of my life, my dreams have generally been quite animated, full of colors that don’t even exist except on a color wheel.

My recurring dream is one in which I save the world like a superhero (Dark Lark after all is my alter ego–more on this in days to come), jumping over walls and brandishing swords. In the most recent one from a couple of weeks ago I was defending a family wearing modern attire with the three musketeers backing me up. So you see, it’s not always about clothes and bags and shoes in my subconscious. But then again, the outfits the musketeers were wearing were quite brilliant, from their foldover boots to plumed hats. And I was in a purple cheongsam…er, I wonder what Freud, or for that matter Anna Wintour, would say about that.

I relate this because I have been fighting insomnia. Surely I’m not the only person sleepless in LA but it’s turning into all sorts of opportunity costs for me. Who knows what adventures I’m missing out when I’m not sleeping and dreaming. On the other hand, insomnia provides a sort of down time where I visually rearrange my closet and plan some outfits. It was during one of these last bouts of sleeplessness that I thought about how many different pairs of shoes I could wear with a classic black tweed top that I invested in from the 09A season. Who counts sheep when they can count Manolos!

Anyway, all this yapping is the back story to the series I hinted about yesterday. Since my goal is to stop buying, I’m going to have to get creative about how many different looks I can pull together from a single, chosen basic (as in classic) item.

I’ll call this my fashion science project. It can only be fun if you participate as both my jury and judge. I welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions.  Today I submit to you my project, FIMTSO, for your review, and tomorrow we begin with our first test item.

FROM IMELDA MARCOS TO SUZE ORMAN (FIMTSO)

Purpose: How to help a shopaholic go on a shopping ban cold turkey.

Hypothesis: It is completely acceptable to wear an item more than once in a calendar year and not have to hand over one’s fashionista card. Just have to shake it up a little. Or a lot.

Materials: All items already in said shopaholic’s closet. No yanking off price tags and faking to sneak in “old” stuff allowed. No cheating of any kind allowed. I mean it.

Procedure: Lobotomy perhaps. No wait, choose one test item per blog entry and show as many different looks as possible.

Result: We’ll see if it hurts more to stay on or fall off the fashion wagon as it were. There’s always vodka if the result isn’t pretty.

Conclusion: Shopping ban sucks. So can I have a Birkin if I survive my experiment?