“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

Eric Wilson from The New York Times Style did a great piece on an experiment called Six Items Or Less a while back. Heidi Hackemer, an advertising executive and total groovy chic, decided to limit her wardrobe to six pieces, not including undergarments, accessories and workout gear for an entire month. She created a website and challenged friends to join her and within no time 250 people participated in the experiment, which was a massive success in that it was picked up by the mainstream media. Six Items or Less became a statement on where we are in relation to our clothes and was an opportunity to be critical about how we spend, while understanding the value of buying key pieces. But, girl, six pieces? It sounds daunting, and I am not even a clothes horse. Let’s face it…we know the kids from the Jersey Shore could not handle it. The Situation alone go through sixty Ed Hardy t-shirts and thirty pairs of cheesy Armani Exchange bottoms a month. And let’s not even start on Snooki or JWoww because they go through more lingerie looks on any given day than the average hooker with a heart of gold that shops in Frederick’s of Hollywood.

Anyhoo, I met Heidi recently and talked about how interesting it would be to partner up with a fashion designer for a capsule collection based on this principle. What would your six pieces be? Mine are:

1. One black V-neck T-shirt
2. One grey V-neck T-shirt
3. One Navy Blazer
4. One White man-tailored shirt
5. One pair favorite dark wash G-Star jeans
6. One pair cool gray G-Star jeans

What also made the Six Items Or Less experiment so successful was the amount of online interest that this generated. The digital landscape is phenomenally riveting, especially if what you do taps into the zeitgeist. Heidi is speaking at Hyper Island this week and I look forward to hearing more about the topic: Driving Participation in the Digital Age. Seems like everywhere you turn there seems to be a community or movement to join, her talk examines how to get people on board with your vision and the digital mechanisms that help drive and motivate an active community. I am there.