mkrootd

2019-2024

Instagram

In August 2019, I created a new Instagram account (@mkrootd) to post daily photos of my outfits (Outfit Of The Day). I kicked off the project by posting the following images to my Stories:

I established a process for posting that included taking a series of photos of my outfit using the self-timer on my phone camera before I left my apartment for work, and then choosing and posting my favorite photo on my subway commute. The caption would include my "agenda" for the day, and as the practice evolved, I sometimes included details about my mood, music I'd been listening to, or books I'd recently read.

An interesting side effect of posting these quotidian observations was that I started to have more frequent casual conversations with my friends in the comments of my posts. This harkened back to the early days of Instagram, when people were deciding what the new platform would be for, and its ubiquitous and much-ridiculed photos of people's lunches.

As I continued to post, I found more ways to expand on the project, including posting a series of videos, and poking fun at my repetitive personal style in my Stories.

I posted nearly daily from August-October 2019. I picked up posting again in January 2020, but ended up stopping in mid-February due to a move that interrupted my photo-taking setup. And then, of course, the pandemic happened. I busied myself with other projects, although I did ressurect my OOTD posting briefly from August-September 2020.

In March 2024, struggling with my personal style after changing careers from fashion to teaching, I revisited this practice with a post stating "I have an ootd hypothesis." The hypothesis, which I never stated on the account, was that I suspected my personal style had changed less than it felt like it had - that I was still wearing a lot of black skinny jeans and classic, minimalist basics. I made "hypothesizing" posts for about two weeks. As of now, I would say the hypothesis is inconclusive.

I am open to the possibility of revisiting this work in the future, but for now it is on hiatus.