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Comment by Homunculiheaded | Hacker News Reader

I actually tried this my freshman year of college: wardrobe of nearly identical shirts, pants and sweaters. I was actually inspired by the idea that whenever cartoon characters opened their closets you'd see it full of just their signature outfit. I didn't use the term 'personal brand' but I had the idea, and also loved the convenience.

Turns out that if you're not Steve Jobs this doesn't work so well. After I had ended the this phase I received a lot of comments from people assuming I just never changed clothes, or at the very least found it to be unpleasantly eccentric behavior. I'm pretty sure that if your true goal is a personal brand, unless you're already a very public figure, you don't want to go this route ;)

On the other hand if you aren't interested in personal brand, or are already branded as eccentric this does make clothes shopping and choosing an outfit much easier.

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On a more practical note but along a related thread, a couple of years ago I threw out all of my socks and bought a stack of the exact same plain black socks. Now I never have to worry about matching socks, when a hole appears I just throw that sock out, when I'm getting low on socks I throw out the lot and buy them new.

I do too. One pool of identical whites and one of blacks. Moves the matching problem from O(n) to O(1) and it's ok if you lose an odd one here or there.

Unlike Jobs, nobody notices.

So I would argue that the matching problem with many different styles of socks is O(n^2), since we first must select one sock appropriate for the occasion, then rummage through all the other socks to select its match. This does have the problem that your algorithm may never finish if your laundry eats socks like mine does.

And that with all identical pairs, I assert the solution is O(n), since there is a chance that you will have to iterate through all of your socks to find one with no holes/is clean. However, I think the latter case is Omega(1). Not quite so sure about the first one.

Given that my socks are partitioned into two sets (washing basket and drawer) and as I mentioned above I would throw them out if the failure rate became high enough to impact the asymptotic behavior I'd say that O(1) is probably correct.

If a sock has a hole, it gets tossed.

Now that I think of it, the mixed sock problem can actually be worse than O(n^2). For instance, if I decide that I want to wear my Marvin the Martian socks, and can only find one in the sock drawer, then it's a big problem. Look in the other drawers. Look under the bed. Look in the dryer. Repeat. Repeat. Until the other one is given up for lost.

It doesn't depend just on n since you aren't just searching through n available socks, you are searching k places with n_k socks in each place and with p_k confidence that you have thoroughly searched each place. I can't think of a more general problem that this might correspond to.

Will it get solved when we straighten out this whole P NP business?

If ordering is made by color&design, matching drops to O(n log(n)).

Again, with ordering, searching drops to O(log n)

However, that actually requires ordering socks, which as we all know is O(not gonna happen).

Previous discussion of this question:

http://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg0008...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1696125

Someone wrote a businessplan around you and cleaned up nicely, check out blacksocks.com and the 'sockscription':

http://www.blacksocks.com/g3.cms/lang/us/s_page/79110/s_name...

Thanks, nice link!

This particular problem appears to be close to being solved for me. I don't see a value in subscription, but reliable source of getting same high quality (providing test socks are going to high-quality) socks of the same color/design in bundles repeatedly is definitely a win.

Heh, except they decided to charge per-sock what I like to pay per-pack.

I tried this until I noticed that the socks from the same brand are a slightly different color across packs. Now I have the problem of trying to match 12 pairs of gray socks that are mostly a different shade of gray.

I've been doing this for years now (like 5 or 6). White t-shirt (always the same, no logos or designs) and jeans (I rotate between 2 different designs of light and dark). I don't think I was inspired by anyone, I just feel like it's me and I can't be bothered to shop (which is also me).

I try to mix it up a bit once in a while, but it always feels weird and I come back to my uniform.

Same here, but 11 years for me. So many things in life can't help but be complicated, it's nice to simplify where you can.

Im glad to know I am not the only one to do this.

All my clothes have slightly different colors and designs so people can't say that Im wearing the same clothes every day, but all of them follow the same style.

The only clothes I own are black t-shirts and sweaters, blue jeans, a black jacket, and a pair of black neoprene Vibram Five Fingers (sparing you my underwear selection).

The jeans and shirts I rotate in my closet to manage fade level. I push freshly laundered garments into the center, shirts to the left, and jeans to the right. I pop them from the ends. When they start looking too faded, I replace them.

I live in a small town, and get a lot of weird looks. My personal brand is weirdo, apparently.

Also, I cut the bottom seams off all my jeans - not for fashion, but because stepping on them barefoot hurts my heels. They are cracked from practicing Tae Kwon Do on concrete.

Try again with an outfit designed by Issey Miyake :)

Probably doesn't work in school settings, but at work, it's pretty normal. Visit any UPS corporate office and you'll see people there look like they wear the exact same white shirt & black pants every day.

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