EXPERIMENT: Australian TV presenter Karl Stefanovic wore the same suit for a year. Almost no-one noticed.
What to wear? It is an agonising dilemma each morning. I have nothing.
My partner points out that the wardrobe is so overflowing it doesn't shut. That the only space for his clothes is the high shelf of the linen cupboard. That I could wear a different pair of black trousers every day for a year and still not run out. That some clothes still have the tags on. Some in bags. All true. But I still have nothing to wear.
It is such a dilemma, as people form opinions about us on what we wear. This month, Australian breakfast TV presenter Karl Stefanovic proved it when he revealed his year-long experiment into the different ways people judge men and women on their clothes.
Stefanovic, who presents daily show Today with co-host Lisa Wilkinson, revealed that he had worn the same dark blue suit every day on television for the past year. That was unusual in itself. But what was most incredible is that his choice of clothes did not attract interest.
"No-one has noticed, no-one gives a s***," Stefanovic told the Sydney Morning Herald.
The New Zealand Herald reported that, during the year, his suit had attracted only one comment from a men's suit store, Briggins, which posted on its Facebook page: "Has anyone else noticed Karl Stefanovic wears that blue suit of his a little too much? We think BRIGGINS might have to add some more variety to his wardrobe!"
Stefanovic said he had not received any questions about his "serial suit wearing", in contrast to the onslaught of comments from the public his female co-hosts experienced.
"Women, they wear the wrong colour and they get pulled up. They say the wrong thing and there's thousands of tweets written about them."
He said his experiment was born out of frustration that women are judged more harshly than men for what they wear, their make-up and how they style their hair.
That is the issue many women face every day in front of our wardrobes. The choice is important. Whether we like it or not, what we wear defines us. It makes us feel beautiful or ugly. Fat or slim. Happy or sad.
And if men think that it is absurd that a pair of black trousers has the power to change moods, then they might consider something that we all wear every day and which also defines us - our name.
This week, a study revealed that what children are called could influence whether they spend their school life doing lines or getting trophies. According to the study, children named Jacob, Daniel, Amy and Emma are the most likely to display good behaviour, while those named Ella, William, Olivia and Joshua are most often to be found on the naughty step.
The findings come from a survey that examined the names of more than 63,000 schoolchildren who logged good behaviour or achievement awards in online sticker books used by teachers.
Those with the most good behaviour awards were named Jacob and Amy, closely followed by Georgia and Daniel.
By contrast, girls named Ella and Bethany and boys named Joseph and Cameron proved to be the naughtiest.
Other naughty names for boys included William, Jake, Joshua and Jamie and for girls Eleanor, Olivia, Laura and Holly.
Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton may sneer at the study. Eleanor is 100 times more likely to go to Oxford University than girls named Jade, according to economist Gregory Clark. The BBC reported how Clark examined first the names of 14,449 freshmen students attending the university between 2008-13.
By contrasting the incidence of first names in the Oxford sample with their incidence among the general population (of the same age), he calculated the probability, relative to average, that a person given a particular name would go to Oxford.
Clark's study revealed that most likely to go to Oxford were Eleanor, Peter, Simon and Anna. Least likely were Jade, Paige and Shannon. And if you are a Shane, according to Clark's study, you have zero chance of entering Oxford.
All this seems a little barmy.
I find it hard to believe that the name of a person in itself influences their behaviour or intellect. How a child behaves can usually be traced back, in part, to their parents. Possibly the type of parents that may name a daughter Eleanor may be the types that encourage her to set her sights on the city of dreaming spires.
Reading these studies made me worry that people are now going to start judging us for our names as well as our clothes. Will parents start choosing names on desired outcomes for their children, just like we choose a morning outfit?
Perhaps parents do name their children based in part on their own aspirations. My first daughter nearly ended up with the name of an angel until it was vetoed by her father. My compiled research list of obscure angel names is still scrawled on the inside cover of one of the dozen name books I pored over in the months leading up to her birth. Naming one's children is already hard enough. If there is a link between a child's name and its future, then the naming dilemma becomes even more intense.
But not as intense as wondering what to wear.