Getting ready in the morning is a time consuming task that involves an incredible amount of thought process,from matching clothes together, to making sure they don’t have any stains. Looking presentable takes a lot of work, however, Chris Kopel has come up with a solution to this issue—he wears the same outfit everyday.

When the idea was generated a decade ago, he realized that he could save himself a good amount of time. “It has been 10 continuous years of the same outfit per se. It occurred to me that I spent a lot of time in the morning getting ready, like ironing, and asking, ‘Does this match?’ I tried to find a way to simplify things a little bit,” Kopel said.

Not just that planning different outfits everyday was exhausting for his day to day life, but he realized that this idea also corresponds with his minimalist philosophy as well as his interesting personality, “I’m philosophically a minimalist, so I don’t have a lot of clothes to begin with. I probably have five t-shirts, two pairs of shorts, and one pair of black shoes, one pair of brown shoes, as well as a pair of flip flops. It syncs with the minimalism, as well as the time saving. Probably a little pretentious. When you’re weird, you want to embrace your weirdness,” Kopel said.

When asked about the possibility of changing into different and brighter colors he expressed his disagreement with the idea. Kopel said, “I don’t like bright colors or patterns. I like gray, It’s my favorite color. So every year, though that outfit modifies a little bit, it always involves a gray shirt, because gray is my favorite color, and I like some pretty muted things.” 

Students find his display of fashion choice in a variety of different ways. “It’s professional and fits in with his job title and it’s something less to worry about,” junior Dunia Fenaoui said. 

“He told our class that he wears the same thing everyday so he doesn’t have to think about it. Which makes sense, but it’s boring. I wouldn’t. Dressing up for things is what makes going out fun, even if it’s just school. Having a good style makes you feel confident. If Mr. Kopel changed up his style, maybe he would make less self-deprecating jokes,” junior Nora Thimmesch said.

“I only have so much energy to commit to anything so a lot of it is about saving energy. I don’t have to put thought into it. On Saturday and Sunday, I wash all my outfits, I iron all of them and hang them up and they’re all there and you know what’s going to be there for the week. It saves me all the energy that I can commit to other things. I’m not a super high energy person. So I think that’s really, really important to me,” Kopel said.