Very Sartorially Challenged

If you believe the hype, there isn't a fashion dilemma the little black dress can’t solve. But could you wear one — the same one — every day for a year?

Sheena Matheiken is trying. The thirtysomething New Yorker is in her fourth month of what she's calling The Uniform Project. Every day she puts on the same black dress designed by a friend of hers (she has six copies of the dress, so relax, she does wash them) and snaps a picture of how she’s chosen to accessorize it. She also puts aside a dollar per day. Voila: Instant statement about sustainable fashion, plus fundraiser for charity. In this case, putting a child born in an Indian slum through school.

After a year of dollar-saving, Matheiken will have $365 — just $5 more than the Indian government spends per year on a child's education, but some 7.5 million children don't attend school at all. A charity called Akanksha, to which Matheiken plans to donate her funds, has vowed to raise $360 per child so that every kid in the country can get an education.

"There's this misguided notion that charity work has to be depressing," Matheiken told the UK's The Times of her website's tone — and her similarly lighthearted accessories, like a necklace made from breakfast foods or one made from old library books. "I want to show that it can be fun and inspiring and make the model of giving back less daunting."

She’s now been wearing the same dress, a short-sleeved black minidress with hidden pockets, every day for more than 100 days (the project began May 1), but insists that wardrobe ennui has not set in.

"If I wasn’t allowed to add accessories, it would be completely different," she told The Times. "The way I'm doing it, it's not boring at all. It's forcing me to be creative, to try out looks that I'd never previously have imagined. There's not much that I miss from my old wardrobe."

It helps that Matheiken has been receiving lots of fun accessories — mostly jewelry and shoes as per her request on her website.

She told Flavorwire: "One girl wrote to me and she wants to design one hat per week for the rest of the project. I was so blown away by that kind of commitment, and we're in the process of coordinating that. There are a lot of my local vintage stores in Brooklyn who want to style me, which I'm looking forward to." (To see how a British fashion editor survived a week-long experiment a la Matheiken, click here.)

Perhaps the hardest part of the experiment is yet to come: On May 1, 2010, her first day of wardrobe freedom.

"I have no idea what I'll wear," she told The Times. "Maybe I'll still be obsessed with the dress."