Welcome to I Tried It Month, where we’ll be publishing a new fashion, beauty, or wellness article every day in January that features a first-person account of shaking up an old habit, pushing beyond

For more than 10 years now, my wardrobe has barely had any color beyond a few one-off pieces in colors so muted I’d consider them to be neutrals. Even though I’m a die-hard fan of neutrals today, it hasn’t always been that way. When I was very young, my style was much bolder, with magenta and bright turquoise as my favorite colors. Somewhere along the way, I drifted away from my head-to-toe looks of hot pink and fell out of love altogether with wearing any form of bold colors.

Over the years, after many closet clean-outs, I ended up curating my day-to-day pieces into an almost all-black wardrobe. At the time, wearing all black felt like a safe way to feel stylish and sophisticated, and it took me a few years before I branched out and added in a few neutral beiges and grays into my wardrobe. Since then, I’ve gotten a better sense of my own style and crafted a more balanced wardrobe of neutrals with key staple pieces that have lasted me for years.