"[I kept thinking], 'Is this too formal? Is that too out there? Is this dress too short?' I finally chose something I regretted as soon as I hit the subway platform."
Arriving at her meeting late, frazzled and wearing an inside-out sweater, while her male colleagues and new boss looked relaxed and at-ease, left her feeling frustrated and wondering why she'd bothered with the stress of it at all.
"I knew my male colleagues were taken seriously no matter what they wore - and I highly doubted they put in as much sartorial time and effort as I had," she writes.
"But gender issues aside, I needed to come up with a solution to simplify this morning struggle."
Vowing to never let herself feel that way again, Matilda made the decision to make the same simple, easy wardrobe choices as many of her male colleagues did, wearing the same outfit each and every day, thereby eliminating the seemingly endless struggle to determine what to wear.
She found her sartorial salvation in the form of 15 identical white silk blouses and several pairs of simple black trousers. For a "personal touch" she added a custom-made leather rosette in homage to her mother, who used to love putting bows in her hair.
She also throws on a black blazer for the chillier days.
"I've always thought black and white looks stylish, so it was a pretty easy decision on the colour," she explains to Daily Mail Online, adding that she took her time deciding on the exact designs.
"I finally fell for the white shirt for its diagonal button line and the cuts in the sleeves.
"New York gets really hot in the summer, so as an alternative to the 6 pants I bought 2 matte black skirts. Simple and sweet."
With her identical every day look, Matilda is following in the footsteps of many high-powered individuals, from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg - who says he owns 20 identical grey t-shirts for work.
But despite many people trying out the trend before her, Matilda admitted that she faced
"mixed reactions" to her new uniform idea from her co-workers.
She was asked if she had lost a bet, joined a cult and some even assumed she was too destitute to afford other work clothing.
But when confronted with endless questions about her new look, she shot back with:
"Have you ever set up a bill for online auto-pay? Did it feel good to have one less thing to deal with every month?"
Many critics also wonder: why doesn't she just choose her outfit the night before?
"To me, that would only move the problem to another time of day, not really solving it," she says.
"It would just make me go to bed later and lose valuable sleep.
"Nor would it solve the pressure of constantly feeling that I have to express my creative ability through my way of dressing, which is something I feel relieved from now with the uniform."
According to Matilda, the criticism has done nothing but reassure her of her choices.
"People have really put it to the test, and I'm happy to say the more questions I get the more sure I become of that I'm happy with my choice of wearing a uniform," she explains.
All in all, Matilda is immensely pleased with her decision, saying it has saved her huge amounts of money and also removed a source of stress from her life completely. She also claims it has given her a new sense of control.
Coming up to three years in her look, Matilda doesn't see herself stopping anytime soon - but insists that if the mood strikes her, she could go back to planning her daily wardrobe.
"I still feel like it does a good job for me so I see no reason for stopping wearing the uniform," she says.
"But if I would wake up one day and feel like start spending time on picking out an outfit every morning, I'd no problem with giving it up. The uniform is here for me, I'm not here for the uniform."
She does however admit that she has had to re-stock her collection of white shirts - because the 15 that she bought originally have become so worn out that she is no longer able to wear them.
"They are all exactly the same and have been for almost three years, up until a week ago," she added to Harper's Bazaar.
"The shirts had gotten worn out, others stained....So last weekend I spent two days on a rather intense hunt for a new hero shirt. I finally found it at Zara."
- Daily Mail
