How to Create a Capsule Wardrobe
What is a Capsule Wardrobe?
You may have heard the term capsule wardrobe and wondered what it’s all about. It’s basically about wearing a selection of clothing items that all mix and match and being able to come up with lots of different outfits.
You might think it would be restrictive and repetitive and get a bit boring but, carefully chosen and thoughtfully put together, a capsule collection can be game changing in terms of opening up the possibilities within your wardrobe.
Shop Your Wardrobe First
My tip to share with you this week is to help you buy less but wear more of your existing wardrobe by exploring the concept of Capsule Collections, as this is something that most of my clients find really useful.
Quite often I help them 'shop their wardrobe' and create capsule collections. This is basically playing around with what is already in your wardrobe and mixing and matching exploring new combinations, so you create lots of new outfit ideas from stuff you already have.
Buy Less But Wear More
It’s said that we wear 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the time, sticking with the same things despite our wardrobes being stuffed to the gills with clothes that never see the light of day. So my challenge to you this week is to make some time to give it a try.
Providing you are open minded to playing around this is a fun way to spend an afternoon and as well as giving you lots more ideas on how to wear things it could potentially save you time and money in the long run. As you’ll be buying less but wearing more of your wardrobe.
Step by Step Guide to Shopping Your Wardrobe to Create a Couple of Capsule Collections
1. Have a wardrobe weed and clear out anything that doesn’t fit. Then hang things by colour so you can easily see what you have.
2. Think about what type of Capsule Wardrobe Collection(s) you want to create e.g. work/leisure/smart casual.
3. Choose a couple of neutral colours to start with and a couple of interest colours to work with. If you’re not too sure where to start use a scarf, necklace, flowers in the garden or a painting or design you like to take ideas from regarding colours. It really doesn’t matter where you get your inspiration for your palette from as long as you like the colours and have them in your wardrobe of course.
4. If you’ve had a colour analysis use your swatch as your guide i.e. Use YOUR neutrals plus a couple of interest colours or maybe one interest colour and one accent colour.
5. The next step is to get out the things from your wardrobe that match your chosen colour palette, including accessories.
6. A good tip regarding accessories is to store them by colour rather than item as it makes pulling an outfit together so much easier. I.e. instead of storing all your different coloured belts together, store your red belt, red shoes, red bag, red jewellery and red scarf all in one place.
7. You will need more tops than bottoms. Separates make creating capsule wardrobes easier than dresses and jumpsuits.
8. Now you have a selection of things to play with and try on, start experimenting. See how things look together that you haven’t worn as an outfit before.
9. Take selfies of the combinations you try and then make notes (mental or in a journal) after your trying on session about how you felt in each outfit. Maybe give it a score from 1-10.
10. Save the selfies in an album on your phone so that you don’t have to remember them and have ideas of what to wear to hand next time you feel like you have nothing to wear.
11. Don’t be worried about playing around and trying things in different ways – you might find some really great new combinations of things.
You can find a template for creating 72 outfits from just 12 items of clothing plus a few accessories on page 173 of my book 'Project FAB! No More Making Do'
Capsule Collection eBooks - your blueprint to dressing with ease
If you feel like you need a little more structure or if you want to take it up a notch and get me in your pocket check out my eBooks Capsule Wardrobe 101 – Your blueprint to dressing with ease. Over 100 outfits from just 33 items.
Success Stories With Capsule Wardrobes
I’ve had lots of success stories with clients over the years who’ve bought into the capsule concept. Let me share just two with you.
• My long-term client (and now, good friend) Pam is a ‘buy it because I like it’ type shopper who ended up with tons of clothes but totally overwhelmed when it came to create an outfit. She’s now resolved this because she sticks to her colour palette and knows what styles and shapes suit her.
“I felt lost when putting different items together to form an outfit…I could now probably grab items with my eyes shut and it wouldn’t look as bad an outfit as the jumbles I used to put together. Also, when I’m working away from home, I’m less stressed about what to take because I know what works. It means I don’t take all the ‘just in case’ things as well, so I travel lighter.”
• My sister had always been very much a ‘buy things as an outfit’ type person until I introduced her to the capsule way of putting clothes together. I did a wardrobe weed with her and then helped her look at buying clothes that complemented what she had left so they mixed and matched. She’d been struggling with her identity due to some life changes…
“I went from feeling like I had let myself go and apathetic about my appearance to feeling strong, beautiful and more like me again.” (She has gone a bit mad for teal though so I might have to visit and going shopping with her once we’re out of lockdown to get her in some other colours too – lol.)
(If you want to read their full case studies you can find them here.)
So there you have it, if you’d like a less cluttered wardrobe that contains fewer clothes but more choice, so that you don’t have that 'head in hands, what shall I wear moment' all the time give my capsule collection concept a go.
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