Beauty and Style

Thoughts on my first capsule wardrobe

March 17, 2016

Seeing as it is now officially Spring, today marks the end of my first capsule wardrobe, and I thought I’d share how it went (you can find a recap of exactly what a capsule wardrobe is here). Despite what you might think, the capsule idea is not about restricting yourself to a small wardrobe – it’s more about starting from scratch and building a wardrobe that (a) suits your lifestyle, (b) can be mixed and matched easily, and (c) contains only items that you love. It’s certainly not about punishing yourself in any way, it’s about making life easier – and I’ve definitely found that to be true!

What has struck me the most about my capsule wardrobe is that, since starting it, I always have an outfit to wear – that’s despite the fact that I now own fewer clothes than ever, and regardless of which items are in the wash at any one time. Whenever I open my wardrobe, I’m happy to wear whatever’s there, which has made choosing an outfit stress free.

Winter capsule outfits

It’s not that I think I look super-stylish all the time, but I can honestly say that pretty much every day I’ve liked what I was wearing and I felt good in it. I used to have days when I would feel a bit weird in what I’d thrown on that morning (you know those days…), but that never happened with the capsule wardrobe.

Also, because I could combine anything in my wardrobe, I never felt like I was wearing the same thing all the time (my friends might beg to differ!). Over the past three months, I’ve tried so many combinations of tops with shoes, trousers and coats that I’ve never felt bored – even towards the end of the season, I was still experimenting with new outfits. My top tip for combining capsule wardrobes is to use Pinterest – if I’m looking for ideas on how to wear my denim shirt, then I just search ‘denim shirt outfit’ for instant inspiration. 

Not shopping for three months has also been surprisingly easy. I’ve definitely been thinking all along about what I wanted to add come Spring, but I managed to stay out of the shops. The thing is, now that everything has to go together and be worn a lot, I’ve become very  picky, which has made buying new things quite tricky – to start with, I sent so many online orders back.

The idea of the capsule is to replenish your wardrobe with new-season items once every three months, but I feel like shopping for several items all in one go doesn’t really work for me – it’s too overwhelming. However, I want to carry on with the capsule at least until the summer and see how I feel then. I read this article on a 50-piece closet recently – it’s about a more relaxed approach to the capsule idea – and I think that’s where I’ll end up eventually. For now, though, this has been a really useful experiment for helping me to break my impulse-shopping habit and learn more about my personal style. I’ll share the new additions to my Spring(!) wardrobe soon.

Are you tempted to start a capsule wardrobe? And how about a 50-piece wardrobe?

P.S. 5 mum outfits, 5 great ankle boots and the perfect nail polish.

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1 Comment

  • j.diwell@hotmail.co.uk'
    Reply Jo February 15, 2017 at 8:56 am

    I love the articles that you post but wish you didn’t keep putting up old ones all the time. More new stuff please.

  • Leave a Reply to Jo Cancel Reply