Wardrobe Addenda  -- Completing Your Closet

Using Capsules to Round Out Your Wardrobe

If you’ve been following along in the wardrobe planning process, you are at the point where you’ve pulled from your closet all of your anchor pieces, used the wardrobe planning template to build up a new wardrobe around those pieces, culled your closet of all the clothes you know you will no longer need, emptied your closet of the clothes remaining and filled your closet with your new wardrobe. Phew!

But we’re not quite done yet.

What you now have in your closet is your primary wardrobe, which should account for 85% of what you wear day-to-day. But you will need to create a few small capsules…either with a mix of your primary wardrobe and a few other pieces, or with entirely separate pieces. And for these capsules, we return to the “remainder” clothes.

In my book, a capsule is a small wardrobe addendum for a specific activity or occasion for which you need clothes that are different from your primary wardrobe. The great thing about capsule wardrobes is that they are not cookie-cutter must-haves. Everyone’s lifestyle is different, and warrants different auxiliary attire. For example, you may train heavily at the gym, and need a more extensive workout wardrobe than someone who takes long walks by themselves for exercise. You may be very involved in charity work that requires frequent formal attire. Or perhaps your work requires serious business clothes while your evenings and weekends are centered around what you can pair with your favorite jeans.

The first key to capsule wardrobes is SMALL. You aren’t building up an entirely new wardrobe for each activity. The second key is CONSISTENCY. Try to keep a common thread throughout your primary wardrobe and your capsules…whether through your signature colors or style persona. And the third key to capsules is M&M…mix and match. All the pieces in your capsule should pair equally well with each other. And your capsules can even have interchangeable elements between each other and your primary wardrobe.

So now it’s time to determine the capsules that you will want to create. Sit down and write out what you know you will require for your particular lifestyle at this particular point in your life. Some capsules that I have recommended previously are the LBD, Weekend, On-the-Town, Workout and “Rags”. Your unique lifestyle may call for others. One caveat in this process: Don’t allow yourself to create capsules for a lifestyle that is not consonant with the one you are living right now. This is a common pitfall! You want a wardrobe that works for at this point in your life, not a wardrobe for an imagined life in the future. If you rarely head out clubbing, you probably don’t need a capsule for this purpose.

Once you’ve detailed the capsules you will be creating, examine how often you will be wearing these clothes. This will determine how large the capsule will be. Let’s examine a weekend capsule so you can get an idea of how this works. Say that your weekends are casual. You will need clothing for Saturday and Sunday. If you have two pairs of jeans…or one pair of jeans and one pair of khakis…and four tops, you have eight different combinations. Each one of the four tops would be worn once every two weeks. Simple and small.

Now it’s time to actually build the capsules. Using the clothes you have kept in your remainder pile and the clothes in your primary wardrobe, begin assembling your wardrobe addenda.

Once you have completed this task, it is time to say goodbye to the clothes that are still left in your remainder pile. AH! Stop right there! Don’t suddenly freak out and decide to stuff more of these clothes into your capsules! NO! You’ve put a lot of work into paring down your wardrobe…don’t undo it now. Read on.

If you are truly going to be ruthless, this is the point at which you resolutely box up all the remaining clothes and immediately give them away. If you are able to do this, do it at once. If not…if you think you will regret it, or you are not ready to part with them JUST yet…box up these remaining clothes and put them in storage with a promise to yourself that you will not even open the box for at least six months.

As you live in your new, pared down wardrobe, try to not even think about those clothes in storage. Over time you will become accustomed to your edited closet. At the end of six months what you will hopefully find is that you haven’t missed those clothes in storage at all. If this is indeed the case, give them away -- without even opening the box to examine them.

(One other thing I probably should have mentioned before this. Your wardrobe is designed to be updated season-by-season. So your summer wardrobe will be distinct from your winter wardrobe. In a later article, we will talk about using a transitional wardrobe to bridge between summer and winter. But for now…if any of the clothes in your remainder pile happen to be there because they are off-season, box these separately. You will want to return to these when you work on next season’s wardrobe.)

And now…
Congratulations! You now have your own Very Small Closet…nearly operational! All that is left is to look at the shoes and accessories that will need to complete your wardrobe. Stay tuned for this final step in the process.

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