January 16, 2026
My wardrobe feels pretty stable, but I’m always looking for things in it that I’m no longer wearing on a regular basis. We don’t have mountains of room (although compared to my sisters in Europe, I’m wallowing in space!), and I don’t like to keep things that might be of use to someone else…
So I initially thought I would use a 30-piece, six cluster template to organize myself:
But then I made a critical aesthetic adjustment to the 28-piece, seven cluster template (yes, they do indeed get confusing!):
Having the bottoms longer than the tops just makes good sense, doesn’t it?
I’m hopeful that you can “right click” on these and copy them, or print them. They’re useful if you’re just writing on them, or you can draw little pictures of your clothes in each of the squares (an idea I love, but completely lack the skills to do!), or copy and paste images from the internet onto each of the spaces…
So from now until the weather warms up, I’m going to work with a 28-piece wardrobe. I’m targeting seven garments that I either want to wear frequently, or figure out why I DON’T want to wear them more often.
To start, I have a really quite new purple sweater, which just sold out. To fill out the first cluster, I just put two black tops and a pair of black denim pants. Not quite jeans, but almost.
Yes, Alex Mill is having a big sale. If you’ve been considering something from them, it’s worth a look. Some of my best quality clothing is from them…
Purple sweater – Alex Mill; black turtleneck – L.L.Bean; black silk shirt – Alex Mill; black denim pants – L.L.Bean
My second target is my black cashmere cardigan. For some reason I can overlook this sweater for weeks at a time… How do I wear it? With a striped top underneath, as I did in Paris, or with a black tee and a scarf. Black corduroy pants are essential in cold weather, for me!
black cashmere cardigan – J.Crew; striped tee shirt – Lauren Ralph Lauren; black tee shirt – J.Crew; black corduroy pants – J.Crew
And of course my other new sweater this year is this gorgeous Fair Isle cardigan! Some of you found it too bulky and thick, but for me its just perfect. This might be the nicest quality sweater I’ve ever purchased from J.Crew, for what that’s worth…
And how do I want to finish this cluster? A white oxford, a white tee, and jeans! So easy, so classic, so “winter in Chicago”.
I know many of you don’t fully understand this next choice, but I MUST include my stone chinos in any wardrobe for cooler weather! I bought them second-hand, and I’m quite smitten. Plus I’d be crazy not to try to get some mileage from my Aran cardigan – it’s a “buy it for life” purchase!
I live in a big city, so a blazer is surprisingly more useful than you might imagine. Or maybe it has nothing to do with living in a city – what do you think? Maybe it’s just because I am always drawn to clothes that have a strongly masculine feeling to them…
This blazer matches these pants – I won’t be wearing a suit any time soon, but it’s always wonderful to have that option!
This blazer is currently marked down to $105…
Blazer – Alex Mill; striped shirt – Lands’ End; cream white silk blouse – Banana Republic; wool pants – Alex Mill
This next cluster is a tribute to my fondness for stripes! And I wanted to get my black jeans into this wardrobe.
I’m not buying anything for myself that has “blended fabrics” – especially Lycra in jeans! Ever since I saw the photograph of stretch jeans that someone tried to compost, I’ve been determined to buy things that can end their life back in nature…
But yes, most of the clothes that I’m showing here don’t meet that standard! It’s difficult…
The striped turtleneck is half off at Lands’ End. They’re having a gigantic sale…
Striped sweater – J.Crew; striped cashmere turtleneck – Lands’ End; white cotton turtleneck – L.L.Bean; 100% cotton jeans – Alex Mill
Well, at this point I have a sufficient amount of clothing for my normal day-to-day wear. Let’s toss in some things for getting dressed up! Belovedest and I go on pretty regular dinner dates (when you live literally crawling distance from some of the best food in the world, you go out!)…
Don’t forget Valentine’s Day too. While many of us won’t go out that night, we may indeed have lovely plans to celebrate!
Cotton cashmere turtleneck – L.L.Bean; lace-trimmed top – GAP; black velvet tunic – Eileen Fisher; dotted skirt – J.Crew
So when I pile all of these clothes together into the 28-piece, seven cluster template, it looks like the following. Note that I’ve marked in purple the garments that I want to concentrate on wearing a lot:
So what does this mean to you?
Well, you could do this with clothes that you want to wear a lot.
Or you could do it with things that you’re not wearing as often as you “should”. The goal of this might be to figure out why you don’t wear some things, and either making the necessary adjustments (does something need to be altered? is there a scratchy tag sitting on your left hip? is it just NOT YOU???).
You could set a goal that each garment be worn X number of times by Y date. Five times by the end of February?
You could just use this to organize what you have, and maybe catch a glimpse of what you need to add…
Here’s a blank version of the 28-piece seven cluster template, just in case it might be handy.
After filling this in, I feel like 28 pieces of clothing is a ton! I know that in high school and college, I could have only dreamed of this much clothing…
love,
Janice
p.s. Ten years ago, we started with a bright and cheery Hermes scarf to build a black, white, hot pink and turquoise wardrobe. For those of you looking for travel wardrobes that span both dressy and casual activities, this is a good place to start!
Like this template idea? Save it to Pinterest!
👏👏👏👏Superb. I love this idea. It would certainly work for me as I review my wardrobe.
To begin with, I would use one chart for each of my colour groups. I can then see wear the gaps/duplicates are. It certainly seems as if I have 28 garments (or more) in each of my colour groups – navy and blues, pink/red, lilac/periwinkle/purple, green. Grey/black/ivory/white is one group on its own. Would you have 28 garments for cooler weather too?
I’d probably reserve the three outliers for dresses, skirts, evening wear in each colour group. Though I could have a separate chart for evening wear. One for outer wear as well.
I’m making one change this year – replacing long sleeve polyester blouses with cotton/linen blouses that I can wear in winter or in summer with the sleeves rolled up. Last year, I bought a pink pinstripe shirt with 3/4 sleeves and I wore it a lot as it was so cool. So, I’ve just bought three very high quality cotton and linen blouses from charity shops for £6 each (rrp £40 to £70). Pink floral, white/blue floral and the third is a light blue linen shirt that is very soft. Having a wardrobe that works for 6-9 months of the year should be a space saver.
I love this new template, Janice! Very easy to right click and save to downloads. I think I’d need two templates, one for warm weather and one for colder weather. I’ve been trying to only buy 100% natural fabrics for the last year or so, but the one place I can’t do it is jeans. I need 1 or 2% stretch for them to be comfortable, but any more than that they seem to bag at the knees.
I love this idea and will certainly try to do likewise with what I have. Since my last post about going back to black as my first neutral I have a mish mash of a mostly neutral wardrobe because of trying to get away with too much black and trying other neutral colours instead. This template may well show me the way as I have been pondering on my next move for ages. I tried a beige trench, my family convinced me it was not my colour and my DD has said I need to get back to red and royal as accents as they suit me best. My favourite outfits are always all black or black and white as my hair is bright white. I think Beth’s idea of having a template for each colour block is a good one so one for black/white/jewel colours. 1 for navy/white/pinks/pale blue and 1 for burgundy/navy etc. There will be of course crossovers within the groups but I think that would work and may show up any gaps but more likely too many duplicates.
If only we’d known about capsule dressing when we were in high school and college!
This template methodology is brilliant. Each of us can apply it differently. Climate, color, occasions, travel. I like figuring out how one or two dressier items can be blended into more every day wear. Pantsuits are one obvious place to start, but I have a few two-piece dresses that can really be mixed up with the rest or really elevated with accessories.
The thing about capsule dressing and palette dressing is that feeling you get when you bring one new item home and discover 5-8 ways to wear it!
I just love this idea. When I was a little kid, the big fashion trend was wearing “Garanimals”….a line of clothing (I believe long defunct) in which each piece would have a tag that you’d try to match to other pieces with the same tag in the department. It was a bit of a scavenger hunt to start, with my sister and me running around the children’s clothing looking for matches to our chosen tag. It was an adventure! That being said, once we got home from our shopping trips, it would be easy to make outfits, because everything matched.
Your wardrobe plan reminds me of this—but fabulous, not tacky. Honestly, I’m blessed with the closet of my dreams in my new house. I quite literally designed it to have multiple storage spaces, as well as a dressing table and chair. I’ve organized everything by style of clothing and then colors in a specific order. This “like with like” method has worked well for me since my Garanimals days. I just have a lot more clothes now.
Keeping my pieces to 28 would be a challenge I wouldn’t choose. However, it would make a killer way to travel. Although I’ve lived in Maine for most of my adult life, I’m a native Californian. I try to get west every year to visit with my friends and family. I use a method very much like this one when I go away. It’s worked especially well for this trip each year, because I generally stay with my friends, so I can use a washing machine. I am going to print a blank off from this page to use for my next trip.
Oh, thank you for the 70’s memory. I loved Garanamals, especially on the seasonal discount rack. Seem to recall a fondness for zebra tags and lion tags! Wish they had existed when taking a corporate job. Oh, the haphazard building of a corporate wardrobe while paying student loans, car and rent.
I was a Garanimals kid too! Walmart carries the line now. Not as thorough as when we were little, but the brand is still out there. :)
Just brilliant!
I love the new template, Janice.
Apropos of nothing, I was in a museum earlier this week (Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra, Portugal, and started thinking about how a particularly gorgeous 18th century Chinese vase in tones of terracotta, peach, turquoise and gold, on a white background could inspire a wardrobe palette. This wouldn’t have occurred to me before my daughter sent me The Vivienne Files, so thank you.
ohhhhhh that color combination sounds FABULOUS!!! i have an old soap dispenser at home (it broke, i then took it from my mom, and made it a pencil holder) that is black, cognac, white, gold and sage green and slight hit of pale pink that i’ve always wondered about turning into a wardrobe! Maybe inspo colors for Janice if she ever gets bored ;)
I love this! Will compare my current work and home wardrobes with this over the weekend and see how they stack up. I have a number of things I purchased to “round out my wardrobe” that I almost never wear, including pieces that are just for going out that I won’t include–sadly, it turns out that I don’t go out to anything that requires different clothing than what I wear to work every day, so there’s not much call for having any.
I’ve been on a budget for all of my adult life, so I buy really expensive things on sale or second hand. Over the past few years I’ve bought a number of Lands End cashmere sweaters for half off or less, and they’re really great quality (much better than Quince, which has good medium quality cashmere $50 long sleeve or thinner, but still nice quality, $45 short sleeved sweaters; or the super thin stuff from Nordstrom Rack). So I recommend anything cashmere at their current half off sale!
This is my all time favorite advice. It is especially helpful with your comments and explanations.
Love the templates. BTW: you mentioned second hand shops. I would like more ideas how to shop in them. Also, just a reminder, if you are getting rid of clothing etc, some local schools are in desperate need of all clothing, shoes and boots.
I am a long-time thrifter. My tips for second-hand shopping:
1. Write down your measurements (I keep mine in my phone), and carry a tape measure. You can usually figure out if something will fit just by measuring so you don’t have to try it on.
2. Assume that you will have to tailor or in some way alter most of what you find.
3. You’ll see a lot of fast fashion, etc. So I look for natural fibers (wool, linen, silk), which wear much better.
3. Short, frequent visits will net you better finds than longer, more sporadic visits.
4. Second hand stores have a range of prices. Consignment shops tend to be most expensive, then large chain thrifts (like Goodwill), then local charities, then the “bins” or Goodwill Outlet stores where things are sold by the pound. You can find treasures in all of them, but I like the local charities best in part because the money stays in the community. I’m in central Indiana, and our Goodwills are wildly overpriced.
5. Always check out the thrifts that are in more well-to-do areas. People there tend to turn over their wardrobes more quickly, and the donations tend to be higher quality. Also, thrifts in areas with a lot of older people downsizing or estates being cleaned out tend to have higher quality, less-trendy goods.
6. After a couple of months, you’ll get good feel for which places have the best formal clothes versus which ones are better for home goods, etc.
7. I’ve also done well online with clothes. I find Poshmark to be the most user-friendly and also the most expensive; it’s essentially an online consignment store.
8. If you’re shopping for vintage, look for sizes that are larger than what you actually wear. Vintage clothes are generally both sized smaller and have shrunk due to laundering over time.
Hope that helps!
Oops, I mis-numbered! That’s what I get for not proof-reading.
Great tips for shopping second hand.
I would just add that online charity/thrift websites and online market places are great for finding branded goods at cheaper prices. You can always ask the seller for measurements or photos in daylight.
My other tip is not to get distracted. I use charity shops to find floral/patterned shirts and jewellery. I do not need any more jumpers.
I don’t know why more people don’t use your number 1 tip since sizes are pretty much meaningless theses days.
Right??? Such a simple and smart thing to do…
hugs,
Janice
Love it! I think I want to use it to “best” out my work wardrobe (seasonally). I have clothes, plenty! But do they fit my body where its at, suit it in cut, color and style? Can I fill it out with favorites that make me happy? If yes, great! (maybe throw out/ donate the rest?? … probably not, issues letting go. Maybe a singluar one of “if they fit again i’d wear them” and then throw out the rest). If not – a good guide to where to actually shop/ what gaps I have. Maybe a singular one for casual and singular one for fancy, with each of the 7 being a different weather/likely level of formality.
Very useful and versatile template!!!
The summer I was 11, my 10-year-old cousin stayed with us Sunday afternoon – Friday evening. We had a sofa bed in the basement, and my mother put up “card tables” on either side for us to use for our clothes for the week. My mother bought me several coordinating short sets, and my cousin had this brilliant idea to mix and match (capsule wardrobe, anyone?). When my mother saw that I had “mixed up” two short sets, she sent my back downstairs to switch. Sets were to be worn as sets, period.
My next foray into capsule dressing was when I was in college. I was home on spring break, and the JCPenney Spring/Summer catalog had just arrived. One two-page spread featured a blazer, pants, and midi skirt in both navy and a pale yellow. There was also a pale yellow blouse with navy flowers, and a bright yellow blouse (not sure why that was included!). I ordered everything, but (1) the yellow pants never fit; (2) pale yellow is not a great color for winter coloring; and (3) I never mixed and matched. I wore the yellow blazer with the yellow skirt, the navy blazer with the navy bottoms. Capsule wardrobes still fascinate me, but they don’t come naturally.
THANK YOU! I’ve been waiting for these blank templates since your first wardrobe post this year!
So timely, thank you Janice.
For some reason I can’t seem to wrap my brain around this. I’m over thinking it. Like Ellen S, with my multicolored wardrobe I don’t ever see myself getting down to 28 pieces, but it is a great way to travel. I am somewhat experimental in my color combos, so most of what I have I can wear with many other items in my closet. Today, for example, I have on a purple sweater dress, but the trim around the bottom has blue, red and olive. So there’s a long olive cardigan over the top, and petrol blue pants underneath. I am retiring today and got cards from student and staff. I had to laugh at how many of them mentioned my colorful outfits. There are worse things to be known for! Happy Friday, have a great weekend
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I’m so happy for you!
lots of love,
Janice
Happy Retirement! They’ll miss you brightening up their day.
Congratulations Sheila! Enjoy retirement!
So, I think this 28 piece template is for cool/cold weather and there will be another 28 piece template for warm/hot weather. If this is correct then the total wardrobe would be 56 pieces. Is this correct?
This isn’t necessarily someone’s entire wardrobe; it’s more a temporary wardrobe for a few weeks/months to help me decide about what things I’m going to keep and build around, and what things I might not keep. A short-term focus on things that need to be evaluated at length, I think you might say…
hugs,
Janice
Thanks for the explanation! Makes total sense!
I love the concept of the purple highlights for things you want to concentrate on wearing. Might I suggest a 2nd iteration of that in a different colour, but going the other way – as a highlight for what I call ‘placeholder’ or ‘filler’ items that you want to replace but, for now, can’t?
With recent medical issues my body has changed significantly, meaning that I have a very difficult time finding anything that fits. In addition I hate shopping. So I have a number of items in my wardrobe that I needed to purchase quickly to ‘have something’ for an occasion (e.g. a funeral, a business event for my husband, a pool party) but that I really should replace with something more suitable. However, because I already ‘have something’ and it sits in the back of the closet unused for the most part, I never focus on actually replacing it, until the next time I need to ‘wear something’ and lament that I’ve never done so.
Another question: because of the above (hate shopping, difficulty finding things that fit), when I *do* find something (e.g. navy or black stretch pants, jeans, t-shirts) I’ll often just buy several of them. In your module, would they count as separate pieces, or only one piece?
It depends on how you feel about them; for me they would be just one item. Let’s not talk about how many black long-sleeved tee shirts I own…
hugs,
Janice
Yes, I have black short-sleeved tee as one of my most worn items in my Indyx app. What it doesn’t say is that there are five of them. I was rather surprised to find that I have four long-sleeved brown tees. Of course, every one of them is a different shade.
That’s like my purple tee shirts and turtlenecks (which you might remember from my packing for Paris); I have all the shades!
hugs,
Janice
“I have a number of items in my wardrobe that I needed to purchase quickly to ‘have something’ for an occasion (e.g. a funeral, a business event for my husband, a pool party) but that I really should replace with something more suitable. However, because I already ‘have something’ and it sits in the back of the closet unused for the most part, I never focus on actually replacing it, until the next time I need to ‘wear something’ and lament that I’ve never done so.”
I’ve had to replace my wardrobe several times for similar reasons–once, when I got my first job working outside the home after my kids were grown, then when I got a different job that required more formal clothes, then when I got the job I’m in now that has a different dress code, once when my weight changed, etc. And oh boy, I did often buy some crappy thing (ie, a white turtleneck because it FIT and would just go under things anyway) and forget to replace it later with a quality one! I used templates of Janice’s to help me shop for enough garments to start out with. And like you I would sometimes buy multiples of the same basics. I counted them as one piece–although I’ve since found that, for instance, in my current no one really cares whether I wear the same pants day after day, so I’d really be fine with five of the same pair as five bottoms!
I so enjoy your blogs and all your helpful ideas. Using art or a scarf to create a capsule wardrobe is so smart. And I love this template, especially for traveling!
I love all your templates, but my fave will always be the essential weekly wardrobe. Almost all of my clothes are core pieces, with very few that fall into the outlier/statement piece category. So the essential weekly wardrobe template was perfect for me.
You mentioned that you love a blazer. I think they look particularly terrific on tall, striking women with strong bone structure. It’s something about the accent on the shoulders.
But I loathe blazers on me; I’m short, short waisted, and very curvy. No matter how well-tailored blazers are, I always feel restricted by them. I have replaced every structured item in my closet with knits instead, and it’s made a huge difference in both my comfort level and my confidence in my appearance.
I’m built much like you, but to me a blazer feels like it brings structure to my squishiness! It really only matter what you think, and what you like. That’s the bottom line of the entire Vivienne Files – figure out what you love, and wear it to pieces…
hugs,
Janie
I’m short and curvy too. I’ve discovered that medium to long coats (buttoned or unbuttoned) skim over the plumpy bits and create a long silhouette.
I am short and curvy too, as well as short-waisted. It’s SO easy for clothes to make me look like fire hydrant! I love blazers but rarely wear them, and I’ve totally given up on crisp button-downs–so few fit that it’s not worth it, and even when I find one I never wear it! I can’t stand the way they feel.
I settled into a 28 item wardrobe for winter and summer after studying my needs, lifestyle and what I was wearing the last two years (I am semi-retired, work from home and love classic, casual style – and, like Janice, I do love men’s tailoring and the borrowed from the “boyfriend/husband” aesthetic). I found her archive of blog posts very instructive and it led me naturally to a very similar template and I focused on finding my “uniform” and what I loved to wear. I donated tons of clothes as I prefer to live light at this point in my life (maybe moving my parents three times in the last two years had something to do with this). I have a little overlap between the two seasons and found that I didn’t need a lot of extra stuff for spring and fall – layering covered it with one or two different jackets. I would be typed as a bright spring, but I like a neutral, classic palette and mainly wear denim, French blue, navy, warm grey, white, ivory with some black and beige for pants. They all work together. I do add some pops of colour in the summer and I have a pine green cashmere sweater that works well with all the other colours and is a joy to wear. I recently had to deal with 10 days of intense caregiving to my elderly father and her advice on “stress” dressing and my simplified wardrobe got me through beautifully without having to think twice when I had to pack in a rush. Thank you for all the thoughtful blogs that led me to where I am today – very happy getting dressed in the morning.
I like the 28 piece cluster much better than the 30 piece! I am going to try to follow the navy wardrobe with 4 seasonal colors in the monthly series. Two tops and one second layer works better for me than 3 tops and a second layer. That feels like the right number for a color I might wear minimally. I love this whole template idea and think one template will work for me for the entire year. I won’t include my 2 pair of everyday active pants, several t-shirts and shorts that I wear for daily life which includes MANY trips outside with 2 old dogs and fun activities with grandkids.
This template feels so organized and compartmentalized which is perfect for me! It will be so useful for traveling as well, which I am fortunately doing more and more of. Thank you tons, Janice.
For me, 28 pieces is a lot. That’s just me, though. If duplicates are counted as one, then I work with about half of this. I live a rather casual life. As for using it to focus on pieces I don’t wear as much as I expected to, it’s very informative. I was puzzling over a few second layer pieces I got to work into my version of the Eiffel Tower wardrobe from last year. They were brown, good quality, fitted well and look good, but I always put them back and grabbed navy. I have A Lot of navy, lol. So, I was mentally putting things in the template, and it quickly became clear that color was the issue. I know there are ladies here who enjoy lots of color, and it sounds lovely, but it’s definitely not my style. Which is always good to know. Winter, to me, is denim, lots of navy, some grey, and a blue that could be called Muted Cobalt. Except for jeans, all soft and cozy. Pretty much everything works with everything else. So, long story short, the brown pieces are gone and, hopefully, keeping someone else warm.
I’m replying a bit late but I hope someone finds this useful. I love Janice’s templates and I frequently use the 4x 4 template for planning. Many of us have mentioned the Stylebook app as a useful tool but it has limitations-cost, time, effort. I recently started to use the free Apple app Freeform to create versions of the templates. It is usually already on apple products and no download is needed. I like that it is on my phone so I can use it more frequently. If I didn’t use Apple I would probably use PowerPoint. I tend to buy most of my clothing on line, so I try to always save a picture when I order an item. You can import the photo into a whiteboard on Freeform and arrange your photos as you see fit. I create a wardrobe of sorts with pictures of all of my clothing and accessories. I just saved a photo of this template and then duplicated the photo of each clothing item to add it on the template. Duplicate works better than copy for some reason. You could also create your own template. I’m no expert but it is working well for me and I hope to use it in more ways to create outfits. There are free tutorials on YouTube, but so far I haven’t tried them. Thank you Janice for your creative organization tools and advice.
I do indeed work in PowerPoint, and I also save an image of any clothing that I buy online. It comes in surprisingly handy!
hugs,
Janice
It’s so interesting how you organize things. I also love this splash of color. 💜
I hope I really only buy what I need to replace this year.
Since I’m still photographing my daily outfits, I’m realizing I have enough clothes.
(I have about 28 items for each season.) Since I bought a lot of things secondhand or they’re decades old, I really need to photograph all my clothes.
I’m kind of confused by this template. I have been using the Wardrobe Sudoku but it got too small to be useful all the time.
But when I looked at your filled template, maybe because I’m used to the sudoku plan, I could see other combinations and don’t understand how this all combines.
For me, I might only have 3 3rd layers because I’m retired, but have 10 pairs of jeans that I wear everyday, even to dinner & church. And obviously every single one of my tops goes with all the jeans. The differences for me are the 3rd layers, shoes and accessories.
So for my lifestyle, I could look at revising that left column spacing too.
Dear Patti,
You can revise this template any way you want! This one is pretty much designed to help us through the “Six Paintings – 12 Months” posts, which always have four garments in each month. And it worked pretty well with my winter wardrobe, except that I’ve got a black cashmere turtleneck show that would (only in sub-zero weather!) in theory be worn under my Fair Isle cardigan. I would swelter, it doesn’t matter HOW COLD it gets…
All of my templates are guidelines, and can be changed, rearranged, or discarded as you need. If you only need three second layers, don’t change a thing! If you can get dressed efficiently and happily, that’s the only important thing – the rest is just trying to impose a structure on clothing that defies order!
hugs,
Janice