February 9, 2026
Let’s just take a second to enjoy the calm solitude of today’s painting. I don’t think most of us take enough time to look at art; I always see people cruising through the Art Institute of Chicago as if they have a checklist, and not two eyes and a heart…
Our heroine, the professional listener, has chosen this palette for her wardrobe; so far she’s very pleased!
At the end of January, she only had eight garments in her “new” wardrobe, but they were carefully chosen and offer her literally twelve outfit options. Twelve really repetitive options, but that’s still a lot of choices for so few garments!
This month, she was delighted to find a pair of pants that go beautifully with her wool vest! And she very wisely purchased a cotton turtleneck that matches her pants, so she has that always-practical matching top and bottom, over which she can wear any of her second layer pieces.
A timeless fisherman’s sweater, and a brown shirt (which matches her brown pants!) finish her four garments for February:
Brown shirt – Alex Mill; amber earrings – Ross-Simons; rust turtleneck – Coldwater Creek; vibrant maple corduroy pants – J.Crew; scarf – Silk&Soul; cotton fisherman’s sweater – L.L.Bean; loafers – SoftWalk
Now, her wardrobe just looks larger, with more options! But the overall feeling and mood of her clothes hasn’t changed:
When she writes descriptions of her new purchases into her template, she finds that they are still right on track:
yes, I’m showing images, but one could easily just write in brief descriptions of each garment – everybody’s not going to play around on their computer all day with clothing images!
Now, when our heroine gets dressed each day, she has even more choices. Technically, I think she as 54 possible combinations? But here are a few…
With spring clothing on the horizon, our heroine is hopeful of seeing a few more green things when she shops next month…
Love,
Janice
previous installments of the building of this wardrobe can be found here: Christmas Eve Preview, January
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Lovely, and the green and rust will look fab together in an outfit as well .
This is just such a magnificent painting. I adore the light and the glow and the feeling of reverence. Despite this being a ‘soft’ painting, I find that I see a new detail with observation of it. I’d love to hang this (or, rather, a reproduction) in my home.
The chestnut brown is a fantastic color. I have a fair amount of it in my wardrobe. I find it uplifting and cheerful. It’s a “happy” brown! This particular shade of green? Not so much. It’s a bit minty-pea soup-hospital green for me. I love the dark brown as the deep base. I love the touches of ivory…but I’d never, ever wear an all white/ivory outfit. Other people look amazing in all white. Me? I look like an escapee from a cult. It just doesn’t work on me. But, I mad for the individual pieces. While I like the majority of what’s here, and I’m in love with the painting, this would be far too limiting for me on a daily basis. I’d need to add something more—a denim 4-pack (jeans, denim jacket, denim shirt, denim dress or skirt) or pattern that is within this color grouping. Even stripes would be great! This is the same Boden dress you posted last week, but this time, in chestnut and ivory stripes…I could see this being incredibly useful with this wardrobe.
https://us.boden.com/products/women-eve-jersey-midi-dress-deep-wisteria-ivory-stripe-d1561brn
I love the stillness of the painting. I’m looking forward to seeing more green next month. Having sets of top, bottom and second layer for each colour is a good idea. Then you can fill in the gaps with prints, textures or specifically seasonal items.
Beautiful clothes and such a stunning painting. For me personally, I very rarely enjoy a “column of color” … but when I can pull it off is when the textures are different! So for me, the cabled/ detailed sweaters and the corduroy pants is really making a difference! Thanks for all the attention to detail you put into these wardrobes
I love the individual items, if not the colors. I’m also kind of stuck on the post last week of Ruffled Clouds and how much I dislike the pink being in there – or maybe it’s just that particular shade of pink. Anyway, I can’t remember who it was that had a minimal wardrobe while building a house? We are prepping ours for sale and I just finished packing up most of my clothing in bins and taking them out to the garage. I do hope I’ve chose wisely for things to wear during the next few weeks….. Thank you Janice for all your hard work.
Oh Sheila good luck. Two years ago this spring we had to move out of our home due to water damage. I tried to be very mindful of what I took with me. Always asking “what would Janice pack” While most of the time it worked I ended up purchasing a skirt and a pair of shorts as the temps slowly went from spring to full blown summer in TX! Depending on the length of time you are w/o a closet, weather can really change. Our repairs were going to take 6 weeks but actually took 3 months!
That was me! I used Janice’s template for a minimal (for me) wardrobe. My colors were these in the previous painting—navy (as my base) and pink and orange for accents. I know that pink isn’t for everybody, trust me.
When I prepped my old house for sale, I took everything out and packed it up if it didn’t fit into my plan. I stuck with my palette and ‘everything goes together’ throughout the showings, the sale, the moving into a rental cottage and eventually, moving into my new home. If you’re moving into a house that you can move right into, you should be just fine. However, our house’s progress was delayed by over two and a half months. I was into a season I hadn’t prepared for and couldn’t access my clothing in storage. So, I did have to make some purchases….but I kept them in the same color palette.
My best advice to you is to get as much as you can totally out of your house. Our realtor said not to store things in the garage because people like spacious garages. We did rent a few storage units. Have the house look ‘staged’ not ‘lived in’ and you’ll be great. It’s another reason why a particular color palette looks great in a closet. It creates the illusion of organization and tons of space.
Good luck to you!
Lovely rich, warm wardrobe. Also enjoying the look back article as I did similar, slowly eliminated the black but kept the navy which goes nicely with the browns.
I am most intrigued by the idea of being a professional listener.
I really love these colors and they are the backbone of my wardrobe. Although I am typed as a summer color palette… these are the colors I love and I think it’s ok. As my hair goes grey that might change, we’ll see. I like to keep the turquoise (that’s what the green/blue looks like on my computer) and a berry/burgundy up top. I also add navy and denim and a few black pieces. I actually have less, maybe no brown, but more of the chestnut/cognac color. I love the way it pairs with navy and denim. So I have it in pants, shoes and a big long vest that I love! I still have my wardrobe edited to v-necks and button ups that are easy to put on after my rotator cuff shoulder surgery, but it’s been almost 8 weeks post surgery and things are getting easier to get on and off. So I might get more of my wardrobe back soon! :) I also never wear one color in my pants and shirt, but I have seen people wear it and love it. I don’t know why but I need my shirt and pants to be different colors and often my topper to be a third color. Sometimes they are all pulled from a pattern in the shirt, but not always. We are all unique! I would love to see more outfits styled that way.
Although not my colours I can see why people love brown as it’s so rich. So many shades of brown where black is just black if that makes sense. One can have a column of browns that are different shades whereby a column of black is just that, no shades at all unless you go to grey which we see as a completely different colour.
re the art institute: I think I stood in front of this one for a solid 30 minutes last time I visited. I’m on the west coast but fortunately my oft-visited Chicago colleague had a membership….
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20155/apollo-granting-phaeton-permission-to-drive-the-chariot-of-the-sun
Janice, I am interested to know if you have a particular method you’re using to allocate the garments into the template? I was wondering if you group the outer layer and two tops that could be worn together or using color, or a different way? I’ve been applying this template to my own wardrobe and puzzling a bit over how to do the grouping.
The bottom row today it seems like it would be bulky to wear the dark brown sweater under the turquoise sweater? That might just be my sensory fussiness!
Not really any system at work here! I just try to find four garments that can be worn together; in a really well-chosen wardrobe, these foursomes could be swapped around a lot.
That said, in Chicago, when it’s near zero Fahrenheit, and we’re headed outside for a long time (think 3 hours outdoors for a protest march, when the first hour at least is standing in one place) I could cheerfully layer sweaters like that. It would be a lot of clothing, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!
love,
Janice
Janice,
These are my colors ! Love, love, love !
I love the feel of this painting so much. It reminds me of a painting I saw at the Dallas Museum of Art last year by Henry Tanner showing a mother and child, called Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures. It has a similar feeling of calm but in blues and creams. In looking it up to share the link, I realized the various shades of blue are ones I love to wear! Perhaps I’ve found my inspiration painting.
https://dma.org/art/collection/object/5000380
I love that painting lauramaureen. The colors are beautiful and it would make a wonderful inspiration!