Capsule Wardrobe Plans Archives

Five Accent Colors with Navy

September 21, 2022

As we have come to expect, Pantone "discovered" 10 "new" fashion colors from the London Spring/Summer 2022/23 Fashion Week.

Bizarrely enough, they seem to have arranged them almost like a (weird) rainbow! So to look at these colors as suggestions for wardrobe accents, I'm going to take the first 5 colors and pair them all with a tiny number of navy pieces...

I chose navy because it looks good with all 5 colors - which makes sense. Navy is opposite to orange on the color wheel, and these colors are all on that side of the wheel!

It sounds strange, but it seems to work...

First up - how often are you looking for something in a true, "not blue, not yellowish" red color, and everything you see is really on ... View the Post

Start with Nature: The Spinning Pulsar of the Crab Nebula

August 29, 2022 Staying at the Observatory Until the Autumnal Equinox

There are all kinds of interesting things to observe and photograph near the equinox; she's going to stay until then, to have everything ready!

She will be alone most of the time, and it will get quite cool before she comes home...

So she starts her small travel wardrobe with some warm things, in the navy of the night sky:

There's laundry in the housing facility at the base of the tower, so she doesn't need much at all for clothing; these 9 pieces will go a long way!

But she realizes that if she takes a few more shirts and sweaters, she won't have to do laundry as often! So she turns to one of her favorite recent astronomy ... View the Post

Start With Art: Winter Solstice by Dame Barbara Hepworth

August 24, 2022

It seems a bit premature to be looking at art entitled Winter Solstice, but our heroine loves pastels!

She doesn't much care what anybody else wears - she's not interested in dark colors! She feels beautiful in pink, and lovely in sky blue...

The core of her wardrobe for cooler weather is gray, with a bit of denim and chambray tossed in for practicality:

please note - everybody's "Common Wardrobe" will be different - what I'm looking for are the core, neutral garments that form the base for the more expressive and statement garments and accessories in our wardrobes.

On those days, our heroine knows that she doesn't have to look any farther than these 9 pieces to get her dressed and out the ... View the Post

Start with Art: A Mother’s Love: The Polar Bear Family by Jason Carter

August 22, 2022

She loved his art the first minute she saw it! The clarity, simplicity, beautiful colors - all of it!

And she knew that this painting would be useful in helping her focus her ever-shrinking wardrobe:

She knows that the core of her wardrobe will be black, white and denim - this painting seems just right!

She start her autumn wardrobe planning with A Common Wardrobe. It's not called "common" because the clothes are cheap or run of the mill - it's called common because these are clothes that a LOT of people have in common!

That's a good thing - you can easily find them, they fit in easily when you're not sure what to wear, but best of all, the serve as a neutral background for whatever accents you wish to ... View the Post

How to Build a 13-Piece Travel Capsule Wardrobe

July 15, 2022

I'm long overdue to spend some time looking in detail at how one can choose a 13-piece "Whatever's Clean" wardrobe; you can't just grab a baker's dozen pieces of clothing and stuff them in a suitcase!

If you've been visiting The Vivienne Files for a few years, you certain recognize the idea of 13 garments for a travel capsule wardrobe - 3 to wear and 10 to pack.

But let's think about a specific travel situation that one of us is confronting week after week; packing for the weekend plus the Monday work day...

First - what items of clothing do you need?

You can always "right-click" on this template, and print it out, and then jot down notes about what you're considering...

Secondly, you need to make ... View the Post

Start with Art: The Red Maple at Lake George by Georgia O’Keeffe

July 11, 2022

The Best Laid Plans... She was planning to spend the autumn photographing leaves, and hiking, and enjoying the brisk air...

But instead, she's going to be touring with a political candidate whom she supports. It's a long story!

She doesn't want to pack much; she frankly doesn't want to think about clothing at all once she closes her suitcase. She's going to have quite enough on her mind!

So she's thinking that she will have room to pack 10 garments in her medium suitcase... Maybe a "Whatever's Clean 13" Wardrobe is what she needs, eh?

Realistically, she might be able to stop at home from time to time, but she wants to be as self-sufficient as possible when they're driving from small town to ... View the Post

Start with Art: Passenger by Sean Scully

July 8, 2022

As soon as she saw the painting, so many things became clearer...

It includes all of her favorite colors, but it's the title that really grabs her...

This is what she wants - after two and a half years of staying home and being careful - she wants to be a passenger!

And so she's leaving. As soon as the summer's over, she's going to buy a train pass and just GO...

She will choose destinations based on things like sporting events, or art exhibits, or other museum-type stuff... or maybe weather. Or something else!

She starts to plan her foolproof wardrobe now; anticipation is a big part of the travel fun, for her:

She loves the idea of a wardrobe based in black, and punctuated with bright colors. ... View the Post

Another Way to Think About Closet Cleaning

June 29, 2022 Today's my birthday - I'm 62!!! The only certain treat today is a yellow cake with maple frosting, from Sweet Mandy B's... Sadly, I will NOT be able to have a blog post ready for Friday; between my birthday and other utterly unrelated errands I have to run on Thursday, it's just not possible! I will of course be back on Monday...

But on to more practical things - clearing out a wardrobe that's just plain and simply too full. More clothing than you need is confusing, distracting clutter, and clothing that you can donate could be a wonderful gift to a total stranger...

Here's our starting point:

I'm working (gradually and haltingly!) toward Project 333 for myself, and I'm trying to be sensible, by keeping clothing ... View the Post

One Way to Get to Project 333

June 22, 2022

By this time of year, most of us should be easily able to whittle down our warm-weather wardrobe to a tidy 33 pieces. While this is NOT what Courtney Carver suggests for her Project 333, I'm pretty confident that she wouldn't be too upset with us starting at this point. So long as we look seriously at our wardrobes from time to time, she will probably approve!

buy her book and read it; trust me!

How to minimize what's in one's closet is a question that I am asked almost every day, and thus I keep thinking of different ways that someone could go about eliminating a big chunk of their wardrobe... Let me share one idea!

Let's start here - I think (but am by no means sure!) that there are 69 garments here... If all of ... View the Post

What is a “Temporary Wardrobe”? And How Might One Assemble Such a Thing?

March 23, 2022

Two emails, asking the same question from 2 opposite points of view:

"I'm going to have chemotherapy, and I'm going to probably lose enough weight to be 2 sizes smaller than normal. I expect to gain all of the weight back... What to wear?" "I'm starting a new medicine that I will have to take for 3 months; I will gain about 30 pounds during that time. I will lose all of the weight when the therapy is done... What to wear?"

Thus, I'm trying to devise a plan for all among us who might need a "Temporary Wardrobe."

This isn't just for those of us being whipped around by the whims of medicine; imagine living in Singapore and being sent to Ireland for 6 weeks to work! Or vice versa...

Of course, you could manage ... View the Post

One Way to Choose and Assemble Your Uniform

February 11, 2022

I've probably mentioned this before (20 times!), but since we've all moved into 1 apartment together, my ONLY real issue is that my closet isn't conveniently placed, nor organized.

And I, of course, really don't have buckets of time to work on it!

My plan is to get rid of things that are no longer appropriate for what I do every day, and to have a good plan for what I purchase.

I'm also moving more and more toward Urban Organic as a style mantra, so I'm trying to buy clothes with better fabric, with less synthetic content, and that are made somewhere humane...

Big goals!

Initially, what would be the most help to me is to have a solid Cluster of 9 garments (either 3 outfits, or 27, depending on how ... View the Post

How do you choose accessories for a LONG trip?

January 26, 2022

Okay, our heroine has a great color palette chosen for her quite long trip to Europe:

And all of her clothing is chosen too:

Because our wise heroine has already figured out what she wants to wear for travel, and what she's taking with her in her tote bag for that quick change in the airport, she has some of her accessories already chosen:

But she will need more accessories, almost certainly! (well, technically, she could get by with just these things...)

And there's so much to consider:

My favorite approach to choosing accessories when I travel is to pick out a LOT of outfits - making sure that I've included all of my garments at least once. Then I accessorize each of the ... View the Post