Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature
August 14, 2017
This wardrobe was constructed over 5 years ago, but you could still pack every piece of this and wear it today... that's my primary goal. Timeless. Elegant. Classic.
When you know that you can wear something for years, you can feel quite a bit better about buying the very best items you can... It's only logical to make sure that your beautiful things will last, right?
love, Janice ... View the Post
June 26, 2017
Denim and khaki go with everything - I'm convinced! - but some of you wanted to see a capsule wardrobe with a very different feel than the relatively soft and cool pastel version that used mauve pink and dark pastel blue...
How about this for colors?
I don't have any really exotic travel vision for this heroine - she's more someone who wears a uniform most of the time, and only needs a relatively small wardrobe to accommodate her "not work" activities outside of her home.
So I'm starting with the six neutral pieces that were in last Monday's wardrobe, and I finally grabbed a pair of dark navy loafers for her. (although with brown in a wardrobe, don't discount the gorgeousness of beautiful brown ... View the Post
June 22, 2017
This is a really old post - from back in 2012! The nice thing is that none of the garments have dated, and you could easily pull this outfit on and head off for a 2nd honeymoon looking beautiful...
In the early days of The Vivienne Files I spent a lot of time looking at camel as a neutral, because a lot of people asked me questions about where to find things, what colors to use as accents, etc. It was good fun, and I'm so happy to see that the posts haven't dated at all!
You can find this lovely flashback here; I hope that you enjoy it.
love, Janice ... View the Post
May 31, 2017
Let's see what happens when we start with navy and beige as our neutrals, and then incorporate two MORE neutrals, in warm hues, to act as accents.
This is the color scheme as I see it; I've made 1 small alteration in that I've given us a range of the accent colors, from lighter to darker, in order to open up the possibilities a bit. These aren't easy colors to find this time of year!
And this wardrobe I'm working with an assumption that we're going to be packing for a more changeable climate - needing both sandals and a sweatshirt, so to speak...
As before, we'll start with six neutral pieces...
Just to keep us mentally organized, let's continue to work with a 13-piece wardrobe template:
The first ... View the Post
March 29, 2917
Could be a dream, could be a nightmare, could just be a sweetheart - the enigmatic nature of this image is striking:
When I saw L'Ombre in the Picasso Museum last year, I knew that I would want to share it with you all!
Her Work is Complicated Enough, Thank You... She's a psychiatrist. A shrink. She sits, quietly, and listens to people. Takes notes. Tries to formulate the perfect, pithy question to open up the hidden pain in her patient's mind, and help the healing start...
She's always watching people, listening to people, learning from people. So she doesn't really want to spend a ton of time worrying about what she's going to wear - it just plain and simply isn't all that interesting to ... View the Post
March 28, 2017
I'm sure there's a story here, and I'm afraid it might be a sad one:
Even in difficult circumstances, van Gogh captures the exuberant energy of nature, in a very limited palette:
Celebrating Nature is Her Profession Landscape architect - it was the title that she always wanted. So she started out working as a landscaper with a successful female manager, and she went to school in her spare time...
For a long time, she wore a uniform of khaki pants, and a bright green polo shirt with a logo, and a matching bright green jacket when the weather demanded. So when she finally wasn't in a "uniform" position anymore, she didn't feel the need for a wildly extensive wardrobe. She found that her simple ... View the Post
March 17, 2017
This sets a mood, doesn't it?
I love how much the sky is emphasized... and that glimpse of stars... sigh...
If you've seen the earlier installations of this series (yesterday, and the day before) you can cruise through this quickly. We have our starter Neutral Building Blocks:
The dozen (at least!) possible outfits from these pieces:
And the way those 9 pieces fit in a 4 by 4 Wardrobe template:
What a fun exercise this is! It can be very difficult for me to find seven perfect pieces within an 8-hour work day, so if you're going to try to put together a wardrobe like this at home, please be patient with yourself as you shop. The pieces are out there, but might ... View the Post
Oh my... I know this woman, metaphorically speaking. She shops on payday. She buys pretty things. She loves what she buys, but never knows quite what to wear.... And this is what she sees when she opens her closet door:
She has a favorite store, which is a great place to buy a pretty accent piece... but she's never found a real personal style, in all of the very nice clothes that she owns...
So let's start her off by pulling out all of her neutral garments. She's actually not particularly opposed to the idea of neutral colors; she has black, denim, olive, white, ivory, pearl grey AND taupe in her closet. But note that it would be difficult, if not impossible to build a simple Four by Four wardrobe here. She has enough black ... View the Post
March 10, 2017
Monday I added accessories to a very neutral navy, grey, camel and white; many of you requested in the comments that I go back to my reader's original accent colors of wine and forest green to see how they might look with this capsule wardrobe.
Changing up accent colors is one of the easiest ways to take a very classic capsule wardrobe and put your personal spin on things, so I was positively eager to get to this post!
First up, let's update the color palette that we were using, and update the style notes for a bit of guidance:
I didn't want to really disrupt the core of our original Four by Four wardrobe, so I chose the very easiest way to experiment with accent colors - tee shirts!
I just pulled ... View the Post
March 6, 2017
Oh, how I love accessories! As much as it's important, and nice, to have good-quality, classic clothes, it's really the accessories that make outfits distinctively yours...
Let's briefly flash back to look at the scarf from which we're working; note that I've slightly changed the color wheel to reflect the focus that I'm going to put on brown leather accessories! I do these in PowerPoint, which gives you nearly infinite flexibility in the number of colors you include, the proportion of each color, the nuanced shade of each color, as well as the ability to change the borders (both color and width) at will. I don't think that PowerPoint was ever intended for this purpose, but it works really well!
The lace ... View the Post
March 3, 2017
People often ask me where I get ideas for blog posts - they should see my inbox! I get the most wonderful emails, with the most interesting questions... (if it takes me days and DAYS to respond, please don't be offended or insulted - I love to hear from you!)
Many of us start to feel like we need to migrate away from black, and toward grey or navy. One among you found a lovely scarf - vintage! - to help focus this wardrobe shift, and asked me for a few ideas. What fun!
First off - buying "luxury" scarves second-hand is just plain smart. You can find them on Ebay (which can be dicey, because they don't do anything to police against fakes), Tradesy, 1st Dibs, Etsy, The RealReal, Malleries, and ... View the Post
OCtober 27, 2016 I'm back from Italy - we saw nothing of the earthquakes yesterday. Thanks so much for all of your emails and texts checking up on us! hugs, Janice I love camel.... I never wear it, because I look like death on a hot day when I try, but it always looks so rich and elegant in a capsule wardrobe... Scarf – Hermes Flânerie à Versailles; knit scarf – BP. There's at least 1 shade of blue lurking in this scarf, as well as a variety of green hues... and the solid scarf, on the website, is described as "olive." That seems... strange. But it's proof that you have to really search high and low, and in all sorts of odd places, to find things.
I hope you'll notice, through this ensemble, the ... View the Post
