capsule wardrobe Archives - Page 16 of 29

Nine MUST HAVE Items for Spring and Summer 2017!!!

April 6, 2017

She didn't just write that, did she?

Of course not - there is NO SUCH THING as a must-have item. I know for a fact that there are women in the world who never wear shoes. You could wear nothing but linen dresses all summer. You could wear shorts and tee shirts every day (how ARE things in Georgia?). You could mix it up between capris, skirts, and shorts...

Nobody can tell you that you MUST buy something. As soon as they try to start that kind of talk, you know that they don't have your best interests at heart, and you can take what they say with the appropriate bajillion grains of salt...

But there are useful ways to approach getting dressed for warm weather, and I think one worth considering is to make ... View the Post

How to Gradually Build a Capsule Wardrobe: Start with a Scarf – Ted Baker Enchantment

March 23, 2017

A normal blogger would wait until this was finished to share it with you, but nobody's ever accused me of being normal!

I freely admit that I think Ted Baker London makes some of the most beautiful scarves, and that they are an excellent starting point for a well-chosen capsule wardrobe. This just screams spring to me... and if you're a pansy person (or you love someone who is) this would be a beautiful "no reason at all" gift:

This beautiful floral is available in such wide-ranging lovelies as ballet flats, bags, 2 swimsuits, a cover-up, cropped trousers and a matching sleeveless top, a blouse, a tee shirt, a couple of skirts, a couple of dresses and of course other shapes and sizes of scarves. I have to admit ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – March 2017

March 1, 2017

Always one of my favorite days of the month!

For no good reason I can explain, the earliest glimpses of spring make me want to wear a skirt, but not really get dressy. It's hard to explain, but I'm a firm believer that a skirt in a casual fabric can be a great substitute for shorts or pants; the world will think you're all dressed up, when in reality it's just a simple garment switch...

So - let's see what I found this month:

I really tried to find the perfect brown, black and grey scarf in "current production," but I finally realized that this Missoni scarf was going to be my choice. It's second-hand (but probably never worn, as is so often the case!); I have confidence that Missoni will do this color ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe Around a Statement Tote Bag

February 20, 2017

Someone sent me a link to this beauty... What excellent colors!

This bag includes a bunch of the classic neutral colors - beige, white, shades of rust into dark brown, maybe some black? I'm deliberately NOT including any sort of style guidelines here because I think that this is a case in which a wide variety of personal styles could accommodate this bag.

I'm going to focus pretty much on warm-weather attire here, but imagine for cooler weather - a navy winter coat with camel trousers... a navy wool skirt with an ivory sweater and brown riding boots.... mmm....

This is sort of a styling free for all - I just let my imagination wander toward whatever outfits I would like to wear, or that would be fun for ... View the Post

How to Build a Business Wardrobe One Piece at a Time: Navy, with Emerald and Amethyst

January 9, 2017

I got this email just before Christmas - one of my readers got a new job, and needs to build a new wardrobe to wear. This is a pretty special workplace - very elegant, with occasional clothing allowance cash awards given, and all laundry and dry-cleaning reimbursed! Pretty dreamy, at least from a wardrobe point of view...

I think the target color scheme is based on my reader's very russet hair, fair skin and freckles, which look GREAT with these accents...

Of course, I answered her email right away, and she's already purchased a bunch of things for her new position, but I thought that this was so pretty, so luxurious, and such a dream shopping adventure, that I wanted to share it with you all!

First thing - ... View the Post

My Year Without Shopping – January 2017. The Reasons, The Method, and The Rules

January 3, 2017

Yes, it's true, and it's long overdue; I'm taking a year off from shopping! I've begun to feel just a bit too much like this:

Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) by Barbara Kruger

(By shopping, I'm including clothes, jewelry, and all accessories.) It's become apparent that I have a lot more clothes than I need, especially when considering my current life. It's not uncommon for me to spend at least 2 days a week in gym clothes - I'll wake up and put them on immediately, but then won't actually GET to the gym until mid- to late-afternoon. By the time I've finished working out and cooling down, (at least in the winter) it's time for me to shower and put on my pajamas! I could get ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – January 2017

January 2, 2017

Yaaaaay!!! It's that time again... The new scarves are chosen (FINALLY...) and the first outfits for this year's capsule wardrobes are assembled!!!!

First up, the scarves:

Black - Hermès Carré en Boucles; Beige - Hermès Flanerie à Versailles; Navy - Hermès au Bout du Monde; Olive – Hermès Collections Impériales; Grey - Hermès Etude pour un Iris Arc-en-ciel; Brown – Hermès Chemins de Corail

I looked at LOTS of scarves, from literally dozens of sources, but in the end, I came back to Hermès, because of the richness of the patterns and the creativity of the color schemes. This is a little bit self-defeating on my part, because if you DO buy a scarf from Hermès, I get no commission. I ... View the Post

12 Months, 12 Outfits in a Olive-Based Capsule Wardrobe: An Evaluation

December 9, 2016 The wardrobe is as far from colors that I wear as is physically possible, but I still think it's really nice - very well-balanced, lots of attractive choices, and a wide range of ways to pull outfits together.

I'm always surprised to see how organized these wardrobes turn out to be, even though I made choices for a lot of months based on things that just interested me, or that I found attractive. In this wardrobe example, the Four by Four wardrobe possibilities were really easy to find:

When we look at this wardrobe in terms of how well it serves the owner for a range of activities, through a full year of weather, the only real "blanks" I see are in the area of very dressy activities. ... View the Post

12 Months, 12 Outfits in a A Black-Based Capsule Wardrobe – An Evaluation

December 7, 2016

Ah, this one is closest to my normal capsule wardrobe, and to what I would buy if I had to start all over...Remember, we left this wardrobe on the first of November like this:

You can see the outfit-by-outfit progression of this wardrobe here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.

Because this wardrobe is so close to my own, I wasn't really concerned that things wouldn't be reasonably well balanced. The easy assembly of a "Four by Four" capsule wardrobe supports my thoughts:

I wasn't quite as certain that things would be as well-balanced for seasons and dressiness - I tend to love cold-weather clothing more than warm, and ... View the Post

12 Months, 12 Outfits in a Beige-Based Capsule Wardrobe: An Evaluation

December 5, 2016

This seemed like it was going to be a really impractical, too pastel, too feminine exercise... but upon analysis, it's turned out quite well!This was where we left it on the first of November:

If you want to go back and catch up on earlier posts, check here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.

Here was the first signal to me that this was a pretty well-constructed 11-month shopping adventure; I was easily able to pull out pieces to assemble a really functional Four by Four wardrobe:

This layout, on spectrums of weather and of dressiness, might suggest that this heroine could use something dressy for cool weather...

And when I arranged all of the ... View the Post

12 Months, 12 Outfits in a Brown-Based Capsule Wardrobe: An Evaluation

December 2, 2016 If you want to go back and catch up on how we've arrived at this point, the earlier posts are here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.The second of our six wardrobes looked like this when we left it in November:

As I did yesterday, my first project is to try to fit these pieces into the Four by Four template. It seems to me that this wardrobe still could use a casual skirt. She already has 2 skirts, they they're both pretty dressy - maybe khaki is an option.

When I look at the existing wardrobe in terms of weather and dressiness, I find the same thing that I did yesterday - a shortage of simple tee shirts. That bottom right ... View the Post

12 Months, 12 Outfits in a Navy-Based Capsule Wardrobe: An Evaluation

December 1, 2016

Back in November, when we left this wardrobe, it was in pretty good shape. Eleven outfits had been collected into a pretty coherent, and pretty comprehensive, capsule wardrobe that would see most people through a great many of their activities:

As I've said before, no wardrobe is ever really finished. Clothes wear out, or get damaged. Our sizes change, and sometimes, we just plain get completely fed up with a garment that we've worn a lot, and feel the need to replace it. So it's useful to have a few different ways to really look at a wardrobe and determine what might be needed, or useful, or helpful, to add. I thought of a couple of different ways to evaluate things...

First off, I thought that ... View the Post