The Vivienne Files

Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature

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A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Navy, Brown, Green and Beige

August 20, 2014   While these are the same neutral colors that we saw yesterday, these accent colors are much more subdued and much more frequently seen along with the neutrals. Therefore, this capsule wardrobe came together much more quickly and with greater ease.  

  This was my color scheme:  

  And this is our familiar brown Core of Four:  

 

 I've changed up the jeans for a skirt, since I'm going to swing this wardrobe a little bit more toward a work environment.  If you don't need skirts, you could certainly keep the jeans.  

I found ONE more sweater in this color combination - equally blindingly expensive...  And I opted for a more tailored ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe STRUGGLE in Brown, Navy, Leaf Green and Bright Pink

August 19, 2014  

I know from my emails that some of you who are working on Four by Four capsule wardrobes are running into some challenges, and so today I'm sharing with you the hardest wardrobe (so far) that I've done.  As we get to each step of the process, I'll tell you what (hair pulling) issues I encountered, and what my adjustments and accommodations to the normal process were.First up, let's console ourselves with the final product:

The more I look at these four, the more I like them...

And these are quite nice too - although the blouse is silk, it's a quite casual style.  Thus far, eight really good, classic, timeless items.

 

But let's be serious - I had NO IDEA that finding ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Brown, Grey, Green and Gold

August 16, 2014  

One last visit to these four grey garments - this time, a entirely different color scheme!  

Making grey work with otherwise warm colors isn't difficult if you keep a few simple things in mind. In order to make everything hang together here, I made sure that the accessories mixed cool and warm. For example, the brown linen bracelet has silver beads, the smoky quartz earrings are set in sterling, rather than the most obvious gold, the brown leather band is on a stainless steel watch - even the grey boots have brown heels!  

These little touches make a lot of difference to the way things look to me...

Today, let's start with the colors:

  Starting with the brown ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Denim, Grey, Pink and Rose

August 15, 2014  

The same grey clothes are going to get a bit more mileage - this time, combined with denim, and softest shades of pink and a kind of lavender-ish rose.  When I built this color scheme, my thinking was that when the accent colors are so closet together and have so much the similar feeling and mood, that it sort of gives you the freedom to use any color within that entire family.First up, the finished capsule wardrobe:

  This is the color scheme, with that absolutely annoying grey that will NOT show up well once it's transferred into a PDF.  Sheesh....  

  When using denim as one of your neutrals, it's can be helpful if some of the denim has some texture or pattern, so that ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Black, Grey, Camel and Cream

August 14, 2014

Yesterday, someone asked if it was possible to change the colors in the Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe.  

Well, yes, I plan to show a whole BUNCH of these so that we can see some of the color schemes from The Vivienne Files Color Planner in action. (that's why I asked which combinations are your favorites; so I can work specifically with them)

All of yesterday's grey garments are still here, but the other three colors have been switched. If I were building this wardrobe for myself, I would ABSOLUTELY buy the scarf first and then very gradually build around it. This is a scarf that would be an ideal long-term focal object for all purchases; the colors and the design are just that perfect!

This is the capsule ... View the Post

The Vivienne Files Color Planner

It's finished! My self-reference for color combinations, completed and formatted for you, is finally completed.

The file is $5.99 - I promise you'll find enough colors here to keep you occupied for weeks!

Each of these combinations, no matter how unusual or difficult to "swallow", was drawn from a painting, a photograph of nature, an Hermes scarf, or some other place where the colors seemed to be happy and compatible together.

The thing I learned from this, more than anything else, is that if you really WANT to put specific colors together, you can. There seem to be no limits in the world to what colors appear together; you just have to get out there and look for the examples.

There are, in fact, two pages of color ... View the Post

Are You Still Struggling with Color Schemes? Looking for Ideas?

  If you can wait a week or two, I'm going to have a GIGANTIC color scheme file available to buy - it will be 191 pages, and contain 1,456 different suggested color schemes. Each suggestion will include two of the neutral colors from the "Combinations of 3 Neutrals" file, plus two additional colors to act as accents.  Some of the schemes will be quite bright, some very subtle, and some almost monochromatic.  And I think you can assume that there will be some things here that you never expected!

Right now, I'm going back through all 985 posts on The Vivienne Files to make sure that I capture every color combination that I've used here on the blog.  I will additionally refer to my collection of color reference books, ... View the Post

Mood Boards, Style Boards, Inspirations Boards…

It's an old piece of advice - grab a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, and start snipping out all of the things that you see that you love.  Glom them all together, and look for unifying themes and motifs upon which you might be able to build a wardrobe.

Fashion designers are legendary for having a wall of their atelier covered with photographs, snippets of fabric and trim, and anything else that might help both inspire and focus them as they put together their collections.  Is there any reason that this wouldn't work just as well for us?  (keeping with yesterday's theme of thinking the way a designer thinks in order to curate our closets in the way a boutique is curated).

I don't like to call these mood boards - ... View the Post

A Variety of Colors: A Simple Summer Wardrobe

February 13, 2014   I've been thinking a lot about how to plan a wardrobe that gives you options for a wide variety of accent colors. There are other way to go about this, and I'm going to figure them out, but my very first thought was the following. Here's what your summer wardrobe will look like, after we've worked out way through the steps.    

  Assuming that you're going to be carrying over a few garments from your cold weather wardrobe, I've pulled together this core of four in grey. I'm also including neutral footwear - canvas sneakers, and a simple pair of suede loafers.  

  As much as I know that the point of this is to introduce lots of accents, I think it's pretty important that we ... View the Post

Three Neutral Colors – An Amazing Range of Possibilities

Realistically, it's quite easy to work with three neutral colors as a solid wardrobe core.  And starting with the fourteen rather arbitrary neutrals that I isolated yesterday, combinations of three start to pile up QUICKLY.  Note that these THIRTEEN pages of color combinations are only those that include black as one of the colors...      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    For reference purposes, these were my fourteen neutral colors... 

  Interestingly, one of the most popular posts I've ever written was one which I built a wardrobe around six neutral colors  (see it here).  And I've finally ... View the Post

Two Neutral Colors – Dozens of Options

I get a lot of emails from people who are concerned about building a wardrobe around neutral colors, because they're worried that they will end up looking like everybody else.  If you devote yourself to black, and you live in a major city, that is certainly a valid concern!  But I think that there are more neutral colors around than you immediately think of, and that if you can focus on two colors as your predominant theme, you have dozens of options.   First off, let's choose a palette of possible neutral colors.  This palette is NOT exhaustive, and the colors as they are shown here are NOT intended to reflect the beauty and the depth that the color actually exhibits in three-dimensional garments and accessories. ... View the Post