travel capsule wardrobe Archives

April Travel – Start with Art: Verre et Paquet de Tabac by Juan Gris

Remember our heroine who helps non-math types learn to work with data and statistics? She's on the road again!

She likes structure, and clear-cut plans. She was wise enough to realize that she would NEVER find clothes in this "wet cardboard" color, so she substituted her favorite bright yellow/gold for the beige... This is her inspiration:

She likes bright, and cheery, and she's happy to hold the attention of her "students" while she's persuading them that numbers will not hurt them...

Because she works for an advertising agency, she doesn't have to get super dressed up, but she always likes to have something with her to look businesslike. You never know when office managers and assorted executives might drop in!

She ... View the Post

Start with a Bracelet – The April monthly bracelet from Fierce Lynx Designs!

Why yes, I am buying this one NOW...

These are colors in which I can (and do!) live...

Summer Long Weekends... In the United States, there are 3 "built-in" long weekends during the summer - Memorial Day, at the end of May, the 4th of July, and Labor Day, at the end of August. Clever women manage to sneak in 1 or 2 more...

This heroine and her family have decided that they're going to take a handful of "medium-sized" road trips this summer and see some attractions within a 4-hour drive of home.

It's going to be a treat, though - they've committed to hotels with pools, and at least 1 good restaurant nearby!

And so our heroine is putting together her travel wardrobe for ALL OF THESE TRIPS... She will do laundry when they ... View the Post

April Travel – Start with Art: Street, Berlin by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

After retirement, they decided that they were going to travel to a new destination every 3 months for the first year! Just for a few days....

In the winter, they went somewhere warmer - I'm not sure, but it might have been Barcelona?

When our heroine and her sweetheart hatched this plot, our heroine chose this very evocative painting as her color inspiration:

Yes, April in Paris She's very excited...

Maybe a striped top is cliche to wear to Paris, but she loves her travel outfit - classic, simple, comfortable...

And since retirement is rekindling the romance in their lives, she's sticking with some pink accents. Something about pink just feels romantic to her. And her true love seems to agree!

She spent a ... View the Post

April Travel – Start with Art: Rhythmisches by Paul Klee

Ah, our friend who just got the job running a quilt museum! She's going to her first quilting conference...

Her work surrounds her with colors - brilliant colors, brilliantly combined by (mostly) women with unsung artistic skills. As much as she loves the colors, she has decided to dress more neutrally - she doesn't want to distract from the beauty of the work that she's curating. Thus, she's chosen a simple, but quite interesting, painting as her travel wardrobe inspiration:

She will be going straight into seminars as soon as she arrives, and she will be met at the airport from an official of the conference, so she's wearing a dress to fly in! (it's a short trip, in all fairness...)

In order to keep getting dressed as ... View the Post

April Travel: Start with Art – Briqueterie a Tortosa by Picasso

Remember our friend who designs installations for solar panels? Happy for her, she's now traveling in warm weather! No more the "leave the snow, get off the plane in sweltering heat!"

So she's packing light - just enough to visit her clients, and the construction sites...

This painting is her inspiration:

She's driving to her next clients, so she's wearing sandals on her trip! Normally, she doesn't fly in sandals...

Many of her clients can be hard to read, at first. Some of them want her to put on a hard-hat and steel-toed boots and climb ladders (she doesn't go quite that far...) and other just want to sit over a cocktail at the country club and review the plans. So she tries to pack with those various potential ... View the Post

April Travel: Start with Art – Between Breath and the River 4 by Susan Osgood

Remember our friend the flooding expert? She's very busy...

This is her art inspiration, and her wardrobe color palette:

She's traveling to the Midwest United States, to help determine where bulldozing or other changes in the immediate terrain might help clear standing water from some flood areas. She's studied the maps, and thinks that she knows what her suggestions will be. If her map analysis is correct, she only expects to be on-site for a day or two...

Still, she's not sure if she's going to have to actually go out and SEE any of the locations in question. (there's one that spot she really feels that she should visit in order to be exact about her plan for drainage...)

So she's going to have shorts, and water shoes, ... View the Post

Start with a Scarf: Hermès Les Nouveaux Amoureux de Paris

Yes, this is the scarf that I received for our anniversary.... Let's Be Slightly Reckless! When her sweetheart came home with a big bonus, they really wanted to celebrate...

Would it truly be insane to go to Paris for just a long weekend? (yes... it's madness!)

She's already inspired:

They agreed on a couple of key things:

1 suitcase - a big one - that they will share, and check. If it is lost, they will BOTH have to go shopping! Not even going to TRY to get over jet lag - sleep 'til noon, dine 'til midnight... SERIOUS dining... They will dress up (not black tie, but nice) every day, do a modest amount of sight-seeing, and focus on evening meals!

She's going to keep things very simple, and quite comfortable - no ... View the Post

Start with Art: Undergrowth by Vincent van Gogh

I love van Gogh... These colors are so perfect for spring and summer:

She Hasn't A Clue... Well, that's strictly not true - she knows that she has to wear clothing to the wedding, and that it won't be ballgowns, nor jeans. Other than that, the invitation was maddeningly vague...

So... she's taking a couple of dresses - there's a chance that she's going to the rehearsal dinner (more of that vagueness that makes this such a headache), so she will wear 1 for the dinner, and 1 to the wedding. Maybe.

At least she knows exactly what she's wearing for the drive to the hotel - her favorite new green!

She's not, in fact, all that worried about what she's going to wear. She's got plenty of options, from a nice blouse or top with ... View the Post

Start with Art: Grey Fireworks by Helen Frankenthaler

She's running for office... Not a big office, nothing that will require travel beyond an hour's drive from her home in order to campaign. But she's serious about it! This is what she's using to help her focus her campaign wardrobe...

She enrolled in a 3-day workshop for women running for office... And she's going to use this trip as her dress-rehearsal for some of her campaign outfits!

She's taken a close look at other women who are running for office, and she's noticed that some of them wear a very neutral "core" outfit (often black tops and pants) with accent jackets... She's going to emulate this idea, using dark grey as her neutral, and 4 accent colors taken from her favorite painting.

Since she will be driving to ... View the Post

Trying to Forecast Weather – Packing for May in Ireland!

Honestly, if I could tell you with any degree of certainty what the weather is going to be in May in Ireland, I would be doing something to make a fortune, like buying penny stocks and selling them for millions of dollars. The weather requires that level of omniscient genius!

But you can be strategic, right? Let's start with a beautiful photograph of an Ireland shore, to help define a color palette:

Okay, time for strategy. First, you can't take ALL of your wardrobe with you, so you have to make some smart choices. If we accept that it's not possible to pack for every possible kind of weather, I submit that it's smarter (in the spring and summer) to carry with you clothes for cooler weather, working with the assumption that if the ... View the Post

Winter Travel: Knitting a Stocking by Sir Francis Grant

She's thoroughly high-tech... She sells software. In her dreams, this might be her life:

But right now, she doesn't sit by the fire all that often! Still, she was smitten with this image, and thus it became the inspiration for her wardrobe palette:

Yes, five colors in a wardrobe might be difficult. But one of the qualities that our heroine most loves about herself is her ability to make things that everyone believes to be complicated into simple, straightforward projects...

Yes, she loves the poncho over her cardigan - she doesn't live in an area with horrible winter weather... It gives her a lovely layered look that seems complicated, but really isn't all that...

For a woman who traveled in beige and coral, this ... View the Post

Bringing New Accent Colors into a Wardrobe

Back on Friday, I showed you a small travel capsule wardrobe based on a beautiful scarf - black and white with yellow and turquoise accents. The final wardrobe looked like this:

You don't have to be all that alert to see that the majority of this wardrobe is black, with white touches in stripes, dots and prints. The only accent color items are these 5:

So what do you do if you're just simply not in the mood to wear yellow and turquoise? Maybe you'd like some pretty pastels? Change the scarf, change 2 sweaters and 2 pieces of jewelry...

We make the minimal changes necessary to the original travel outfit, and it now looks like this:

2 adjustment to her travel capsule wardrobe that she's packing:

And the ... View the Post