Building A Capsule Wardrobe

A capsule wardrobe is an intentional wardrobe that allows most items to be worn together creating more outfits with less items. The internet is filled with ideas on how to get started creating a capsule wardrobe, so I’ve curated my favourite steps, added a few of my own steps and capsuled my wardrobe! 

Determining Closet Essentials

Many online Capsule Wardrobe “How To”s will provide you with a list of closet essentials, whereas others recommend you examine your lifestyle to make your own choices. Here are the questions I found most helpful in examining my lifestyle and selecting my closet essentials

• What are my current core activities? Emphasis is on the word “current” because I wanted to build a capsule wardrobe around life as it is, and be open to having the wardrobe evolve as my core activities evolve. 

• How often do I plan to do laundry? This helped me determine how many items I would need to support my current core activities.  

• What spaces are available to store my wardrobe? Living in a 4 seasoned country, my core activities change throughout the year, so considerations were made to how I might rotate my seasonal pieces as needed. 

Creating a Wardrobe Palette 

I wanted a colour palette that was going to take me through all of the Canadian seasons, as I prefer to keep the majority of my wardrobe in one place and don’t rotate seasonally. When selecting my colour palette, I decided to start out by pulling my go to items: black yoga pants, black dress pants, light denim jeans, white t-shirt, beige cardigan, pink sweater, black long sleeve, green tank top, black dress. Already I could see several outfits forming just by these fews pieces.  Next I started to think about a few of my core activities (ex. Playground with my kids, dinner out), and pulled as few items as possible to make outfits that would work for these activities in each season. 

This is where I saw my colour palette emerge. 

Editing my Existing Wardrobe

The easiest first step was to eliminate any items that didn’t fit my colour palette and set those aside. My most common patterns were stripes and florals, so I kept those as long as the base colours were in my palette. My items were already sorted by categories (pants, shorts, shirts, tanks, long sleeve etc). Since I do laundry once a week, my favourite items are usually ready to go again, and my least favourite items end up untouched. At this point, my pile started to feel refined. Starting with the items I had selected when I created my wardrobe palette, I formed a categorized keep pile. Using the Kon Marie method, I decided to touch all remaining items, holding them next to the keep pile and carefully considering how many outfits I can make, and how versatile these outfits were across my core activities within different seasons. When making the outfits, I also considered which shoes, bag, jacket, hat, scarf and even gloves I would use to complete the outfit. Separately, I looked at bathing suites, socks, under garments and pyjamas. This process resulted in the clothing going to a few categories:

• Capsule Wardrobe Keepers

• Special Occasion Box

• Keep For Now

• Donate

Building My Capsule Wardrobe

The end result of the wardrobe edit was a closet with lots of breathing space. The special occasions box allowed those items that were outside my colour palette, but served a specific purpose, to be accessible when needed without being distracting. The Keep For Now items were not very versatile, either because of their colour or style, but I can’t part with them just yet until I find the perfect replacement. This resulted in a curated shopping list of items I would need to complete my capsule wardrobe.  A common criticism of capsule wardrobe is that it encourages more shopping, when the original goal was to minimize the number of pieces in the wardrobe.  In reality, I’m still going to want to shop, I just want to do so efficiently and with intention. As the promotional emails start to roll in, my hope is that I’ll spend less time mindlessly adding to the cart from the sale section and focus on quality pieces that will add value to my wardrobe.  

Storing My Capsule Wardrobe

I have an Ikea Pax Wardrobe, which houses all my clothing. Under my side of the bed, I have Ikea storage boxes, one for shoes (except winter and rain boots) and one for bags and seasonal hats/gloves. In my hall closet is a shared space for jackets. In the basement storage area I have one shared bin for adult winter and rain boots, and one shared bin for non-seasonal adult hats/gloves.

Check out my Pinterest Board on Capsule Wardrobes for more inspiration!