A Domino Effect

Last week I read a book called In the Red by Alexis Hall.  It’s the diary of a self-confessed shopaholic who, having mounted up an impressive £30,000 of credit card debt, suddenly comes to the realisation that this might not be such a good idea (shock!), and that perhaps she should try to curb her ravenous appetite for shopping and, y’know, pay some of it off.  So Alexis quits shopping for a year, and attempts to channel every penny of her spare income into her creditors’ coffers rather than the tills of Harvey Nichols.  Easy.

What struck me most while reading this book (aside from the fact that a woman in debt to the tune of 30K thought that it was entirely reasonable to spend £40 on birthday presents for HER DOG) was Hall’s description of her spending addiction.  At one point she confessed to having bought so many things which she had then flung at the back of her wardrobe and forgotten all about that sometimes she would actually buy the same things twice without even noticing.

Now, I know what it’s like to have so many clothes that forgetting about the odd skirt or top isn’t that unusual, but to not even remember buying something is another concept entirely.  People laugh and joke about being “shopaholics” all the time (which, just while I’m at it, I don’t really rate as something to brag about), but when you’ve bought up the high street to the extent that you start buying it all over again, surely then it’s time to hand yourself over to a doctor, no?

But why am I talking about all this?  Well, Alexis and her mad spending habits came into my mind this morning while I was thinking about shoes, and how they fit into the capsule wardrobing jigsaw.

Which in turn got me thinking about shoe mania, and how completely bonkers it is.

Someone enlighten me: what is it about shoes?  More than clothes, more than bags, more than perfume, make-up, diamonds or pearls, shoes seem to possess a unique power to turn highly respectable, sane women into shrieking, salivating hyenas at the drop of a (I was going to say hat but I think stiletto is probably more appropriate).  Since Sex and the City exploded into our lives in all its “Who needs a man when you’ve got Manolo?” glory back in the day, the humble shoe has acquired an almost mythological status among much of the female population.  Blahnik and Choo are now household names, and I’d be willing to bet that there are women out there who would happily trade in the rest of what they own (or perhaps even their long-suffering partners) for a pair of $400 platforms to coo over at night.

It’s not that I’m unable to appreciate a nice-looking shoe when I see one, it’s more the fact that shoe-worshipping as a sport seems to me to be utterly, utterly pointless.  As far as I’m concerned, shoes (like clothes) are for wearing, not licking.  If they don’t fit, if you can’t walk and dance in them, and if the thought of them making contact with, like, an actual pavement makes you want to hurl, then to my humble mind they’re either not worth buying or were a complete waste of money.  End of.

And that’s not to mention what happens to our high heeled shoes when we DO wear them.  They get dirty.  The heels wear down.  The buckles lose their shine and the straps fray and sometimes they even snap.  And anyone who has ever been clubbing (not even in your local grunge emporium, just your average club) will agree with me when I say that our shoes have to negotiate sticky, drink-splattered floors, broken glass, other peoples’ heels and yeah, occasionally the odd pile of vomit as well.  Surely this speedy rate of stiletto depreciation ought to give us some clue as to how much it’s reasonable to spend on them?

Such are my musings on heels.  My opinion on other kinds of footwear, however, couldn’t be more different.  When it comes to the shoes I wear every day, I’ll quite happily spend the extra money for something that won’t pinch, leak or fall apart at the first signs of bad weather.  I’ve had too many bad shoe experiences courtesy of the house of cheap crap to even consider spending less than around £15 on footwear these days (unless the goods are in a sale, of course!).  As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to flats, and whether they’re Summer sandals, Winter booties or heavy duty hill walkers, it’s investment all the way.  Your feet have to last you your entire life – show them you care by not subjecting them to torture every time you step outside.  And with that sentiment firmly in mind, here are my top five tips on capsule-ising your shoe collection:

• Always keep a pair of (ultra) cheap shoes nearby for accidental ruining.  Paintballing, DIY and muddy camping trips will be much more fun as a result, and you won’t embarrass yourself coming over all “I can’t ruin my shoes” either.
• Have at least one pair of semi-formal shoes (no ridiculous heels, no provocative patent and no garish colours), and keep them in good condition.  Dressing for job interviews, funerals, and impromptu ‘look smart’ occasions will be much less stressful.
• Keep your shoes somewhere you can see them.  Mine sit on top of my wardrobe, so whenever I’m putting an outfit together I can select the right shoes without having to bury my way into Narnia.  Simple idea, massively helpful.
• Think about what’s in your wardrobe when you go shoe shopping.  If they won’t go with a single thing you own then please, for the love of God, don’t buy them.  Stick to your own style and buy something that’ll work with your clothes.  Remember that capsule wardrobing is about making dressing easy as well as fun.
• Finally (and it’s a biggie) LOOK AFTER YOUR SHOES!  It’s easy to do and it will bring you dividends.  Have them re-heeled when they need it, polish them with love and replace laces and buckles when they start to look tired.

What are your thoughts on shoes?  Do you have five pairs or five hundred?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

While I devour newspapers, books and blogs like there’s no tomorrow, I always struggle when it comes to finding a magazine to read.  And it’s not for want of trying.  I often stop by the newsagent’s magazine stand in the hope that I’ll find something that captures my imagination and makes me want to read.  Invariably, I come away empty handed and disappointed.  As far as I can see it, unless you’re into ogling trashy pictures of Z-list celebrities, are planning a wedding or you have a very specific hobby such as sewing or photography (or fly fishing, anyone?), then your options in magazine land are really rather limited.

Which is a shame.  I like magazines.  I like the size, the weight, the glossy covers, the knowledge that you can pick them up and drop them over the course of a month without worrying that the content will date.  I also like reading material that I can hold in my hands.  I openly confess my devotion to blogs, but all that clicking and scrolling and commenting can be tiresome if I’m not in the mood.  And I can’t take my Google Reader out to the park with me, or whip it out in the queue at the coffee shop, or in the doctor’s waiting room.  I’m well aware of the tricks a smartphone can pull, but I often find mine to be more hassle than it’s worth.  By the time the page I want to view has loaded, I’m ready to get moving again.  Sorry tech fans, I’m an old-fashioned girl at heart.

So magazines would seem to be the perfect option.  Less intense than a book, easier to manage than a broadsheet.  Trouble is, there’s just nothing out there that I want to read.  Funny, given that I’d estimate about half of the entire magazine market to be directly targeted at my own (i.e. female) demographic.  But these are, to me, the least attractive options of all.  I find the women’s magazines (and granted, I haven’t read one for a while, so correct me if there are non-offenders out there) in this country to be sexist, oppressive and completely unoriginal.  I know of not a single woman in my life who wants to talk about nothing other than weight loss, sex and make up, so why our magazines continue to drip-feed us these topics as though there’s absolutely nothing else in the world worth discussing I have absolutely no idea.  What about politics and current affairs?  Food?  Travel?  Films?  Books?  The vast majority of women and girls I know are interested in and would actively want to read about at least some, if not all of those topics, so why is it that our magazines constantly revert to crass tips on how to please our men (cringe) instead?

The other thing I can’t stand about womens’ magazines is the way they talk about clothes.  I’m surely not the only one who finds that flicking through pages of celeb-endorsed designer adverts and photographs of grotesquely thin models doesn’t really make me feel all that great.  I’m as interested in clothing and personal style as anyone I know – online or off – but I can’t for the life of me feel anything but disheartened and a little bit unworthy after spending twenty minutes with a fashion magazine that’s just cost me a fiver to buy.  Neither can I understand nor appreciate the way magazines write about the clothes they are paid to showcase.  Talking about a pair of shoes like they have the capacity to solve the world’s problems and bring everlasting joy to all actually makes me feel a little bit sick.  And demanding that readers go out and drop a few hundred pounds on “this season’s must-have item” (what a phrase) as if it cost no more than a cup of coffee shows embarrassingly little regard for the life of the person in the street who has bills to pay and mouths to feed.  Carrie Bradshaw once said that she bought Vogue instead of dinner when she had no money.  Well Carrie was unhinged in all manner of respects, but I’d still take a bowl of pasta over 200 pages of airbrushed insecurity any day.

“Oh but they are so inspiring”, the fashionistas moan, shaking their well-coiffed heads at me like I just don’t get it.  And perhaps I’m too quick to judge.  Perhaps the stick thin models and the sycophancy does float the boats of some.  It must do, otherwise the fashion magazines wouldn’t still be in business.  But still, what inspires me far more than wind machines and muted lighting ever could is seeing normal people (like, ones with hips, bums and chores to do) wearing real clothes and looking totally amazing as they go about their daily business.  The street is a great (and free!) place to get inspiration, and what’s interesting about it is that the most eye-catching people are always the ones who don’t look like they’ve been licking the pages of a fashion magazine and spending all their money doing exactly what it tells them.  Slaves to the glossy pages are easy to spot because they’re absolutely everywhere, and they’re all wearing the same thing.  That’s the problem with wearing what a magazine tells you to wear, isn’t it?  There are hundreds, if not thousands of people out there doing exactly the same thing as you.  Like, sooooo unique, like.

But I’m digressing and ranting, neither of which are particularly attractive.  I’ll leave it there for now and plod on, magazine-less, but ever-hopeful that something new will hit the block.  Something that’s both well-written and full of engaging, interesting articles and ideas and goes easy on the fashion talk and the sex tips.  Until then, I’ll stick to books, blogs and the Guardian, leaving the “Lose a stone in an hour without leaving your chair!” and “How to make someone fall in love with you even though you’re a total moron!” cover stories on the shelf.

Sigh.

What’s your take on magazines?  Do you read any?  If so, which ones?

Image above from Flickr – stacya.

Now that Spring has fully arrived here in the UK, I thought it was high time that I wrote a warm weather update to my capsule wardrobing series.  In case you’re new to the blog, and haven’t yet read the original posts on capsule wardrobing, they are here, here and here.  And in case you’ve never heard of the phrase “capsule wardrobe” before, let me explain, in the briefest of briefs, what I think it means…

The UK wardrobe is in dire straits.  The ubiquitous “buy and wear only once” mentality that so many people are plagued with continues in its quest to stuff our wardrobes full of cheap, badly made clothes that we neither care for nor, more importantly, actually wear.  Masses of shoppers pound the high street every Saturday afternoon, feverishly searching for the latest ‘must have’ items, all the while completely forgetting the piles and piles of under worn clothes they already have at home.  Bad for the people who make the clothes (often in the most grotesque of conditions), bad for the environment, and bad for the shoppers themselves too (seriously, who has the cash for that sort of thing?!).

Enter a solution, in the form of the capsule wardrobe.  Low on quantity, high in quality and versatility, the capsule wardrobe isn’t bursting at the seams with clothes such as those I’ve described above.  The capsule wardrobe is of modest size, but everything in it is well-made, ethically sourced and incredibly versatile.  It might have fewer clothes than a wardrobe stuffed with Primark’s finest, but what it does have are the right clothes.  The clothes that fit, the clothes that last, and the clothes that go with almost anything.  Having a capsule wardrobe won’t win you prizes for quantity, but it will push you streets ahead in terms of quality, versatility and style.  Which in my opinion is a better place to be than the friend who has five hundred things in her wardrobe but is forever complaining that she has nothing to wear.

But enough from my soapbox.  Let’s talk about the weather.

Spring is a fantastic season for experimenting with our clothes.  No longer bound by the need to wear six layers to stave off the cold, it’s time to have fun with what we wear again, and to relish the fact that it’s often entirely possible to step out of the house with little more than a cardigan for a cover up.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I sometimes feel uninspired to wear a fantastic outfit in Winter – if you have to hide it away under a coat to stop yourself turning blue, then why not take it easy, wear something simple and cosy and spend the rest of your time fuelling up on porridge and tea?

Not so with Spring, however.  There’s something about a warm, sunny day that compels me to want to wear something beautiful and go outside to show it to the world.  Dressing up for the day lifts my spirits tenfold, and if I know I don’t have to bury my body away under myriad scarves, hats and coats, I’m much more inclined to be a little more experimental.

Spring-ifying your capsule

The simple way to shift a capsule wardrobe in the direction of Spring is to harness the dual powers of layers and accessories.  An idea that I took rather a long time to get to grips with.  I used to have so many clothes that I couldn’t actually fit them all in my wardrobe at once.  I had to divide them up by season and rotate the entire thing once a year.  Not something I was particularly proud of.  These days, after a long period of selling, donating and selling again, everything I have fits in the one modest cupboard.  And with the exception of items that are obviously related to one season, such as heavy jumpers and sheepskin-lined boots, everything is worn throughout the year, adapted to the changing seasons either by adding or subtracting layers and changing my accessories.  Helped along by a few Summery staples, it’s goodbye to wardrobe rotations and a beaming hello to fuss-free dressing.  My essential Spring/Summer capsule wardrobe pieces (and everyone’s will be different) are as follows:

• A lightweight, non-black trench coat.  Mine is an amber shade from H&M and is one of the best jackets I’ve ever bought.  I can throw it on over anything and it instantly looks at home.  Low maintenance, high wearability, and the perfect defence against those impromptu April showers.
• One beautiful, feel good, God-I-CANNOT-stop-wearing-this dress.  Last year’s was the purple and yellow square neck floral I’m wearing in my picture.  I wore this everywhere last Summer: to weddings, to uni, to the beach – I even wore it on a roller coaster in Las Vegas!  The best part of the story is that I bought it in a charity shop for £8.  One of my all time favourite capsule wardrobe pieces.
• Sandals that go with everything.  My chosen colour is tan.  I bought mine in Clarks last year (I cannot rave enough about Clarks shoes – one pair of those at £45 really is worth all the £2 flip flops the high street can throw at you).
• A large, brightly coloured scarf.  My favourite is from H&M.  It’s square, which means I can tie it into a top or even a mini dress, as well as wearing it around my neck and over my hair.  When travelling last year, it morphed into a shoulder bag, a pillow and a beach cover-up.  Multi-functionality at its very best.
• One bikini/swimming costume that fits and that makes you feel great.  I once went on holiday for a week with a different bikini for every day.  And I ended up wearing only two of them.  Why?  Because those were the only ones I really liked and felt comfortable in.  The other five were a complete waste of money (and seriously, who needs seven bikinis anyway?).
• Sunglasses.  Finding the right pair of sunglasses is a daunting task, and not one that I’m particularly fond of.  I prefer classic styles to the bluebottle trend that seems to be forever in vogue, and don’t get me started on the John Lennon, “look at me I’m so creative but soooo pained”-type.  No one will ever suit John Lennon glasses apart from the man himself.  Leave them for Strawberry Fields and opt for something simple.

Basics

Basics are the most crucial part of the capsule wardrobe, whatever the season.  Underwear that fits and that makes you feel good.  Basic tops and vests that keep their shape throughout the day (again, H&M’s are the best affordable option I’ve found).  Tights and leggings that are ladder-free and big enough to avoid the horror of the sagging crotch area (it’s happened to us all at some point!) and a handbag that carries all of your junk but still looks the part.  If your basics are in good shape, the rest of your Spring/Summer dressing will be a walk in the park.  Leaving you with plenty of time to actually walk in the park, or do something equally as enjoyable.

Shopping

All this renewed joie de vivre that comes with the arrival of Spring can have unwanted side effects.  When the clocks leap forward I always have to fight the temptation to rush out and buy armfuls of dreamy, candy coloured chiffon blouses and deliciously long, floaty floral skirts.  Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of reasons why that wouldn’t be a good idea.  For one thing, heady spontaneity often leads to regretted purchases later down the line.  We all know what it’s like to buy on impulse, and I bet most of us know what it’s like to wish we hadn’t done so later on.  The second reason is that while Spring may well have arrived, it isn’t actually particularly warm out there yet.  So while you might get away with shedding a layer or two, all out Summer dressing when it’s not even April yet could well lead to a belated case of the frostbite.

Don’t give up on your wardrobe as the weather gets better, or denounce it as plain, or too black, or too boring.  Chances are that there are more things in there suitable for Spring than you know, and it might just be that all you need to do is shed the long-sleeved top you normally wear under that dress, or wear your jeans with ballet pumps as opposed to those clunky Winter boots.  Have fun with the weather, and your wardrobe.  Because really, that’s what it’s all about, innit?

What’s in your Spring capsule wardrobe?

Image above from Flickr – TheLittleRooster.

Some of you might have noticed that Part 2 of the capsule wardrobing series was mentioned in the Guardian last week (the link is here in case you want to take a peak).  This was a complete surprise to me, and a real delight – it’s absolutely lovely to see something I’ve written endorsed by a publication I hold in such high regard – I’ve had a grin the size of Scotland on my chops ever since!  A big hello to any new readers who have found the blog as a result of that link.  I hope you enjoy your time aboard HMS Thrifty Chick wherever in the world you are and please, do feel free to drop me a line and say hi!

But anyway, back to our capsule wardrobes.  The subject matter of Part 3 is shopping…

As much as I enjoy and appreciate clothes, I’m not a big shopper these days.  It hasn’t always been that way, but ever since I discovered the joys of a life based around thrift I’ve shopped on only a fraction of the scale that I used to, the majority of the time in charity and vintage stores as opposed to on the high street.  These days, I only really venture to a shopping centre when I’m in dire need of something, and even then there are a whole raft of stores that I’ll no longer go anywhere near for reasons of principle (that’s right Arcadia, I’m talking to you).

The capsule wardrobe isn’t a tirade against shopping. Plenty of people like shopping, including myself, and while excess consumerism is never going to be something I’ll hold my thumbs up to, a moderate level of considered and – where possible – ethical shopping most certainly doesn’t make you a bad person.  The problems only begin where shopping becomes a mindless game: an attempt to shore up flagging confidence levels by spending lots of money on new handbags and ‘wear once’ dresses.  If you can’t feel good on a night out unless you’re wearing something brand new and shiny, then that, to me, is when trouble abounds.

But what’s the code of capsule wardrobe shopping?  Well, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s both simple and largely based on common sense.  Common sense which can be distilled into three simple, albeit golden, rules:

1. Buy what you need
2. Buy what fits
3. Buy what you like

1. Buy what you need

A capsule wardrobe should cover all of the necessary bases: balance is key.  Like I said back at stage 2, there’s no point in having a ten cutesy summer frocks if you don’t have anything to layer either under or over them on cold Winter days such as these.  If you have the correct quotient of all of the things you need in your wardrobe, you’re ten times more likely to find that it works for you in exactly the way you want it to.  Keep the idea of balance in mind when shopping, and always, always ask yourself whether you really need something.  The answer should tell you whether to buy it or not.

2. Buy what fits

Clothes should fit.  Period.  Don’t cajole yourself into buying something unless you feel completely comfortable in it and DON’T make the mistake of promising yourself that you’ll drop a couple of pounds in order to fit into something you really like.  If it doesn’t fit perfectly at the time you try it on, for the love of God don’t buy it.  All that will happen if you do is that the item will languish, unworn, in your wardrobe for months making you feel terrible every time you look at it.  A waste of money and a colossal guilt trip.  Don’t fall for it.

3. Buy what you like

Only buy things you like.  A wardrobe that’s full of clothes you love and enjoy wearing is worth a thousand wardrobes that are full of fashion fads, bought because they featured in Cosmo or your friend looked good in one last week.  The logic is simple yet powerful: if you like something, you’ll wear it, and if you don’t, you won’t.  And if you’re not sure, why not give it a week and see how you feel?  If you find yourself immersed in regret, wishing you had bought whatever it is, then you’ll know you actually did like it so you can go back (unless you saw it in a charity shop in which case it’ll likely be long gone).  And the converse is also true: if you don’t give it a second thought after exiting the store, you were right to leave it on the hanger.

Simple right?  OK I lied above: we’re not quite finished yet.  While those three rules are what I consider to be the bread and butter of capsule wardrobe shopping, it’s worth bearing some of the following in mind as well…

• Beware of shopping in groups – Have you ever bought something because the person you were shopping with demanded that you should, even though you yourself weren’t actually sure?  Yes, you’re nodding, I’m nodding.  This is the group effect.  Unless you have a shopping partner with whom you can be brutally honest (and who can be brutally honest with you), don’t shop in groups.  We impulse buy a lot more; we cave in to the desires of others as opposed to ourselves and we often don’t feel like we can spend as much time deliberating over whether to purchase or not.  Having five friends waiting at the door for you intermittently checking their watches is a fast-track way to making a bad decision.  Be brave and go it alone!

• Work out price per wear – It always amazes me that people are willing to spend £100 on a dress they’ll wear only once, but only a fraction of that on the shoes they wear every day of the week (the less said here about those £4 fall-apart-at-the-very-sight-of-rain ballet pumps the better).  It’s vastly more economical to invest in the things we use and wear a lot.  Try thinking about the price per wear on the things you buy: if a dress is £100 and you wear it twice, that’s a price per wear of £50 (divide the price by the number of wears).  Now if that £100 was invested in some sturdy winter boots, worn every single day for four months, then that’s a price per wear of roughly 80 pence.  Think about that, and don’t be afraid to take a calculator to the shops!

• Observe the three outfit rule: the essence of the capsule wardrobe is versatility.  And that means that things work together.  No one item of clothing should be permitted to stand on the sidelines, eschewing the collaborative process.  When shopping, I find it’s useful to bear in mind what I like to call the three outfit rule.  If I can’t picture three outfits in my wardrobe involving whatever it is that I’m contemplating purchasing, then back to the rail it goes.  The capsule wardrobe only works because the clothes in there are open to mixing and matching; anything that doesn’t tick that box belongs elsewhere.

• One in, one out - Some items are bought purely to replace others.  If that’s the case, make sure you actually carry out the replacing bit!  That means throwing out or recycling the old, ladder-infested tights and the dull, washed-a-million-times work shirts as opposed to simply stuffing the new ones on top.  Replacing things will help your wardrobe to remain streamlined and smart, and you’ll be able to manage it better.  The same logic should apply to gifts: I got two new pairs of pyjamas as Christmas gifts, so recycled two existing pairs.  Neater wardrobe, less clutter, liberated mind.

• Look at the washing instructions – Be honest with yourself: if the top is hand-wash only, are you really going to hand-wash it?  Or are you simply going to wear it less often on the basis that it’s high maintenance?  And if you have an aversion to ironing, should you really be buying trousers that simply can’t be worn without at least a quick once-over?  Always look at the labels on clothes before you buy them, and answer any questions that arise honestly.  Remember that the motto of the capsule wardrobe is wearability: if you’re not going to invest in clothes that are wearable to you, you’re defeating the purpose of the entire exercise.

• Accessorise – Finally, if you’re really feeling low about your wardrobe and find yourself wishing for change, consider bringing in some new accessories to brighten up your existing threads.  The difference a change of necklace can make to the way you feel about that dress or that top is phenomenal.  And shaking up your accessory collection is a much cheaper way to keep your capsule wardrobe interesting than buying vast swathes of new clothing every time you get bored.  You could also try having an accessory swapping party: get a few friends to come round with a bunch of their own accessories and have fun swapping.  You don’t have to keep things forever, but a couple of weeks with some new-to-you jewellery and a scarf or two is bound to generate some new ideas and get you feeling excited about your wardrobe all over again.

Above all else, the biggest piece of advice I feel I can give in relation to shopping for your capsule wardrobe is to ignore fashion magazines.  Under no circumstances should you ever buy something simply because Glamour, or Cosmo, or Vogue says you should.  Fashion magazines need to sell advertising space to designers in order to make a profit.  Telling people not to buy those designers’ vastly overpriced “pay for the name rather than the item” products isn’t conducive to securing future ad business, whereas the opposite most definitely is.  Worth bearing in mind when they’re busy nagging you to pay over a small fortune for the must-have item of the season I think.

And anyway, the most stylish people are who they are because they do their own thing and they don’t pay the blindest bit of attention to what’s hot and what’s not.  So throw caution to the wind and your stack of Vogues in the recycling bin: tread your own sartorial path and wear whatever you want, whenever you want.  Only buy things you need, like and that fit.  Find joy and creativity in using your capsule wardrobe to its maximum effect by mixing and matching.  Layer, layer then layer some more and don’t be afraid to experiment.  Blaze your own trail by clashing colours; mixing fabrics and piling on accessories.  Clothes are meant to be fun, not something that’s ever worth getting upset or stressed over.  And the next time you find yourself moaning that you have nothing to wear (which should never happen if you have a capsule wardrobe), remember that for millions of people in the world, deciding what to wear isn’t an option.  You are fortunate enough to have that option.  So be thankful for it and have fun.

Image above from Flickr – HowardLake.

Now that the New Year is wholeheartedly upon us it seems like the perfect time to carry on with the capsule wardrobing series.  I know I’ve been doing some New Year’s decluttering and tidying up of my own closet, and I suspect I’m not alone.  Here at stage 2 (stage 1 is here in case you want to re-read it) I’m going to write about putting your capsule wardrobe together.

As I said back at Stage 1, the essence of the capsule wardrobe is versatility, rather than minimalism.  You can have a wardrobe with lots of different things in it and still legitimately call it a capsule.  The point is that whatever you put in there is wearable, useful and wanted.  So regardless of the amount of clothing you have in your wardrobe, the following principles should be remembered as you think about putting it together:

Make sure you can see things

Structure your wardrobe in such a way that everything in it is both visible and accessible: stuffing clothes into drawers is a brilliant way to forget all about them.  And really, who has the time to go burying through the wilderness for a black roll-neck on a frosty Winter’s morning?  Your wardrobe should work for YOU, not the other way round.  But it can only do that if you put it together in a logical way.  And how you do that depends on your own preferences, and also the wardrobe you have.

I have very limited space to hang things in my wardrobe, so I reserve that for dresses, skirts, trousers and a few tops I don’t want to crease.  The rest of my clothes are folded and laid on shelves organised by style (basic tops, hoodies, cardigans etc) so I know exactly where to look for things.  Coats and jackets I hang on hooks by the door, shoes and accessories I display.  A wire coat hanger makes a good scarf house if you hang it somewhere prominent, and draping necklaces over the corner of mirrors always allows you to find one at a glance.  If that sounds like cluttersville to you, think about storage options.  Clear boxes or chintzy wicker baskets will hold lots of items, and pretty jam jars are one of the most useful storage solutions around: imagine a row of those cute Bonne Maman ones filled with lovely bits of jewellery.

Create an even spread

Your capsule wardrobe should serve all of your needs.  If you have a surplus of strapless dresses but a dearth of long-sleeved tops to layer underneath them in Winter, then a good percentage of your wardrobe is unwearable when it’s cold.  Impractical, and probably pretty frustrating as well (nothing brightens up a dull January day like a summer floral!).  Similarly, if you are bereft of snow-repelling footwear, the next bout of white stuff will leave you feeling miserable and with wet feet, as opposed to gleeful, childish and desperate to make a snowman.

If you made a list at Stage 1 of the things you think your wardrobe is lacking, now’s the time to pick those items up.  I’ll write a little about shopping later at Stage 3, but some sage advice right now is to make a list, stick to it and leave the high street once you’re done.  You’re on a capsule wardrobing mission girl, not a jolly jaunt around town.  Stick to the plan and don’t open your purse unless it’s for something on your list.

Give it some love

That means hand washing and dry cleaning where necessary (note: not just bunging stuff in the machine in the hope that it’ll all be fine), paying attention to water temperatures on labels and always using a fabric softener.  It also means ironing, folding and putting away – three things I fail at with surprising regularity.

I HATE ironing.  No other household chore feels like such a spectacular waste of time.  So I’ve got two options: buy and wear only clothes that don’t need to be ironed, or man up and get on with it.  And seeing as I have neither the pennies nor the inclination to replace my entire wardrobe with iron-free garments (some day!), it’s the latter approach that I take.  The best tip I can offer to any fellow iron haters is to get some of your favourite music on, find your way to ‘the zone’ and stubbornly focus on the image of a wardrobe full of ready-to-wear, crisply ironed clothes.  It works people, really it does.

Repair things

Having to change your outfit plan because the burst seam on your ‘feel fantastic’ shirt mysteriously hasn’t been repaired by sparkling little elves in the middle of the night is annoying.  As is having to wear your second-choice shoes because you forgot to polish up your favourites.  Repairs such as these really are necessary if you want your wardrobe to function at its peak.  The best strategy I’ve found for overcoming the tedium of sewing on buttons and picking up dropped hems is to do them in front of the telly with a glass of wine by your side (just one – being drunk when there are pins and needles involved isn’t something I’d heartily recommend).

Monitor

Finally, try to get into the habit of monitoring your wardrobe.  Having one superbly energetic bout of organising at the beginning of the year is great, but if you don’t keep it up your wardrobe will soon revert to its old disorderly ways.  Having a weekly or fortnightly sprucing up session will allow you to stay in control.  It will also alert you to those things you’re simply not wearing (you know, the ones to whom you gave a second chance at stage 1?).  Maybe they don’t fit anymore.  If so, toss them.  Life’s too short to be bullied by a pair of jeans.  Or maybe they do fit but just look a little tired.  If that’s the case, consider customising them by dyeing, swapping the buttons or adding a trim.  As I said before, there’s a whole world of possibilities out there when it comes to alterations.  Get your thinking cap on and do something creative.

So there you have it: stage 2 done and dusted, and a gleaming, fully functional capsule wardrobe the result.  Join me later on for Stage 3: A word on shopping.

Image above from Flickr – funkypancake.