Camel sweater – Warehouse, tee shirt – Uniqlo
They grey and black wardrobe is suffering from a shortage of greys! It’s easy to go overboard with one neutral at the expense of the other – just make sure to keep them balanced if you don’t want to have items stranded in your wardrobe because they don’t have enough “family members” for full utility.
Grey skirt – Diane von Furstenberg, sweater – Wal-G
This wardrobe now still shows a strong bias toward black, but the grey garments offer a lot more versatility. The bridge garments are strongly represented; but we could add to the light neutral, and the bright blue…
Similarly, we’re rather neglected the olive garments in this wardrobe in my enthusiasm for the beautiful accent colors, and the rich elegance of beige…
These two piece should make quite a bit of difference – they’re simple, but will be beautiful worn together, and very useful when worn with everything else in this closet!
Army green cashmere sweater – Jason Wu, skirt – Derek Lam
This wardrobe now still shows a decided preference for beige neutrals, but has lovely accent garments. Maybe a few more bridge garments would be useful?
Another clear example of “neutral bias” – I haven’t enough navy tops here!
I always opt for simple sweaters and tee shirts, but any simple navy shirt or blouse would also be perfect here…
Navy cotton sweater – Closed, navy silk blouse – Theory
The neutrals here are well balanced – there are clear “Core of Fours” in both neutrals, but there’s a noticeable absence of light neutrals blouses or sweaters. Unless you’re completely opposed to wearing white, off-white or cream near your face, these are garments that are always useful to have on hand.
Off-white tee shirt – Joseph, off-white cotton sweater – MIH Jeans
Almost perfectly balanced neutrals (please note that you’re almost NEVER going to have exactly the same number of pieces in each of your neutrals – that’s really not an objective!), but a definitely lack of “bridge” garments…
Here again we find an absence of beige blouses, sweaters or tee shirts. While that might be a conscious choice because of a color aversion, it’s worth trying these colors out – maybe with scarves or jewelry. If you are firm in your color preferences, then stock up on accent colors or “bridge” garments that are easier to wear.
Cashmere sweater – Masters, tank top – Uniqlo
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You have put so much work into thesee! There is so much to study. Beautiful. One collection I love is the beige snd olive. I think I would use the burgandy as my core neutral and get rid of the olive. Do you have a suggestion for another accent color that would work with these changes?
Burgundy is a big color in my wardrobe, probably more of a neutral than an accent. In addition to brown and olive (theoretically my neutrals but in quantity more like my accents), I also have a lot of eggplant purple, and burnt orange has gone from being a slightly scary "maybe I'll try this" to one of my new favorites.
Again, wow! This is like a PhD course in wardrobing:-)
Kate
Brilliant! I thought the wardrobes were great before, but today's gives that information I needed to look at my own perfectly fine wardrobe to show me what I might be missing. I'm going to go in and group my clothes by color instead of item right now and see how things stand. I suspect it is bridge items I am missing. Thank you!
This post is absolutely great! I love the cohesive ensembles you are offering.
I had not thought about the concept of "bridge garments" at all, but I know see that they are indispensable (and my wardrobe utterly lacks them). Could you please elaborate that idea in further posts? Thanks!
In the black and grey neutrals can I make bright pink work instead of red. Alternatively can I set up the navy/grey neutrals with bright pink instead of soft pink?
Sorry to be so precise, my neutrals that work for me are black, navy and grey plus I like bright blue and pink!
Lo, and behold, when I took everything out of my closet and put it together by color, I discovered the only real problem I had was needing to remove those items from my closet that don't fit the scheme. You just saved me some real money – I do not need to buy anything else and already have a fabulous versatile wardrobe, thanks to you!
Anonymous, You were interested in navy/grey with bright pink. Look at post Friday, January 20, 2012:
Wardrobe: Navy, Gray, BRIGHTS!!! and lots of outfits. This may give you more ideas. g.
Thanks ever so much! Off to view it now.
Swoon!!!!!! Thanks! x
I'm new to this blog and sucking up every ounce of this scratch series, hadn't got as far as older posts.
Try typing "Navy, Gray, BRIGHTS!!!" into the search box. g.
Found it, thanks!
You are simply amazing and this series has been incredible. Thank you. :)
PhD course in wardrobing indeed! Astonishing in every way. I am agog.
I've been following your blog for awhile now and have been learning a lot from this series. It's genius!
This is a most helpful series. I have a mostly worn out wardrobe, small budget, and several significant lifestyle changes in the last year. Currently, an unusually long stretch of warm weather is forcing additions to my summer wardrobe. I especially love your showing several palettes with neutrals and accents concurrently. This is very helpful. Thank you so much.
Janice, I have learned so much from this incredibly helpful series. It has moved me from understanding the concepts to making the clothing in my closet "click"! The editor in me, however, can't help but wonder where #16 is. I don't want to miss a bit! Thanks for all you do.
I just hope this gives you as much joy as it gives us to look at and marvel. Thanks : )
I have the same bias of grey over navy as my neutrals. I just bought my first mauve piece and it is really pretty. I will be looking to fill in more navy tops in the fall. I love this series so much!
This is so interesting to me; almost like a new mystery series unfolding. I'm seeing why my wardrobe doesn't quite work. I've got the one neutral thing down in spades. The problem is, that is all I have, so I just keep buying black, black, black everything. I need to work in the second neutral and the accent colors now. The problem is, after seeing all the lovely combinations here, I don't know what to select! I love the light blue you have, but the browns and blues together are also wonderful. Could you publish this in an e-book or something? I need to keep it handy so I can keep digging it out and trying to figure out the pieces. You are my heroine, truly.
I have been reading your blog daily and this series is the first one that convinced me that I really could do this. I just now got my color pie chart done and am working on the next stage in the series. I'd love to know how other people are progressing or even stumbling on following the series. What do you think of a reader sharing day?
How did you create a color pie chart? I would love to do this but have been unsuccessful in my attempts. Is there a site?
It's a pie chart, that you can make in Excel or PowerPoint. My days working in advertising come in handy now and then when I blog! I have never found another site on which you can make these graphs – if anybody knows of one, please let us know!
Thank you! I'm going to give it a whirl and have lots of fun in the process :)
That's just so clever! Can't wait to start re-grouping my own clothes when I'm back from my holidays
Alice
I visit daily, but don't comment. Thank you for all the work you put into your posts. You are an amazing person for sharing this wonderful knowledge and helping others (and me!) make good choices.
I have been rather naughty in not commenting along this wonderful journey, but just love how you have grouped this last lot, it makes so much sense (it all did from the start) but seeing it set out like this is inspiring. PS did you get my email about the travel kit?
Your parcel is on the way! If you don't see it soon, let me know and we can try between us to track it down. big hug, Janice
Thank you Janice, I will let you know when it arrives. hugs, Sharon
I do love your blog and this week I realized why it's so resonant. I'm 60 so when I was growing up I played Ppaerdools all the time. cutting out or making flat paper outfits..and here on your blog is that same delight and fun and imagination. Thank you!
Hi Janice! Thanks for the wardrobe ideas… They're great! I was wondering where you got all your wonderful clothing pictures from? Also, wondering what software you used to bring your clothing peices together for complete outfits or complete wardrobes found on one page??? I would like to create pages for myself with all my own clothing on one page or different outfits I can put together with my own clothes. Then, I would also like to make a dream wardrobe page with clothing I will later purchase so I would like to know where I could get clothing pictures for inspiration for this dream wardrobe… Thanks for your answers, Julie :)
I grab images from all over the Internet, and work with them in PowerPoint. It allows you to rearrange things and resize them really easily!
Thank you! :)
This is the point my wardrobe creations tend to fail, not evaluating and balancing the neutrals. I end up with lots of color odds and end and not a lot to wear with them, leaving me to the same suit over and over. Or hating it and buying something else to compensate that isn't what I need.
Dear Vivienne,
This is really great. For the first time l am trying to organise a capsule wardrobe. I have had a clear-out and cannot believe how many items l found in the depths of my wardrobes that are brand new and never been worn. I would like to develop a capsule wardrobe around greens but am struggling with what to use for the neutral as l never wear navy,grey, or peach/warm beige colours as these look ghastly against my skin and make me look washed out. Similarly l have very few pastel colours in my wardrobe but can wear stone and dark taupe. I have a lot of black and brown already and would like to utilise some of this. Can you help.
Jenny
5v
Rose and medium blue… Rose is one of those colors that seems to look good with everything! And I love the way blue looks with green. What do you think?
hugs,
Janice
I do hang by colour already but haven’t realised until I went back and reread this article how important the bridging garments are. I now have on top row
black,white,black/white, black/blue, blue/white and blue.
On the bottom row I have navy,red,navy/red,grey,grey/red,beige,beige/olive,olive,beige/olive/turquoise,turquoise, turquoise/blush, blush and burgundy.
Yes I have too many clothes in too many colours some of which won’t be replaced once worn out but there were others that didn’t make it at all and which will go to charity.