June 25, 2018
Our heroine is pretty loyal to her favorite store… Every time she goes in, she just feels happy; she loves the outdoor equipment, and the feeling of love and pleasure in nature that the company really encourages. And it seems that most times she stops in, she walks out with something!
So her warm-weather closet looks like this:
She doesn’t really struggle to get dressed, but she feels vaguely… uneasy… when she looks at her closet. She would like more focus, and maybe a clearer sense of personal style than she currently has.
Where to begin? The fastest, easiest starting place is to sort everything by color and see if she can learn something:
Oh. Dear. An equal number of navy and black garments doesn’t give her a clear sense of her preferred neutral color. However, the large number of blue and green pieces DOES give her an idea of (maybe) what accent colors she prefers.
The first thing that I see that I would want to discuss with our dear heroine – she’s got both olive green and more cool (leafy) shades of green in her wardrobe. Does she really want both of these, or (my fictional state of mind for a fictional heroine!) does she actually prefer olive green, but often settles for the more readily available cool green? If this is the case, a little bit of discipline will help a lot…
Another thing that our heroine can do in order to get a new, possibly insightful, view of her wardrobe is to sort everything by function:
TEN DRESSES? This is either a real personal style statement, or a serious impulse direction…
Also, she has as many pairs of shorts as she has pairs of pants! Here’s a moment to really look at what garments she wears most often, and try to come up with a clear mental picture of what an ideal wardrobe for her preferences and activities might be…
From her starting wardrobe, if we assume that my thesis about the preference for olive green is true, we can come up with at least these 3 potential color palettes. It’s probably possible to pull together a 16-piece 4 by 4 Wardrobe from her current clothes, using any of these schemes… For example, here’s a navy, olive, and turquoise wardrobe:
If this heroine is serious about cleaning out this closet a bit, she’s going to have to make a few decisions. This is probably not the only way to look at this wardrobe, but I found that answering these questions made the rest of the wardrobe clean-out much easier:
Since this heroine is NOT struggling to get dressed every day, I would encourage her to take as much time as possible to think about her wardrobe desires and preferences. There’s no rush to go shopping, nor to purge things from her closet; she has plenty of time to identify colors, clothes styles, or adjectives that reflect her self-image and what she really wants from her wardrobe.
We shall pretend, (using fictional license) that she has been thinking about this for a while, and has decided that she only buys black things because she believes that she is supposed to! She buys logo tee shirts because she loves the store in question and is tempted to show that loyalty across her torso… And every now and then she buys something in some entirely unsuitable color (red, or beige) just because it’s lovely, or because it is on sale…
Yes, I kept the matching green cardigan and tee shirt in the cooler leaf-green, even though that’s not a color that is in our heroine’s long-term plan. Because they can be worn together, or mixed easily with navy, they are worth holding onto for a while. Same with the white pants, and the first 3 blue tops above. These 4 garments are a nice little mini-capsule that will be useful in hot weather. Just because you’re not going to use certain colors forever doesn’t mean that you MUST get rid of them the very first day!
This leaves us with a handful of things for which the decision isn’t really clear-cut:
Realistically, if this was my wardrobe, I’d keep all of the dresses, 1 of the 2 sweaters, the blue shorts, and… maybe the bottom left green top. Possibly the plaid shirt. The other green pieces are still useful with navy, but this heroine doesn’t need more tops to clutter things up!
Now that we’ve got a pretty tidy wardrobe started, we should think about the possibility that something is missing that might make a lot of difference.
As always, I see a need for simple, solid-colored, neutral things. They’re not dramatically fun to buy, but they do the heavy-lifting in your wardrobe, and give your accent pieces a base upon which to build an outfit.
What might I add to this wardrobe?
cardigan – L.L.Bean; olive tee – L.L.Bean; white tee – L.L.Bean; dress – L.L.Bean; shorts – L.L.Bean
These are all from her favorite store – they’re just not those fun, playful or colorful pieces that catch her eye most of the time. A little bit of this discipline is worth cultivating; it makes your wardrobe a LOT more versatile and useful!
This is what her revised wardrobe looks like. It has a strong feeling of sea, sky and forest. She clearly likes a wrap-front dress style, a loose, no-button cardigan, as well as simple tee shirts. Her style is coming into focus!
These 29 pieces can be work in a TON of different ways:
So what do we learn?
- Focus on a few colors, at least for the core pieces of your wardrobe,
- Balance the number of tops, bottoms and 2nd layers you have,
- Figure out where your “useful soft-spots” are – in this case, the allure of dresses was an important thing to consider, and
- Figure out where your “foolish soft-spots” are. I think this heroine might have an inclination to buy shorts even when she’s never going to wear them. She should think about how this happens – trying to dress like her friends? seeing too many magazines telling her that she MUST have shorts?
These posts are a ton of work – just FINDING 53 pieces of clothing and cramming them onto 1 page is a fun project. But I love these because this is really where a disciplined and functional wardrobe starts!
love,
Janice
p.s. if you struggle to find a particular garment on the L.L.Bean site, send me a note or leave a comment and I will point you in the right direction. linking all 53 of these pieces would have driven me completely nuts!
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What a great post! Since olive green is one of my neutrals I know what you mean about finding it hard not to stray into the cooler green palette – my favorite pants come in a vine green (cool) rather than the warmer olive and it is so tempting to just give in and buy them in this less flattering shade of green. I would add one more potential color palette to the three choices, with olive green as the main neutral and black as one of the accent colors, because that is the way I add black to my wardrobe.
Thanks for all the hard work on pulling this post together. Now I feel the urge to examine my own closet with purging in mind! I hope you will do something similar for an autumn wardrobe when shades of brown and rust become more available.
This post helps me SO very much! Having recently lost weight (55 pounds!) I am literally starting from scratch yet at the same time trying to keep using some pieces that still fit. I have never been literally as desperate for clothes as I am at this point (hello having just three tops that fit!) and your site is helping me slowly add in core pieces when I can find them. I do not want a hodge podge wardrobe like before, but am trying to bring some consistency into the few pieces I am left with. I love LLBean clothes, both for their quality AND because I can shop for them from home! I am working with the colors of very light khaki, navy, white, and light grey. I love aqua as a color, but have not had much success finding it in stores recently.
You are brilliant. Please continue this by selecting the footwear, especially for the dresses. I have two patterned blue dresses that I never wear. Maybe I don’t have the right footwear? My style is casual like this wardrobe. I like the same colors!
+1 for footwear, esp for the dresses. And me too like the same colors!
This is a great lesson! I am a little more than half way through this process at the moment – I’ve cleared out the strays, down to 3 core neutrals (but 2 dominate so I will not be adding items in the third colour). Any new purchases must conform to what I’m aiming for in the end. But – I’m not just getting rid of items willy nilly – a number will be worn until they wear out as I cannot afford a wholesale change just for the sake of change. It is a gradual process and that’s ok as it really gives me time to adjust and forces me to think more carefully about what I’m buying and why.
I am the strawberry blond, navy neutral, blue/green accents girl in your story. What a treat to wake up to this today! You’re right. It’s not easy. I still love the cool greens and the warm greens. This is such a great post for me. Thank you for all your time and effort.
Well, you must have put in the hours on this post. I dread to think what would happen if I applied that excellent logic to my wardrobe. One day … maybe, if I’m brave enough! Hugs, x.
These do take a long time, but I love them. They’re sort of the quintessential post for The Vivienne Files, I think…
hugs,
J
I have taken a large Rubbermaid bin of summer clothes down from my attic twice this month. Each time I see many “perfectly good” items in the bin, but I pull out just 1 or 2 specific items I am after. It is time for me to lay it all out on the bed and sort by color, then function. I expect the donate pile will be sizable, but then I will unload myself of the guilt of NOT wearing those “perfectly good” items over the course of this summer.
THANK YOU so much. <3
Getting rid of guilt, and passing on something useful to someone who will use it, is worth the effort. Life is too long (or too short?) to live with guilt…
hugs,
J
Because of your wonderful work over the years, I did something similar a few years ago. It sure makes it easier to pack! This inspires me to have another go at it. And I’m happy to see you get so much support from ads.
I second what Liz says above. These colors are great for a blonde! And I love the casualness of the wardrobe! This is so helpful as these are also my colors! I’m surprised by the stylishness offered now by LLBean! Too bad I don’t really NEED any more summer clothes – but I’m afraid that little stripped linen top would be snapped up if it were still available in my size! Thank you so much, Janice, for this.. I’ll revisit this post for my Fall/Winter review. Janice Collins Coyle, Washington DC
A lot cooler version for me but I’d love to see the accessories that tie the olive with the aqua/teal/turquoise.
Interesting; I saw this as navy and grey with blue and cool green accents (would dump the black and olive), and the occasional punch of red because sometimes she feels like something different. I’d probably also dump the turquoise.
But then she’d be back to this: https://www.theviviennefiles.com/2017/10/can-corporate-wardrobe-have-personality.html/
or this: https://www.theviviennefiles.com/2015/11/start-with-art-arrival-of-normandy.html/
and you’ve already done those.
Love this post / need this post!
I’m about to take charge of my overstuffed wardrobe and try this out.
Thanks Janice
Kathryn xx
This post was exactly what I needed this morning, and the colors are the ones I already have. So I took a deep breath, pulled everything out of my closet—easier to do now that I’ve been putting your advice into practice for the last few months—and went through the steps you outlined in this post. It took fifteen minutes—I am not kidding—till I had pulled together a 25 piece summer wardrobe. No gaps, either, just three extra pieces that went into a donation bag. Thanks, Janice!
What a lovely story and my favorite color combo at the end! (Plus some salmon or rust or even yellow. I would keep those reddish items and purchased some more, as 2nd accent. And in my mind I discarded black and gray, too.)
And I am the one purchased other shades of green while waiting olive to appear! So true! LOL
Only, except for the dresses (and shorts obviously) this would be my spring capsule (colder parts of it). Not a single long sleeved item in my warm -weather closet. That climate mismatch allways puzzles me. But you explained it is due to lakes. But this is not a real summer in my book.
Regarding cool/warm choice, I don’t see it as choice – since we can wear what we can e.g. it depends of our natural coloring. I wish there is reference to seasonal coloring.
I love the “foolish soft spots” concept. The easiest way I’ve found to address all of it is to use that hanger technique: when you wear something and put it back, turn the hanger. At the end or even 3/4 way though you will see what you really wear, which is likely what you enjoy. Then get rid of the duplicates (how many pairs of neutral trousers do you need?) The unworn items (hangers other direction) will often reveal your soft spots or what seemed like a good idea but turned out to be a horror, like non-breathing poly tops.
I have always loved your blog. This might be the most helpful post you have ever written. I can’t thank you enough.
Thank you so much for this post … love the colors, love the casual clothes, love your concise way of planning. This might be my favorite post EVER!
Thank you very much for this post, Janice! As you said in your comment, these ARE the very bones of the Vivienne Files: thoughtfully considering how clothes go together and why we’re drawn to certain things. I love love love these posts, especially when there are so many thoughtless capsule wardrobes out there. I don’t doubt this took a long time to search and think and write and edit etc. I am very grateful!
If I might make one suggestion, or rather a wish: Could you do this occasionally as a reader interaction? I always love to see what different people like and why, and I think this might be a fun way to respond. They could choose clothes from an online retailer, you do your wonderful analysis and I’d love to hear their comments and what made them think… I know this will probably mean more, not less work for you, so I’m just putting it out there. As a little lottery maybe?
Thank you regardless, always love and appreciate your work!
Greetings from Germany, Isi
Exactly. I will return to this post many times. This summs it all for me: “they’re just not those fun, playful or colorful pieces that catch her eye most of the time. A little bit of this discipline is worth cultivating; it makes your wardrobe a LOT more versatile and useful!”
Exactly what I am doing since following TVF trough seasons, building capsules, following the steps – from hodge-podge to cultivating discipline, yes! and gradually building neutral pods. Now I do have something to wear! For example I didn’t own a single navy thing b.J. (before Janice – as I call it). Thank you, Janice, thank you thank you!!!
Now I am considering to reorganize my closet – everything hangs sorted by color and than function, neutrals at the middle and 2 accents far left and right. I am thinking to sort everything by function and within the function by color. The picture “sort everything by function” gave me that idea, to replicate that picture inside my closet. The colors are almost the same, anyway! It could give me a better view. What do you all think?
hugs
Janice,
With regard to selecting all warm or cool colors, I agree in the sense of olive green going with coral, golden yellow and values, tints and shades of orange, as well as with warmer blues, such as denim, but I do not understand its pairing with turquoise, which appears icy on my monitor. i know that navy would work, but even navy can be too dark for my light personal coloring. I also prefer to have one color be lighter or darker in value when wearing them together, or break them up with off white near my face.
The olive green that I wear is both muted and warm and I have tried aqua or teal with it, which is OK, but not super. Thinking of the color wheel and contrast in value, lavender might work or rich purple. I have struggled with what else to pair with olive in the way of accent colors. Of course it pairs with my Summer neutrals of stone and tan or khaki. in the Fall I then pair longer sleeved and longer pants of olive green garments with various browns.
i like one of your reader’s idea of placing the neutral tones in the middle of the closet rod, with two accents on either side, as I group by color within a function. I do like to have both a warm and a cool ( within my season’s choices of cool ) accent color in a travel wardrobe for balance. I would soon grow very weary of only very warm or very cool accents.
Two of your three offered colors schemes would work very well together, with olive as the core neutral of one 4×4, and navy or denim blue as the core neutral in the other 4×4 for two 16 piece capsules that could interchange with added white and perhaps an additional accent or two in a coral or peach or yellow or a version of red . The black and gray considerations would not be my choice for my coloring. It is so good that your posts help to clarify our own best preferences — something here for everyone to learn ! As others have said, I wish to add my vote of thanks for all of the effort that you put into these posts ! More, please !!!
LOVE this post! Such good advice on wardrobe planning! I am so guilty of the “it was on sale” or was pretty and caught my eye! I am getting better since finding your blog, but still a work in progress.
This post is certainly the quintessential Vivienne Files! Thank you so much for putting in the time for this! It is going to help a LOT of us!
This was great. Time consuming for you, but wonderful for us.
A problem I run into all the time is finding the item that ticks all the boxes. If it’s the right color, it doesn’t fit. Or if it’s the right color and fits it doesn’t really work with the other things I own. Or, it’s a style that isn’t quite right for me or it’s out of stock. If you dress all from one store or brand it’s a little easier, but it’s never easy.
So, I like that you are keeping some of the dresses and wearing them out, which gives your fictional woman time to really look for the right things to replace them thoughtfully.
Wow! This post was amazing – and since it has been over 20 years since I have been in an L.L. bean store, I had no idea they had so expanded their women’s lines. As an advocate of seasonal color analysis and a “soft summer”, I learned years ago that I had to let go of the olive green I so loved and could get away with it when I had my normally reddish-brown hair done blond or frosted. However, now that I am mostly gray, I gave away all olive (although I adore it with a light blue oxford cloth shirt). My main neutral is navy. I would like to find a blue-grey for slacks but have not had much luck, not even in fabric stores. How I miss Four Seasons in BC, Canada. They always had “my” colors. Since I am now 71 and pretty disabled from miscellaneous orthopedic/rheumatologic issues, I do not go out a lot, but when I do, I would love to have something other than the standard navy slacks and whatever “in my season” top I pull. I desperately need at least two dresses, maybe one print and one plain, that will work with my cardigans (I do have one lone red one because it works so well with navy but because I tend to be florid I usually avoid red). Because my eyes are blue-green, I always leaned towards green or blue-green tops, sweaters, etc. One day I bought a pale blue one, mainly because I could not find any other color, and it floored me when everyone started to say how good my skin looked, or how I was glowing…. so, yes, there is more light blue in the closet now. Nothing really exciting. I am going to learn from this wonderful article and will probably add a lot of those blue-green items and maybe one or two dresses. Thanks for all the time you put into this for us. My one dream is to make a Chanel style jacket, in as close to a couture manner as possible, before I kick up my toes – hand quilting, sleeves set from the outside, etc. i have had two silk tweeds that I have kept for 20 years for just this reason. I know what I love, but it is hard to find in today’s world, in prices I can afford, and in natural fibers. Breaks my heart that Coldwater Creek is mostly polyester now. I used to love the Evan-Picone line that Macy’s carried and their colors always seemed well suited to me. Good thing I kept all my Evan-Picone patterns. When my broken ankle heals, I can get busy sewing. Would you believe I was actually in the Linton weaving mills in the mid 90s and bought nothing? Shame on me. If you ever find a source for what I would call Cadet or Williamsburg blue items, please post them. They are hiding in me. Thank you for all you do. I am calling L.L. Bean and Lands End right now for catalogs!
I love the blues and greens!! Would love to see you expand this with shoes and accessories!! Thanks for a wonderful post, Janice! It really hit me with many similar issues I have with my own wardrobe. I think I often buy what I think someone says is a “must have’ item and I never end up wearing it! I need to focus more on what are actually used items from my closet and let go of some of the rest! Thanks!
Like how you cross checked and evaluated the pieces using color and function.
If the heroine is a person of Winter coloring, she has another great option. Make two capsules with the goal of working toward one.
Capsule #1 Black, Grey, Blues, Cool Greens
Capsule #2 Navy, Olive Green, Random Reds
She might decide that Capsule #1 is her long term goal, so some black pants/jeans might be a good thing to get to start. It would also help her to go through the exercise and think about what she wants her long term wardrobe to work like/function like/look like. Then the goal would be to wear out the less useful things and not replace them.
Meanwhile in alternating months, she could wear Capsule #2 with the goal of wearing it out. Everything but the 3 olive tops near her face will look good on her. The two olive tops that button down the front can work though if they are left open and a navy or red item is worn under the shirt so that lots of that color is near the face. The pullover item could be worn with a suitably colored scarf in Winter colors, given away, or worn for working in the yard/garden as desired.
As the number of items in Capsule #2 shrink due to wearing out items, you can reduce the length of the rotation to 3, 2, and 1 weeks.
Since LL Bean items tend to hold up really well, it is hard to predict the order in which the Capsule #2 items will wear out. If the olive tops are longer lasting, they could be worn with light blue, turquoise, and black tees (and the same or black pants) and dresses as a light jacket.
If the olive green tops last the longest, they can be worn with light blue, turquoise, and black tees (and appropriate bottoms) and dresses.
If the olive green bottoms last the longest, they can be worn with light blue, turquoise, and black tops.
If necessary she can also create a Capsule #3 to wear out the last of the olive green.
Capsule#3: Black, olive green, light blue, turquoise
This often overuses the black items though as they seem to get worn the most in #1 and #3.
This way she could maximize the use of what she already has while looking really great.
Janice, I am echoing many others but it bears repeating that these analytical posts are my favorites. They are incredibly useful, and I would love to be able to reference all of them through a single link on your blog.
I also want to thank your readers for their inspiring comments of alternate ways to triage a wardrobe. So helpful!
What occurred to me after reading this post, and thinking about my own ongoing purging of things that just aren’t working in my closet, is that my impulse purchases don’t work largely because they lack even the coherence of the pieces shown above. I’m sticking to the core I have created thanks to Janice’s efforts, my ‘whatever’s clean,’ with a few outliers. This is in no way a criticism, but your post caused to reflect on what it is about the things in my closet that do not work, and why. The impulses that led to creating the Winchester Mystery Closet, with mismatched colors and no real choice, no matter *how* many pieces have been purchased, is why I had to stop and really assess what was I trying to accomplish. And that, on its own, has stopped I’d say 95% of impulse buys.
Janice, I echo many other readers’ comments when I say that your analytical posts are my very favorites! They are so incredibly useful, and it would be wonderful to be able to access them all through a link on the blog.
Thanks also to all of Janice’s readers who comment with their inspiring suggestions for new ways to think about and triage our wardrobes.
I am cracking up at the “Winchester Mystery Closet.” I think I have one of those too.
What another timely post for me. I’ve put on just a few pounds and in the frustration of getting dressed every day am doing a major closet purge. I cannot believe how old some of the clothes in getting rid of are! Right now everything is going except what fits perfectly right now and what fit perfectly 10 lbs ago. When I lose more that that, I’ll start planning a new wardrobe with Janice’s guidance.
And for the record, my foolish soft spot is printed tops. I’m a sucker for a pretty pattern.
Hello! I love your posts! For neutral bottoms I always prefer grey/black, but love navy as a shirt color as it’s complimentary and have olive green as a neutral for jackets and pants. Is navy what you would consider dark wash jeans? Or is it okay to use all 3 in your closet if they can mix and match? I sometimes worry about too many neutrals but they all go well together.
Also I have been loving your kathkath scarf inspiration! Would love it if you did a giveaway!
Dark wash jeans are perfect with navy – that’s kind of basically the color the jeans are before they start to fade…
hugs,
Janice
OMG this post describes my wardrobe and exactly how I feel when I go into an LLBean store (or for that matter on their website). The sales people in the store even know my name. My closet is about 95% LL Bean clothes, many shown here and most in the colors of navy, black and olive. But contrary to your advice I love all my LL Bean clothes and will not get rid of any until they wear out!
Your heroine got rid of all my favorite dresses. 😢