August 5, 2024
Thanks for all of the kind and loving comments on Friday; these kinds of things keep me going…
I’m coming to realize, as I look at the 32-piece wardrobes with which we start this month, that 32 pieces of clothing is really quite a lot! I don’t believe that I’ve worn 32 things so far this summer! These wardrobe will very neatly finish up with 52 pieces of clothing; does that seem like plenty, just right, or far too few?
Let’s get to it!
Here’s the 32 piece wardrobe with which our heroine starts August. Next month, I’m going to break these images out into at least two different ones, so that we can see things more clearly! This is akin to having a messy closet, or having clothes stored in a couple of different places. When you don’t know for sure what you have, its pretty hard to know what you need…
And this is also true for accessories; I make a relatively big mistake today, because I didn’t look closely at the accessories that a heroine already owned. If I can make these mistake with these imagines right in front of me, it’s REALLY easy to make the same mistake when you winter clothes are in a different room, and your scarves are in a bin at the top of your closet…
This heroine is really looking for corduroy pants, and learns that she may have to wait a bit to find them. But she’s delighted with the tidy ensemble she’s pulled together this month:
Scarf – Artifact.; earrings – JCPenney; cardigan – Hope & Henry; plaid flannel shirt – L.L.Bean; olive shirt – L.L.Bean; jeans – L.L.Bean; boots – Clarks
Humor me – take a second to look at the scarves from Artifact. I’m absolutely dazzled by how lovely they are…
Our heroine’s wardrobe is 12.5% larger than it was last month, but it doesn’t really feel changed. Which is how things should be – you don’t want to go somewhere and have someone ask you if you’ve recently gone shopping…
Can you look at someone’s accessories (a collection of them, like this) and tell anything about them? At a minimum, you know that this heroine does NOT wear high heels…
In the same vein as not wanting to look like you’ve just revamped your personal style, you also shouldn’t struggle to put together outfits with new purchases. Something’s gone awry if you bring home beautiful classic garments and can’t figure out how you’re going to wear them…
This next wardrobe shares a fondness for beige and earthy tones, but has a much softer feeling…
This is our heroine’s 32 piece wardrobe:
And this is her accessories… I think some day I’m going to have to find her a brown handbag!
This heroine is jumping on the vest bandwagon! Although a quilted vest is as far from trendy as you can get, and I don’t think the “chinchilla brown” sweater vest is going to go out of style next winter…
And yes, this scarf is also from Artifact.
Blue topaz earrings – YS Gems; light blue shirt – Uniqlo; quilted vest – GAP; chinchilla cashmere sweater vest – Boden; scarf – Artifact.; jeans – Wit & Wisdom; boots – Born
Her wardrobe feels a bit darker now, to me. Adding all of this brown makes it feel that she’s more ready for winter, doesn’t it?
Here, you can see my error. It’s not going to destroy this heroine’s life, but did she REALLY need a second pair of brown boots? (I can’t say anything – I have two pairs of black boots…)
Our heroine’s new, darker brown garments give her beige garments a lot of additional mileage for cooler weather:
Our last wardrobe for August is the simple, yet fascinating, study in shades of blue…
Her 32 piece wardrobe is versatile, and to me it isn’t boring. I don’t look to my clothing for variety or novelty (you can’t when you wear this much black!), so the limited color palette isn’t a problem for me. I know some of you really chafe at the idea, though!
Her accessories delight me – maybe because I really love that London scarf at the top right…
This heroine also decided to address the serious side of her wardrobe – at least in part. The navy dress can be worn a million different ways, and for a half-million events! She grabs a navy turtleneck before her size is long gone, she picks up the pleated skirt that she’s looked at for months because they still have her size, and the tee shirt… just classic.
Earrings – Ana Luisa; necklace – Kendra Scott; cashmere turtleneck – Chinti & Parker; dress – Boden; skirt – J.Crew; striped tee – Boden; boots – Easy Spirit
Her wardrobe doesn’t change much, as it shouldn’t. The addition of a dress is a bit of a landmark event…
I still love these…
She easily finds new outfits which will include her new garments:
Just one small suggestion – clean up your closet(s) and dresser(s) on a regular basis. You will find things that are useful, and possibly that you love…
love,
Janice
p.s. Ten years ago, I tested out the color puce (yes, puce!) with a range of neutrals. It’s a very pretty color…
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I like the new brown boots better. And with three pair now, maybe she’s a boots sort of person.
This is where I land on the boots question too, Dame Eleanor. She does seem like a boots sort of person.
I grew up with the “let your shoes rest a day between wears” philosophy so I think having multiple pairs of boots if you live a boot lifestyle/climate makes sense. For me, this means either switching between colors and/or between short and tall boots, but if I had this kind of tight color palette, having two short pairs in my primary neutral wouldn’t feel like too much. Now I might have chosen one pair to be more casual/chunky and one more sleek in style but it’s easy to imagine how this particular heroine with her more casual, outdoor-living type wardrobe could make good use of both of these pairs!
I have more than one pair of boots in the same colour. Different styles, different terrain.
I don’t see a problem with the two pairs of brown boots. Unless the heroine has limited closet space or aiming for a minimalist wardrobe,They are different enough in style to justify them both.
I did notice that the Magill heroine now has 5 striped tops. Again, this isn’t a problem. But if I were her, I’d watch myself. I have 3 very different striped blue and white tops personally and I find that I’m drawn to more of them . I have to mentally review my tops to keep from automatically buying more just because I love striped shirts. ;)
OMG me too. I have two vertical striped shirts which I adore in Lavendar/white & Teal/white. Then I have 3 breton style horizontal striped t-shirts in Navy/Grey, Teal/White and Brown/white. I could easily oh so easily add more but I know that it would skew my whole wardrobe to being a stripey lady which is not the goal. It’s a struggle to find other patterns though.
I’m loving the brown and olive collection the most.
Your advice is always spot on. I have a very large amount of clothes, but ensure that anything I buy fits in well with the outfits I already own. However, it can be challenging not to duplicate garments as you suggested.
Thanks for your inspiration.
You curate the most beautiful wardrobes and they all make sense for a woman’s lifestyle. My question is, as someone who wears a lot of dresses, can these capsules also work? I do wear pants quite a bit in the winter. But, I’m in dresses almost exclusively in summer and early fall. Even in winter in Maine, I will wear dresses with tights and boots. I do layer over (and occasionally under) them, of course. I’d love to see a capsule with a plethora of dresses that work together to create a wardrobe of them.
Me too. I’m trying to do this exactly. I love the femininity and ease of dresses and would love to see your approach for this way of dressing.
Although I gaze longingly on many of the capsules/modules that Janice curates for us, I also prefer dresses. I discovered the Perceptions brand four+ years ago, and I am smitten. I now own twenty or so Perceptions dresses, and I rotate most of them throughout the year. My favorites are sleeveless, and I have different weight/length toppers that I wear with them, depending on the weather. I have three that feel dressier to me, and I wear those for showers, weddings, etc. Perceptions are super easy to wear and very comfortable, even with weight swings. They are not “investment” dressing, but with my lifestyle I don’t need them to be.
I’m going to agree here, too. I’ve found I mostly wear dresses these days, even in the winter. There’s usually something light over a sleeveless dress in the summer, and a great many layers in the winter. My style probably verges on lagenlook, but I find it’s much more challenging to pull together an interesting look in the summer, when I can’t rely on all the layers for visual interest.
Hear, hear! I would love to see that concept fleshed out using different styles of dresses.
I remember Janice did one or two posts about the dress-wearing opera singer and they were super. They more reflected my wardrobe approach than many here. I admit to often imagining the pants and shorts in the wardrobes as skirts.
Dresses are hugely popular nowadays. It’s reached the point where skirts are harder to find in the stores because they focus on selling dresses. The ebb and flow of available clothes is wild!
I agree – and when I look at some of the capsules, I feel like another dress or two is what is missing. The Boden dress just added is terrific – and the green on their website is particularly good. Sadly, US doesn’t ship to Canada and the pricing/shipping/sizing on the UK site makes it “ungettable” for me.
Good Morning Ladies, Happy Monday. These are all just lovely. I love them all. A few years ago when you did the Tree of Life scarf I tried to assemble a wardrobe similar to the Denis, but I just couldn’t stay with the neutrals. I really wanted to, but it’s just not me. I still have the scarf, but not the wardrobe. I also love the Magill, but again, I would find it hard to stick to just blue. I do have primarily navy/blue/periwinkle in my wardrobe, so I do achieve a great deal of mix and match with those items.
Sally in St. Paul. I thought a great deal about your comments on Friday about capsule wardrobes and the ability to mix and match vs an outfit based wardrobe. I guess I fall in the middle? As I noted above, most of my wardrobe is mix and match. That being said I do have some things that were bought as an outfit, and mostly that’s where they stay. In my head I consider them a French Five. Even though they mainly just go with each other. And that’s ok with me. I have a fuschia, and a mint green I just adore. Both of those actually can be worn with my periwinkle, but mostly I wear them as outfits. For something different. Due the TVF I have all the basics I need (common wardrobe), and now feel it’s ok for me to branch out and buy things that don’t necessarily go with anything else.
The scarves are quite lovely. I will admit I have a personal fondness for Jessie Zhou and Cow, Pig and Chicken. Have a great day everyone.
I tried it and am not tired of it at all! Since she started the blue wardrobe and I realized how much I loved it, I redid my spring/summer clothes in navy, white, and various blues. I have a lot of black so I kept some black pants (slim jeans, twill trousers with wide legs, and black and white check), sweaters (a cashmere short sleeve, a long cotton, and a short cotton) and a sweater jacket. I love black and blue together, so it works for me and adds some variety. Beside that I have a few pieces in pink, raspberry or orchid (a second accent), and a pair of ecru jeans instead of white (white bottoms are not practical for me). I do wear them, but most days I reach for the blues! This wardrobe makes me extremely happy, so I will keep most of it and reevaluate fall and winter. Do I want a major change, or just more of the same? I’ll decide in another six weeks or so.
Yes my current wardrobe resembles the range of blues, with navy as a neutral, and that whole wardrobe accents my black and white staples. Thanks, TVF! But yes I’m definitely trying to branch out too and add some other colors – this year I felt it especially in spring and summer that I needed some warmth and brights.
Sheila, it’s interesting to hear about your hybrid wardrobe that has both a capsule wardrobe mix-and-matching base as well as some French 5 additions that often are worn as outfits! We often think of the French 5 items as mixing in with the main capsule but that’s just one approach.
I think outfit dressing sometimes gets a bit of a bad rap. Sure, it can be done in a haphazard ineffective way, but that’s true of every wardrobe approach. After all, a top and bottom that go together as an outfit isn’t really any different from a dress, is it? And I’ve seen dresses that aren’t as similar to the overall wardrobe get a pass on TVF and other places discussing capsule wardrobes.
It’s certainly interesting to think about, and I always get value from hearing how thoughtful real heroines are building their wardrobes.
Although I love mix-and-match in theory, I am outfit-driven. My first purchase when putting together my professional wardrobe (a lifetime or so ago!) were two four-piece suit ensembles from Casual Corner. So, I bought “outfits” that could be mixed-and-matched. After that, I added four-piece ensembles as I could afford them. I do remember being annoyed that the navies from two different suits did not match (the blazers and skirts were different styles). I believe the brand was Sterling Cooper, but that may have been Casual Corner’s house brand.
My wardrobe is mainly separates but when I add something that then makes ‘an outfit’, I will.probably wear that combination in future. It works, I feel good, I might get a compliment or two but best of all it is stress-free dressing. I can also build out that outfit into a capsule wardrobe for a holiday.
For example. I’ve recently acquired a random dotted pattern top in varying shades of aqua, turquoise, teal, periwinkle and navy. I’m currently wearing it with navy trousers and a periwinkle cardigan with turquoise blue jewellery. This is the outfit. I could build it out into a capsule with aqua, turquoise, lilac and white tops/cardigans/jumpers with navy, purple bottoms. That will be an fun activity.
You were worried about the second pair of brown boots? I love reading your page. I love seeing you put together wardrobes, but I rarely click on your links. I clicked on that second pair of boots.
The red, white and black from yesterday and the all blue are my favorites, but that pair of brown boots really caught my eye.
I’m so glad to see that you’re back. Please know that your followers support you and want the best for you. If you need more time, we’ll still be here when you come back.
That said, you are in great form with your latest posts. I wear fall colors, so especially like the first two of these wardrobes, I’ll be in eastern France in September/October and my travel wardrobe will look a lot like wardrobe 2!
Thanks again for all you do.
Glad to see you back Janice. Love the blue! Not boring at all. I have a very small summer wardrobe. It consists of 5 dresses (3 in shades of blue), a couple of pairs of pants, a few t-shirts and cardigans. Nowhere near 32. The dresses are casual in t-shirt material. Unless it’s unseasonably cool, I just wear the dresses on rotation and so could say it’s a summer capsule of 5. Before I retired I had a huge wardrobe, but have been slowly donating those clothes. We tend to gravitate to the same pieces over and over so we probably all own too many clothes.
Welcome back!
As always, your wardrobe post gets me thinking. I love the blue colors, although I’m more likely to gravitate to navy and chambray blues, and grey, hunter green and maroon.
But I love looking at all the color schemes — you have such a gift!
You
Might find a brown handbag at Portland Leather. I bought a bag from them last spring and I love it. They kind of remind me of the original Coach bags from the 70s-80s.
Janice,
The Denis and the Nash are clearly my favorites , with the Denis being used in the Fall, and the Nash being more Spring functional for me , though a lot of overlap would be possible . Love them both for sure !
A one note accent color would drive me into a depression, color magpie that I am ! Your site is so instructional in both what does and doesn’t work for me !
I am liking the Nash more and more even though it’s not really me. I love the Magill collection and can see it as a grand jumping-off point to add little pops of bright favorite colors every now and then.
Regarding the brown boots, I seriously love the second pair so I would have probably added them myself, if that was my wardrobe. She could sell the first pair, if it bothers our heroine, but I think she will realize that the first pair are more urban and the second pair are for hiking through fall leaves.
I was thinking about the question, is 52 items too many? I don’t feel like it is, especially for a year. I know that I rotate some parts of my wardrobe each season and I like the subtle shift in colors and style of clothes throughout the year. My basic neutrals stay the same so there is a chunk that doesn’t really shift out, but then tank tops and shorts get replaced by flannels and sweaters and thicker pants. So if you thought about a 33 piece wardrobe each season and if even 20 pieces were mainstays all year and 13 were seasonal, that would still be (13×4=52, 52+20= 72)… so 72 doesn’t seem like a crazy number when I think about specialty clothes like nicer dresses and coats and things like that. I probably easily have that number but not all in my closet at one time. I think the variety that I switch out each season helps me feel like I am getting some new things (when in fact there are just new for the season) every few months.
Kristi,
I quite agree !
I really appreciate the addition of more medium brown pieces to the Nash wardrobe as we move into fall/winter purchases. But I would love to see the blue color get a boost as well, even if it’s translated into a darker color…and of course I am in favor of some blue denim in this capsule.
I still really like the shades-of-blue wardrobe but it’s definitely shaping up to be a navy, white, and blue (3 separate colors) palette rather than the shades-of-a-color-blending-into-each-other that we saw with the brown version. And while I can see this color scheme more easily for winter, spring, and summer, I’m curious how it will work for fall. I can’t decide whether that’s just my societal color associations saying “these aren’t fall colors” or whether I am suffering under the psychological strain of a blue wardrobe that contains no denim/chambray or any of the other “softer alternatives to navy” that might help make this a more blend-able wardrobe rather than the current monochromatic + high contrast options. (The small scale navy and white patterns/prints do have a softer “false plain” look at a distance, to be fair.) Of course our heroine might have decided that she likes the 3 separate color palette for herself and is leaning into that purposefully, but I think some readers were hoping to see how the blend-able shades-of-a-color approach could work with navy, so it would be interesting to hear Janice’s take on that at some point.
Sally, your comment got me thinking. I know what you mean about Fall colors, but as a definite “Winter” in my coloring, I have no brown, beige, or orange in my wardrobe. I wear of blue. In the Fall I wear more gray and black along with a few burgundy and dark green pieces. The two wardrobes in this set for 2024 that appeal to me are the blue toned one and the red and gray one. I can see easily combining these two into one wardrobe.
I definitely think of Navy as a fall color but you’re right… typically in the autumn it is paired with browns and tans and maroons, not really bright blues or white
When I saw your post Friday, I knew these three would be all in one place this time and I just about wriggled with excitement!
All three of these are favorites of mine. And while my personal blues might tend more toward the softer more muted side rather than the clear and bright, I would still happily wear it right to threads. Lol.
The other two are very much representative of how I dressed and how my colors changed throughout my life. In my younger days when my hair was auburn, I tended toward the greens, browns and rust of the first.
Now that my hair has become much more “salt and paprika”, I tend more toward the second with its softer hues. And I’ve found that, at least in my own wardrobe, I can take cues from that second wardrobe, and add in all the shades of soft blues, soft pinks and soft purples as accents, and look kind of amazing!
Thank you so much for all your hard work on these posts Janice. You do wonderful things and I for one, very much appreciate you.
Hugs and love from Minnesota!
Great to have you back! Sending you hugs and a BIG thank you for your work that brings so much pleasure and inspiration to all of us, your devoted fans.
Is 32 garments enough? Not when you live in a place where the weather changes seasonally. I might wear a summer top under another layer (or two!) in the winter, but I would definitely not wear winter clothing in the summer. I would have fewer shoes, though. I despise heels and wear orthotics, so it is probably a good thing that I don’t care for a large shoe wardrobe.
The Artifact scarves are lovely. I am enjoying looking at all the wardrobes and planning for fall. Since we were out of our house and I had no access to my closet I have many summer things I have not worn. I’ve pulled them all front and center to wear between now and Labor Day. Since I don’t really have the big seasonal changes, I try to change up colors. So all my white, pastel pink, aqua etc. is getting worn now!
I agree with those who say the brown boots are quite different. And yes she might be a “boot” person.
i echo all the ‘take the time you need’ comments. I do love your posts and I look forward to each and every one. I still love The Common Wardrobe (my version) of it, and make sure not to donate my basic long sleeved shirt just because it’s ‘boring’. i’ll wear it again soon.
I can really identify with the “something’s gone awry if you struggle to integrate …” concept. I recently bought some garments in a shade of green I thought would work well with the rest of my wardrobe, but when I brought them into the closet to try and make outfits, nothing quite worked. Don’t get me wrong, I have many shades of green, and this one did look good on me, but it just didn’t blend with my shades of emerald, chartreuse, and teal – it was simply too muted. I contemplated making a French five-piece wardrobe out of it, but couldn’t even coordinate it with any of my neutrals. So back the items went…
No point in keeping something that doesn’t work. Just because you like green doesn’t mean that every hue will suit you. Well done.
Janice,
Great to have you back. My thoughts and well wishes are with you still. Love these posts and I could easily chose the Magill as my focal point for a wardrobe. I don’t think there is an ideal number of clothes to have, but I do believe most people, myself included, could pare down. Over the last few months, I’ve been pulling out items I no longer wear or like and I’ve organized my closet in honor of TVF advice. I even had a moment earlier today where I smiled at my closet and thought “this is nice.” I still have a way to go but it is such a nice feeling to be able to go to one area and just pull an outfit together. I also like both pairs of brown boots and can see the need for both. One seems slightly dressier. Thanks to all for the advice!
Ditto, take all the time you need. All these wardrobes are lovely, as a boot person, you can never have too many lol. I asked myself that question, could I get by on 72 pieces in my wardrobe. For everyday most likely, but then my garden clothes capsule is not included nor my work out clothes capsule, oh dear I am sure I have forgotten something else but this is an interesting question. As ever, you keep us on our toes☺️ thank you.
I have waited all day to reply, hoping someone else would ask my question. When you do have season clothing, some out and some packed away at the same time, how do you keep track of what you do have? Do you have pictures of all of it on your phone? Printed out in your closet? Or what?
Teri,
Several other readers mentioned the Stylebook App in the past.
I am still working with it but it is useful to see what you have. It takes time to upload everything but it helps to organize your items visually. I’m starting one season at a time as I pull items from laundry. If I ever have a day with no interruptions I’ll take photos of missing items. You can also use images of similar items to populate your closet and save images of any new purchases. One of my favorite tools is uploading images from blogs to an inspiration section so I have my favorite TVF “everything” images linked there. Hope this helps. Elsie
I have heard a lot of good things about the app Elsie mentioned. If you don’t want to use an app, you can also just take photos or grab photos of the same/similar items online and keep them organized on your phone or computer in a digital wardrobe. (I also maintain my own spreadsheet for tracking number of wears, cost per wear, etc., but that of course isn’t necessary. And an app can do that for you if you’d rather.)
Whether using an app or not, it does take some time to set things up with photos but in my opinion it is SO worth it.
I like having this stuff on my computer because that’s where I shop from (and it’s where I do a lot of my outfit planning from) and because I can see a lot at once on my large monitor (compared to a phone screen). I have also heard of people printing out photos and putting them into a binder in their closets.
Or even just creating a list of items on paper…actually jotting down that list of items would be quite a bit faster and work quite well for many purposes, like reminding you what you already own.
PS- Prior to using the App I would arrange my clothes in the 4 x 4 format from TVF and snap a photo. I live in a warmer climate but I used to travel a lot to colder climates. I would sub out where needed for climate. I also used good old fashioned notebooks with a list. I still have too much to use a spreadsheet but I hope to get to that once I reduce my wardrobe down to fit my lifestyle. I’m still transitioning from work to retirement which leads to too many clothes still. Good luck on finding a method that works for you.
Hello Teri,
Unfortunately the app only works with the iPhone, so I sorted the clothes by season hanging/lying next to each other in the closet. Additionally, I also photographed this and it works very well for me. Recently even the accessories were sorted by season. Only dresses and jackets hang separately.
So glad to see you back! Returning to doing normal things can be a comfort and provide a break during the grieving process.
As for the quantity of garments, 52 seems a lot to me. Many of us work with more than one palette in our wardrobes so 52 in one palette would be too much. If you want to expand the palette with another color, the wardrobe becomes cumbersome.
Perhaps seasonal postings would work better. Four new garments per post seems to work so you could do two months of four each then skip one month to end up with 32 garments per palette at year-end. Or do six garments per post, a la the six-pack, and do every other month to end up with 36. Two tops, two pivot pieces and two bottoms in each post.
Fun idea! this reminds me of a series Janice did earlier with a set of heroines/paintings that she revisited once a quarter and made seasonal updates based on what was happening in their lives (There was a teacher- painting had hot air balloons; a soil scientist? – painting had florals?; a lady doing a biography of a guy in France, who ended up visiting for a date – colors were brown and teal and …; a lady with a simple painting in navy of phases of the moon, she had a blue and white wardrobe) LOL, you can see what stories stuck in my head :-D You may enjoy looking at that series!
Janice, glad you are back to work, but also know it is the first step of many in the grieving process. My thoughts are with you as you move forward and we all understand when you are away from us!
The Magill is my favorite and one of the reasons I enjoy it so much is because of the crispness and clarity of the blues and white. I guess I may be an outlier who hopes grayed blues or denim are not chosen by this heroine. Come to think of it, I actually stopped wearing denim and grayed hues 2 years ago after my own Mom passed. Whether coincidence or not, they are too drab and depressing for me now.
I think I would be shocked if I counted the number of items in my wardrobe. Since following TVF, I have culled a lot but I have yet to cull accessories – mainly jewellery and scarves. Sadly, I do still have clothes in different places.
Oh, these warm tones are so beautiful. The Nash is my favorite.
There are still dark green and dark blue in my wardrobe.