STEP 1: UNIFORM | 5 STEPS TO A CAPSULE WARDROBE

FIND YOUR LIFESTYLE UNIFORM

The very first step to building your own capsule wardrobe is finding your lifestyle uniform. (What is a capsule wardrobe?) A uniform is something like a recipe for your favourite outfit. It's a set of clothes you wear more often than others and that makes you feel good. E.g.: skinny jeans, loose blouse, cardigan and ballet flats. Uniform represents your style as well as your lifestyle and changes from season to season (because who wants to be wearing ballet flats in -2°).

Your uniform is your outfit template.

First up, let's talk a little about your lifestyle.

Where do you spend most of your time?

Work? University? Home? Traveling?

What's the nature of your work? What kind of dress code is there? Smart? Smart casual? Casual? Do you work from home? Feel free to write the answers down and section your day/week into smaller pieces. Make a pie chart if you want to. Mine goes like this:

 

40% at home - writing, cooking or relaxing
20% at university
20% running errands
10% doing sports
10% socialising

(*If your work dress code is not what you'd wear in your free time, you might want to consider building two smaller capsule wardrobes. Another option is challenging yourself some more and looking for pieces you can dress up for work and dress down for free time.)

I'll do an example of my autumn uniform (psst, more than one uniform is a OK!).

When constructing outfits, I usually start with bottoms, then I add shoes, then a top, then a sweater and, or jacket, depending on how cold it is, and then accessories. If you start with a top, and add the rest to it, put TOP as your first column. If you start with shoes, put SHOES down first.

So you must have noticed I have 2 uniforms. Because I start constructing outfits through bottoms, it made sense for me to divide my outfit templates according to the type of bottoms - trousers and skirt outfits. But maybe you never wear skirts. Or only wear skirts. Then perhaps you'd have just one uniform - or you could distinguish the uniforms between the types of skirts you wear (like a maxi skirt uniform and mini skirt uniform). Or you could have 4 different uniforms because your style has that much variety. There is no set number for how many uniforms you might have and the number will also change between seasons. I think I'll definitely have more uniforms in the summer.

(*And don't worry, if you only ever like to wear one type of outfit. It doesn't mean your style is boring, you still have so many options. Uniforms, while giving you some "guidelines" are still very versatile. And you can always play with colours, accessories, your make up and your hair, because it's not just clothes that make an outfit.)

I don't actually count accessories like hat and scarf towards the final number of pieces, but I like to have them up there in the table because they complete my uniform outfit and I like to paint the whole picture.

Right, so now it's time for you to take a step back and analyse your lifestyle.

This should be fun! Take a little time and think about where you spend your time and what you love to wear. Write down your uniform(s) and keep it somewhere safe, you'll need it for the other steps! I know you can't wait to find out what your capsule wardrobe number will be, so next we'll do just that.

What is your capsule wardrobe uniform?