Build Your Capsule Wardrobe Today

So you want to build a capsule wardrobe? That’s very smart of you. 

Quick refresh: A capsule wardrobe is a system for curating a collection of clothes that maximizes the number of outfits, while minimizing the number of garments. 

Building your next capsule wardrobe DOESN’T have to:
• take forever
• be overly complicated
• involve buying a whole new closet full of clothes

The foundation of a capsule wardrobe is a simple math problem (top x bottoms x shoes). The heart of a capsule wardrobe is making those resulting outfits, outfits you love to wear.

A capsule wardrobe is excellent for all sorts of reasons… 

Some people transition their whole closet to a capsule to: 

• Eliminate decision fatigue: when everything in your closet works with everything else, deciding what to wear becomes very easy because everything works together. 
• Rotate their closet with the seasons: a more focused and contained wardrobe for each season makes rotating your closet with the seasons faster and simpler. 
• Focusing on quality over quantity: when you’re not spreading yourself thin you can invest more time and energy in higher quality clothing. 
• Save space: whether or not you live somewhere with limited closet space, it’s nice to be able to hang up your clothes without shoving things aside to make room. 
• Help curb impulse shopping: a well built capsule wardrobe can give you hundreds of outfits from dozens of pieces. With a seemingly endless variety of outfits in your closet already, why impulse buy something new. 

While others choose to build a temporary or limited capsule wardrobe without transitioning their whole closet, for situations like: 

• Travel: when everything you pack works together you need to pack fewer pieces.
• Extremely busy seasons of life: spend a little time prepping a small capsule within your larger closet for those exceptionally busy times.
• Sparking creativity and ditching style ruts: constraints are an amazing way to spark creativity. 
• Experimenting with new styles or new items: building a small capsule is a nice way to see if a style is for you. 
• Low spoon days or low-energy dopamine dressing: capsule wardrobes are great for reducing the effort it takes to look put together. 
• To test the cohesion of your closet: building a capsule from clothes you already have (though you could, of course, use clothes you don’t have yet) is a great way to find the holes and gaps in your wardrobe. The top that is beautiful but doesn’t go with any bottoms will not fly with a capsule wardrobe. 

The practical reasons for building a capsule wardrobe abound. You can also build a capsule wardrobe because it’s fun, and you want to.

Do you have what you’ll need?

What you’ll need to build your next capsule wardrobe… 

• Your closet! 
• An afternoon!
• Curiosity! 

What you won’t need… 

• Experience building a capsule wardrobe before
• Prior knowledge of exactly what a capsule wardrobe is before we start
• To go shopping (you can if you want, but buying more clothes is not required for building a capsule wardrobe) 

Holly’s Guide to Building Your Next Capsule Wardrobe is a self-paced guide where I take you through a simple, straightforward, step-by-step process to help you build your next capsule wardrobe this afternoon. 

Ready? Let’s do it together with Holly’s Guide to Building Your Next Capsule Wardrobe

I’m Holly – personal stylist – I coach and consult on your everyday genuine style, helping you build and wear the wardrobe you love. (Even when you’re running late, fighting a cold, and it’s laundry day.)

In this guide our aim is to build your capsule wardrobe TODAY. Whether you’ve never built a capsule before, or you build one every season, I think you find this helpful.

It’s a simple repeatable process so you can start, build and complete your capsule wardrobe this afternoon – and repeat the process any time you want to build your next capsule wardrobe. 

We’ll start with choosing an inspiration piece, deciding on our color palette, and making our first outfit. 

From there we’ll methodically build out the rest of our capsule wardrobe piece by piece. 

And finally we’ll add the *actual* capsule wardrobe mathematical magic. This final step is what turns your small pile of clothes into hundreds of outfits. 

I’ll take you through the process step-by-step, and build a capsule (using clothes from my closet) alongside you, so you always know what to do. 

The process I take you through in this guide will work for you if you’ve… 

• Never built a capsule wardrobe before – we start from the very beginning. 
• Have built a capsule wardrobe (or two) and they have failed – we build methodically and iterations are strongly encouraged. 
• Consider yourself a capsule wardrobe maven and are curious about a new way of building them. 

This is also for you if you have heard the term, or seen some infographics, and are just capsule curious. By the end you’ll know if this is a good option for you or not. 

Capsule Wardrobe Questions Answered: 

• Do I need to buy clothes? / Can I buy you included in your capsule?  

Do you need to buy clothes? No. As you are building your capsule you may identify a missing item or two, but most people can build an excellent capsule wardrobe from the clothes they already have in their closets. 

As for if you can buy pieces I’ve included in my capsule, I have not included links to the pieces I used, and honestly, most of them are either very basic (ex. black jeans) or probably no longer available for sale.

• How many pieces will we be including? / How many outfits will that make?

At the end of this process we’ll have about 15-20 pieces in our capsules. My example capsule ended at 17 pieces of clothing. There are a couple optional steps that you can skip to make a smaller capsule or if you’re short on time. If you want more pieces you can repeat the last couple steps to make a larger capsule wardrobe. Once you know the process, scaling your capsule wardrobe up or down becomes fairly intuitive. 

Out of my 17 piece example capsule wardrobe, I am able to create 200 outfits. (There is a bonus lookbook at the end of the guide.) Exactly how many outfits you can create will depend on the pieces you choose, but hundreds of outfits out of 15-20 pieces is a common capsule wardrobe outcome.

• I don’t think I get the math magic of a capsule wardrobe, can you explain it again? 

Sure, here’s the basic idea: you have a small selection of clothes you can mix and match which creates an unintuitively large number of outfits. 

For example: 

3 tops, 3 bottoms, and 2 pairs of shoes all of which work together, can create 18 outfits.
5 tops, 4 bottoms, and 2 pairs of shoes, can create 40 outfits.
7 tops, 5 bottoms, and 2 pairs of shoes, can create 70 outfits.
7 tops, 5 bottoms, and 2 pairs of shoes, plus 2 outer layers, can create 210 outfits.

But it’s really something to be experienced to be understood. It’s one thing to say, it’s another thing to viscerally understand the personal style possibilities. 

What’s included in Holly’s Guide to Building Your Next Capsule Wardrobe…

This 66 page PDF is available to download immediately after purchase and contains:

• What is a capsule wardrobe? 
• 4 tips to make the process less daunting
• What to include and what to exclude from your capsule
• Deciding on your inspiration and color palette
• Methodically building your capsule wardrobe piece by piece 
• (optional) How to incorporate one-pieces (dresses, rompers, jumpsuits, etc) in your capsule wardrobe
• Identifying and filling in the gaps 
• Adding the mathematical capsule magic 

BONUS: a lookbook of all 200 outfits from my example capsule wardrobe