In my last post, I shared a hypothetical wardrobe capsule consisting of my top fifty-five cool weather items. I did a similar exercise back in August for my summer wardrobe. I chose the number fifty-five in recognition of the milestone birthday that I had reached earlier that month. I find that playing in my closet and doing sartorial “navel-gazing” can uplift my mood, plus I always like to come to new realizations and share them with my readers.
I followed up my August post with a “part two” in which I delved deeper about the collection and highlighted some of my lessons learned from pulling it together. I’m doing a similar thing today with my “not summer” capsule. In this post, I break down my cool weather capsule selections by color and offer some insights related to those designations. I also point out how my capsule choices have shifted since I originally made them last August – and why (I chose both summer and “not summer” collections back then but only blogged about the summer one). In a future post, I’ll outline the gaps that I’ve noticed in my closet and what my targeted shopping priorities are for the remainder of the year (for both the cool and warm seasons).
Why Do Hypothetical Capsules?
Before I move on, I want to answer a question that some of you may be thinking: “Why create hypothetical wardrobe capsules if you’re not going to actually restrict yourself to them?” That’s a very good question! While it’s true that we might learn more about ourselves and our wardrobes if we actually take the plunge and dress from a smaller capsule, it’s amazing how much we can learn from just preparing to dress with less. In doing so, we need to take a good, hard look at what’s in our closets, how we spend our time, and what we like to wear. This process often alerts us to what is and isn’t working for us, as well as what we might want to do differently moving forward. It can also be a fun way to identify closet gaps and areas of duplication.