Day Three: The Minimal Wardrobe

'French Girl's Wardrobe' by Lesley Sico via Pour l'amour de Paris

With the seasonal changeover, I’ve been enjoying playing around with my wardrobe.  I love reading about others tiny wardrobes on their blogs (like Janet at The Gardener’s Cottage, Sarah at Chic Mummy and Jennifer at The Daily Connoisseur), and on websites such as Project 333 (which I linked to via Tracy’s lovely blog) and also TheVivienne Files.

However, when it comes to putting it all into practice, I chicken out.  I go to my bedroom with grand plans, open the doors and then think ‘oh, I don’t have that much’ and close the doors again.  But over the past little while I’ve donated quite a bit of my wardrobe as well as down-graded going out clothing to home clothing, so having a small wardrobe is not such a far-away dream.

Inspired by Project 333, I put my winter clothing on my bed, looked at colours together and made up some new outfits.  I then put the hangers back into my wardrobe having weeded out ‘too summery, slightly too tight, the colour doesn’t go with this collection, etc’.  Those things went further along our really long clothing rail.  Our master bedroom is blessed with a triple door wardrobe which has extra railing beyond that even (behind the ensuite wall).

If you’re not familiar with Project 333, the central premise is to choose a selection of 33 garments from your wardrobe to wear for the next three months, and put everything else away in another room, or a suitcase etc.  You would potentially learn to put together a capsule wardrobe to get maximum possibilities out of your 33 pieces, and also refine your personal style.

In my ‘winter capsule wardrobe’ I now have about 20 hanging garments, half a dozen folded items and maybe 5-6 pairs of winter shoes/boots, two belts and a handful of scarves so I’m pretty happy with that effort.

My focus is on identifying what it is that I do on a daily basis, what would be the ideal clothes to wear doing those things whilst also looking the way I want to look.  Basically being realistic about what I like to wear.

I always feel so good in very simple outfits with not too much frou frou.  I like a colour with a neutral (such as denim and black, beige and light green, charcoal and light pink, etc).  I can very easily be over frou froued since I always wear makeup and jewellery, so wearing simple clothing styles balances that out.

Looking at my clothing and sorting through things gave me two thoughts:

1.  I don’t want to buy cheap clothing in the future.  I’d rather go without and save for something good.
2.  When I do go shopping, I will be very picky and the item will go with lots of other things in my wardrobe.

Both are classic French Girl aren’t they?  I thought it was funny that those two ideas popped into my mind.  You can read and read and read about something, but when you experience it yourself, that’s when it finally sinks in.