Seasonal Colouring and Capsule Wardrobes

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF PINTEREST

Seasonal Colouring and Capsule Wardrobes 

This weeks blog is, in a way, a continuation of last weeks when I mentioned your season/best colours and also the idea of a capsule wardrobe. Both seem to have been in the fore at Pinterest recently, no doubt because of the onset of the holiday season. However, what the many articles don't seem to explain is just how the concept works on a daily basis.

I have found a marvellous example on Pinterest which covers just about everything you could need including underwear, nightwear etc., but even this one doesn't explain whether or not it is just for a single season or whether it is a year long venture. (Incidentally, the earliest capsule wardrobe idea I have found comes from a book written in the 1960s by the then fashion editor of a national UK newspaper. Her name was Jean Rook and the basic wardrobe she suggested will actually take the user through the entire year. Even better, she has suggestions for capsule wardrobe collections that are based on income so will appeal to both the student/basic hourly wage up to the wealthy/well paid at the top of the earning tree. Many of the items mentioned would need to be updated given that both colours and fashions have changed over the years but these are still far and away the best suggestions that I have ever found, and cover both work and play.

I have downloaded a number of other suggestions from Pinterest for simple capsule wardrobes, and while many of them would apply for a holiday or even for a specific event (example taking a 3/6 week break over summer or Christmas because it's the school holidays) but very few, if any, would cover the user for the entire year round.

As a result I have been going through my seasonal colours (I am a deep autumn) and have decided that the best way to make the capsule wardrobe theory work all year round is to have 4 basic capsules, which will overlap with each other to a certain degree. The names of the four capsules are rather obvious, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and a couple of items or so from each capsule will cross the divide into the next one. Each season will also rely heavily on those colours from my seasonal bests that correspond as closely as possible with the season in which the clothes will be worn. For example, Autumn will be browns, oranges and deep yellows, while Spring would be greens and yellows.

Over the next four weeks or so I will concentrate on one of the seasons and quickly go over the colours I have decided to use and the wardrobe items I am making for that capsule of my wardrobe. I hasten to add that the items I have chosen would not appeal to everybody, I prefer to wear a dress (known as a 'smock top' when I was growing up in the 1970s) over trousers or a maxi dress or skirt with a top. I freely admit that I still prefer an updated version of that style of dress, only now I ensure that the sleeves are at least ¾ length instead of short.