A closet full of clothes and nothing to wear? Here why!
“I confronted that eternal puzzle: a closet full of clothes, nothing to wear.” Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City)
It might sound paradoxical, but that’s just the way it goes. But why?
Today I will explain…
The wardrobe that works is not the one with many clothes, but the one that allows many clothes combinations. That is many outfits.
The key word is consistency.
I’ll explain better.
The clothes in your closet, few or many, need to be consistent:
COLOR
To create more outfit, clothes must follow the same palette. And that doesn’t mean having a whole black wardrobe, but simply focus on colors of the same chromatic family (it would be enough that they were all warm or cool colors).
Practical Example: I could have 50 coats and 30 pair of shoes, but if coats are all brown and shoes are all black, than I have nothing to wear!
FABRIC
Try to mix fabrics with the same weight and therefore you can easily layer them.
The ideal is to opt for medium weight and mid-season fabrics, like jersey or thin cashmere, that are the most versatile of all.
Practical Example: I could have 40 jackets and 60 shirts, but if jackets are all in velvet and shirts are all in linen, than I have nothing to wear!
STYLE
This is a crucial point. The real problem arises when we mix different styles. Individually, perhaps the clothes are pretty, but combined together don’t work. They have nothing to say because they have different language codes. Do you remember math in elementary school? You can’t compare apples to oranges… The concept is the same.
Practical Example: that blouse with frills and little flowers, bought on sale, perhaps you’ve never worn it because its romantic style doesn’t match the rock style of the other clothes.
Obviously the more colors-fabrics-styles that coexist in the closet, the more you don’t find anything to wear! Than the real secret is to buy less, to buy better (with consistency).
Small anthropological parenthesis: have you ever wondered why men don’t have this problem?
I’ll tell you: because they are much easier (you choose to give that a positive or negative meaning).
Regarding colors, for example, men choose those they look better with.
Have you noticed that some men wear only black-blue-grey and others only brown-green-buff?
Instead women are more complicated (you choose to give that a positive or negative meaning) and we are at the mercy of a thousand variables: taste, fashion, celebrities, Pantone color, friends, time, weight, etc. etc.
Like always, simplicity wins!
