I am back for my 24th year in business after taking my regular August month off from writing this blog.  I had a restful month and I hope you had a wonderful end of the summer.

As you may know, I’ve never been a huge fan of summer.  I know people love it, and it does have many redeeming qualities.  But, the heat.  I loathe being hot, even before hitting menopause in my mid-40s.  I avoid the sun because have you seen me?  I mean, what’s going to happen to me in the sun besides wrinkles, age spots, and potential skin cancer?  Give me post-Labor Day living any day.  Jeans, sweaters, blazers, layers?  Yes, please.  

My wardrobe became incredibly simplified and minimal during the summer, likely in reaction to the hot weather, but I don’t think I’m unique in this.  I find that clients tend to spend less on their summer clothing and have a similar mindset to me: simple, uncomplicated clothing that gets the job done.

This is not to say my simplicity compromised anything. The looks weren’t resigned or throwaway.  I still looked good; I just simplified my choices which, in the end, I realized, simplified my brain.   For most of the summer, I wore ribbed tank tops and stylish summer pants or white jeans.  When it was cool, a gauzy button-down got thrown into the mix.  

THE ACT OF SIMPLIFYING YOUR WARDROBE

In preparation for my return, this got me thinking about the act of simplifying your wardrobe and its benefits.  We live in these times where there is so much merchandise to sort through along with so many avenues in which to shop.  Think about it, there was a time when you would shop at a handful of stores.  What was there is what you had to choose from and, despite the limits by comparison, we did just fine with the limited options presented.  It begs the question: is more necessarily better?

My point is, if we live in a time when fashion isn’t simple and straightforward, stores are over-merchandised, and new items hit the racks at lightning speed.  We can’t count on fashion to be direct, curated or easy to navigate.  Therefore, it’s up to us to choose it for ourselves.   

SIMPLIFICATION SHOULDN’T FEEL LIKE RESTRICTION; IT SHOULD FEEL LIBERATING

We have this tendency when we want to simplify as a natural response to feeling overwhelmed.  When things are chaotic, humans often swing to extreme simplification when faced with overwhelming chaos to reduce mental stress and regain a sense of control.  Signs of extreme simplification include black-and-white thinking, rigid routines, and absolute answers to everything.   This is not what I am suggesting.

Extreme simplification creates rules that tell you what you’re allowed to own or wear. What I am suggesting is boundaries.  Boundaries help you decide what deserves space in your wardrobe in the first place.

A boundary might be recognizing that you don’t need five different versions of a category you rarely wear. It might mean deciding that uncomfortable shoes no longer get to take up valuable closet real estate, no matter how beautiful they are. It might mean knowing the silhouettes, colors, fabrics, or outfit formulas you reliably feel good in and allowing those things to make up a larger percentage of your wardrobe.

And yes, it might mean repeating yourself.

I did that all summer. I returned to the same types of looks again and again, not because I had run out of ideas, but because I had stopped requiring myself to constantly come up with new ones.  That’s an important distinction.

The goal isn’t to make your wardrobe smaller simply for the sake of having less. The goal is to make the decisions smaller.

Good boundaries do that. They eliminate enough of the noise that you can actually enjoy what remains.

SIMPLIFICATION IS PERSONAL

This is also where simplification can go wrong. We start looking for someone else to tell us what simple is.  Own this many pieces. Limit your wardrobe to this many colors. Build a capsule. Choose neutrals. Make sure everything coordinates. Get rid of anything you haven’t worn in a year.  But there is no universally simplified wardrobe because what feels simple to one person can feel incredibly restrictive to another.

I don’t wear black. For me, this is liberating. Black isn’t a color I particularly like on myself, so eliminating it from consideration makes shopping and getting dressed easier. I don’t have to wonder whether I should own the black version because it’s more “versatile.” I don’t need to build outfits around it. I simply don’t consider it.  For another woman, a wardrobe built largely around black might be the very thing that creates that same sense of ease.

The same is true of quantity. One woman may feel wonderfully free with 40 pieces in her closet. Another may genuinely enjoy and easily manage 150. A tightly edited palette of four colors might make one person’s wardrobe practically effortless while making someone else feel creatively suffocated.  None of these women is doing simplicity wrong.

The question isn’t “How much should I own?” or “How many colors should be in my wardrobe?”  It’s “What creates enough structure that my wardrobe feels easier without making me feel restricted?”

That’s the difference between adopting someone else’s rules and establishing your own boundaries.  A boundary isn’t an arbitrary limitation. It’s something you learn about yourself.

Maybe you don’t wear black. Maybe you love color but know you only feel good in certain families of it. Maybe you need variety in your tops but are perfectly happy owning the same three styles of pants. Maybe you love shoes and want dozens of pairs, but couldn’t care less about handbags. Maybe repeating a handful of outfit formulas makes you feel grounded rather than bored.

Simplification isn’t about stripping away everything that makes a wardrobe interesting. It’s about stripping away what makes your wardrobe unnecessarily complicated.  And the only person who can determine what that looks like is you.

MAKE YOUR SIGNATURE LOOK YOUR CENTER OF GRAVITY

There is a very funny Baroness von Sketch video about aging out of fashion in which a woman is essentially informed that she has reached the age when it’s time to develop a signature look.

It’s ridiculous, of course, but I actually think there is something incredibly useful about the idea of a signature look. Not because we reach an age when we’re supposed to pick an outfit and wear some version of it for the rest of our lives, but because identifying the look that feels most like you can give the rest of your wardrobe a place to begin.

Think about the outfit you put on and immediately feel like yourself.  Not necessarily your most exciting outfit. Not the one you would wear to an important event. Just the combination that feels so natural on you that you don’t have to think very hard about it.  For me, it’s jeans and a navy blazer.

I certainly don’t wear jeans and a navy blazer every day. But I can think about much of the rest of my wardrobe in relation to that look.  What would the woman whose signature look is jeans and a navy blazer wear when she isn’t wearing jeans and a navy blazer?  What would she wear to dinner? To a meeting? On a hot summer day? On vacation? To an event?  Suddenly, a signature look isn’t a limitation. It’s a starting point.

Imagine that outfit sitting at the center of your wardrobe with all your other looks branching out from it. Some branches will stay fairly close to the original. Others may travel much farther away. But there should still be some recognizable thread connecting them.

That thread might be a silhouette. It might be a level of polish. It could be the way you use color, the juxtaposition of casual and tailored pieces, a preference for clean lines, or the amount of interest you like an outfit to have.  You aren’t trying to make every outfit look the same.  You’re trying to make every outfit feel like it belongs to the same person.

And that is where a signature look becomes incredibly useful for simplification. Instead of starting with everything that exists in fashion and deciding what you might wear, you start with yourself and work outward.

10 WAYS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT SIMPLIFICATION MEANS FOR YOU

There is no ideal number of clothes, perfect color palette, or universally useful capsule wardrobe. Simplification starts by paying attention to what makes your own wardrobe easier to use.

Here are ten places to start.

1. Identify your signature look.
What outfit feels the most like you? Not necessarily your most fashionable or impressive outfit, but the one where you look in the mirror and think, Yes, this is me. Use that look as the center of your wardrobe and imagine other outfits branching out from it.

2. Notice what you repeat without getting bored.
We often treat repetition as a wardrobe failure when it can actually be incredibly useful information. Which silhouettes, combinations, colors, shoes, or outfit formulas do you happily return to again and again? You probably don’t need to push yourself away from them. You may need to lean into them.

3. Figure out what you can stop considering.
For me, it’s black. I don’t wear it, and rather than finding that limiting, I find it liberating. What can you simply remove from consideration? A color? A silhouette? A type of shoe? An entire category of clothing? Every option you eliminate is one less decision you have to make.

4. Find your personal point of “enough.”
Forget how many pieces someone else says you should own. At what point does abundance become clutter for you? You may want ten pairs of shoes and three handbags. Someone else may want exactly the opposite. Simplification doesn’t require equal restraint in every category.

5. Look for the parts of your wardrobe that create friction.
Where do you consistently get stuck? Maybe you own plenty of clothes but never have the right shoes. Maybe your closet is overflowing with tops but none work with your pants. Maybe you have too many pieces that require very specific styling to make them work. Simplification is often less about reducing quantity and more about reducing friction.

6. Decide how much color feels manageable.
A simplified color palette doesn’t have to mean three neutrals and an accent color. Your palette can be as broad or narrow as you want it to be. The question is whether your colors work together in a way that makes getting dressed easier.

7. Pay attention to your “yes, but” clothes.
Yes, but I need different underwear. Yes, but I can only wear it with heels. Yes, but I need the right jacket. Yes, but maybe if I lose five pounds. Clothes that constantly require negotiation add complexity. Notice how much of your wardrobe asks you to solve a problem before you can wear it.

8. Stop demanding maximum versatility from everything.
Simplification doesn’t mean every piece needs to work with every other piece. Some clothes can have specific jobs. A dress you love wearing to dinners doesn’t need to work for the office, weekends, travel, and a parent-teacher conference to justify its existence. Sometimes clearly knowing what something is for makes a wardrobe simpler.

9. Create boundaries where you need them, not where someone tells you to.
Maybe you need a boundary around buying more jeans but absolutely none around jewelry. Maybe you need to stop buying clothes for an imaginary lifestyle. Maybe you need to limit how many versions of essentially the same thing you own. Your boundaries should address your sources of excess and overwhelm.

10. Ask one final question: Does my wardrobe feel easier?
That’s the metric. Not how few pieces you own. Not whether everything coordinates. Not whether you could fit your entire wardrobe into a carry-on. Does getting dressed require less effort? Is shopping more focused? Do you know what belongs and what doesn’t? Do you feel more like yourself?

If the answer is yes, you’ve simplified.

If your version of simple looks completely different from someone else’s, that’s exactly the point.

SIMPLIFICATION ISN’T ABOUT HAVING LESS FOR THE SAKE OF HAVING LESS

After nearly 24 years of helping women build wardrobes, one thing I know for certain is that there is no single formula for making a wardrobe work.  I find myself less interested than ever in telling women what they should own and much more interested in helping them figure out what makes sense for them because simplification isn’t about having less for the sake of having less. It’s about removing the noise. It’s knowing what works, trusting what you’ve learned about yourself, creating boundaries that make decisions easier, and giving yourself permission to stop considering everything else.

There will always be more clothes. More trends. More recommendations. More things we’re told we need.  We can’t simplify the marketplace, but we can simplify our relationship with it.  When we do, getting dressed becomes less about navigating an endless sea of possibilities and more about choosing from a wardrobe that already feels like us.

If you’re ready to figure out what that looks like for you, I can help. Book a complimentary Image and Style Assessment, and we’ll talk about where your wardrobe is now, what’s getting in the way, and how we can make it work better for the person you are today.