15 Oct I lived for a year with 40 items of clothing. Here’s what I learned
Many of us have a wardrobe that’s too full of clothes and accessories we don’t use. Men too (yes, there are men with lots of clothes in their wardrobe).
Fashion magazines talk about the capsule wardrobe, a concept that has become very popular in recent years.
For those who have never heard of it, in short, a capsule wardrobe is a minimalist wardrobe. It contains just a small repertoire of around 40 pieces to dress yourself day to day for a season. Yes! In total!
Those 40 pieces include shoes and accessories (although underwear and sportswear are left out, along with more specific items like party dresses or clothes for one-off occasions).
When I first heard about it, it seemed like a challenge, but at the same time the concept seemed very functional.
And I really did it.
I kept around 40 pieces in my wardrobe for good. 40 for winter and another 40 for summer. In my case, I left shoes and accessories out of the count. It already seemed like too much.
The challenge is dressing with only that number of pieces for a whole season.
If you combine the pieces well with neutral colors, you end up with a very functional wardrobe and you don’t waste time in the morning thinking about what to wear.
True. When you have nothing to choose from, you wear what’s there, and that’s it…
I lived the experience last winter and this summer. And here I am, still with my 40.
A minimalist wardrobe has many benefits:
- Getting dressed is quick and leaves no room for doubt. There’s little clothing, and as you fill the laundry basket, there’s even less to choose from, so it gets easier still.
- You avoid impulse buying and choose better quality pieces. You think about it more.
- The wardrobe always looks clean and tidy. You open it and you don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s a joy!
- Using less clothing, you save more money. And what you don’t buy doesn’t end up in the trash either.
- No more buying a shirt because you love it, getting home and finding you have nothing to wear with it. That’s the clothing that piles up the most and gets used the least.
And it also has its downsides. This is what fashion magazines don’t usually tell you, and what you only find out when you live it:
- Lack of variety. If you like prints, you’re in for a hard time. Combining printed fabrics is more complicated than combining plain ones. And it’s a bit boring, the same thing every day.
- You spend all day doing laundry. With so little clothing, you wash it more because you wear it more often. And if you like to always dress well, and not just in anything, you may feel the need to keep everything clean and within reach.
- Clothes wear out faster, because you have fewer and wear them more, and not everyone has the budget to invest in high quality pieces.
- Traveling gets complicated. For example, I went on a week-long beach holiday and ran out of clothes.
In my case, everything I took out of the wardrobe I donated.
With bags it was a different story. I kept more than I should have, and I admit it. They’re all from my brand, designed by me. Some are leather (from the time when I worked with animal leather), others are made from my new plant-based leather materials, and it broke my heart to part with them. Here I collide head-on with minimalism, I know… but my bags are like my children.
For me, the sweet spot is somewhere in between: a wardrobe that works together, is functional, has everything I need, and where I can choose what to wear in seconds. It doesn’t have to be 40 pieces, and it doesn’t have to be 500 either.
What matters is to stop buying on impulse pieces you then can’t combine with anything, pieces that don’t quite convince you and stay hanging for years…
I think the same about my bags. That’s why I make few pieces, in limited edition. I’d rather have one bag that gets used every day than ten waiting in a drawer. Speaking of bags, one that goes with everything and is perfect for every day is this two-tone bag, in black and navy blue with camel handles.
And having got this far, from my own experience, I’ve drawn a few ideas from going from a wardrobe full of clothes to a minimalist one, and from there to the middle ground where I am now. I’ll tell you about them in the next article: how to reorganize your wardrobe without feeling overwhelmed.
Un abrazo,
Belén