FASHION - Wardrobe Full Yet Nothing To Wear?

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Summary - 

Is your wardrobe bursting at the seams yet you feel as though you’ve got nothing to wear? You’re not alone! In fact, as a Personal Stylist this is the most common problem I’ve helped women overcome. In this episode, I share why this happens and how to turn the situation around so you’ve always got an outfit to wear for every occasion.  

Things I Mention - 

  • Why you feel like you have nothing to wear despite owning a wardrobe full of clothes

  • How your ever-evolving style can result in little to no outfits

  • One of the most important checkboxes to tick before buying something new

PLUS, I explain in just 2 steps how to create a wardrobe that works well with your lifestyle.

Links & Helpful Resources - 

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From my experience, it’s usually one or the other –  women either have too many frills & thrills and not enough basics or vice versa, they have too many basics yet lack a little sparkle when heading out for the night. Both scenarios are less than perfect and both contribute to a wardrobe that works overtime for all the wrong reasons. To put it simply, building the perfect wardrobe is impossible to achieve if 1). it doesn’t reflect your defined personal style (which we’ve spoken about in episode #46) and 2). it doesn’t reflect your lifestyle - which we are going to delve into today! 

Taking some time out to consider whether your clothes work well your lifestyle is not something we tend to do (not as often as we should anyway!) which is crazy because our lives are constantly changing and evolving and therefore it makes sense that perhaps some of the clothes we’ve held onto for years just don’t get worn as much as they once did - not because you don’t love them, purely because they just don’t work for you now and that’s honestly - to be expected. There’s no point eyeing off clothes that don’t work with your day to day activities and what you spend the majority of your time doing - a wardrobe full of gorgeous cashmere coats will never work for someone living by the beach just like a draw full of bikinis and resort wear won’t work for someone who lives in the snow.

I’ve edited hundreds of wardrobes throughout my styling career and despite some of those wardrobes spanning across 2, sometimes 3 bedrooms, it wasn’t uncommon for the owner to wake up each morning and constantly feel that they had nothing to wear. The problem was never the amount of clothes they owned though, it was the type of clothes they owned. If roughly 60% of your wardrobe is full of party dresses, yet you spend roughly 80% of your time running errands or chasing after the kids, then you’re going to run into a bit of trouble when it comes to pulling both practical and versatile outfits together each day. 

So how do you work out what you actually spend most of your time doing and more importantly, how do you work out what types of outfits or clothes work well with those activities? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy doing this the old school way with a pen and paper but for convenience sake, I’ll talk you through how to do this just as easily online. 

STEP 1.

You’re going to write down over a month long period, exactly what you do in a day that requires an outfit change. You can either backtrack a month and try to recall what activities you did each day (To do this, I’d suggest doing a Google image search of last month, saving this as a .jpeg & just adding your own text to each day). Alternatively, you can just start from the first day of the next month, remembering to write down each outfit change per activity that you do. 

As an example, let’s look at a typical Monday - perhaps you get up early to workout (add the word ‘activewear’ to Monday because you’d likely change outfits for this). From here, you jump in the shower and get ready for work (add the word ‘uniform’ to Monday because that requires another outfit change) After work, you might head straight home to get cosy in your pj’s. You don’t need to add ‘sleepwear’ though unless of course, you are really lacking in the pyjama department. 

Or maybe you’re an on-the-go Mum juggling a side hustle in which case a Monday might look something like this - perhaps you squeeze in some exercise first up (add ‘activewear’ to Monday). From here, you spend the next 6 or so hours juggling the kids & doing school pick up and drop off (add ‘casual’ to Monday). Once the kids dinner has been sorted, you may have to duck out for a drink with a potential client for a few hours (add ‘glam’ to Monday too if you’d usually change into something a bit special for this). 

Other events or day to day activities that could include a potential outfit change are school, university, breakfast, lunch, dinner, special occasions such as a wedding or baby shower, beach days, sporting events and so on. Also, if you are happy to wear activewear both for exercise and your usual mum duties, then just keep this as 1 outfit. 

You can be as creative or as specific as you like with what titles you choose - only you will know what type of clothes you would usually wear for each activity so just use a word that makes sense to you. 

STEP 2.

Once you’ve completed an entire month, write a quick summary of how many times you required a different outfit for each of the activities you listed. 

For instance, in the last month, you can see that you required a casual outfit 21x that month, activewear 16x that month, a uniform 9x that month, a glam outfit 3x, a formal outfit 1x and a beach outfit 1x that month too. Therefore your wardrobe should mostly consist of clothes that are going to make pulling together casual outfits easy followed by activewear. There should be very few frills & thrills and even less bikinis. 

CASUAL – 21

ACTIVEWEAR – 16

UNIFORM – 9

GLAM – 3

FORMAL – 1

BEACH - 1

Completing these 2 simple steps might sound unnecessary and like a bit of a waste of time, but I assure you that just by doing so, you’ll be able to see quite clearly which types of clothes you actually need the most to reflect and work well with your lifestyle and from here, you’ll know where you should be investing your hard earned cash.

Elisha CasagrandeWomens Confidence, FEEL BE LOOK, Confidence, Brisbane Personal Stylist, Online Personal Stylist, Styling Tips, Outfit Styling, Clothes Pyschology, Fashion Psychology, Style Rut, Fashion Tips, Styling Advice, Shopping Budget, Fashion Budget, Repurpose Clothes, Personal Style, Defined Personal Style, Wardrobe Versatility, Investment Buys, Shopping, Online Shopping, Add To Cart, Cool Colours, Warm Colours, Wearing Black, Wardrobe Inspiration, Style Inspiration, Outfit Inspiration, Capsule Wardrobe, Wardrobe Editing, Wardrobe Organising, Wardrobe Culling