The age old question, “how can I achieve a perfectly balanced wardrobe?”. The short answer is there is no such thing as perfect and every wardrobe is ultimately a work in progress as you evolve through seasons on life. However, there are some key principles and ratios I use with my clients to come pretty damn close. What are these principles you ask? This is something I like to call the Wardrobe Pyramid, and works off a 60:30:10 ratio.
Working for over a decade in Retail Buying. While this seems like a glamorous job on the surface, a lot of people probably don’t realise that while there is an element of creativity, buying is based on mathematic principles and strategy.
One of the key principles in retail buying is the Buying Pyramid which indicates the ratios of product type you would develop for the store. The product types are Core, Seasonal Volume and Trend and roughly breaks down to a 60:30:10 ratio (depending on the brand).
When I reviewed my own purchasing and wardrobe building habits, I realised I have inadvertently applied this principle to my own wardrobe and immediately set about utilising these principles to elevate my clients wardrobes too.
This method provides structure to your wardrobe and allows those fun trend pieces to still have their place, while still maintaining a strong balance of timeless pieces.
As I have mentioned in my Capsule Wardrobe post, I personally find the traditional capsule wardrobe method very limiting and difficult to maintain a level of personality and excitement in one’s personal style. We can get so caught up on the Pinterest perfect aesthetic of a capsule wardrobe that at times, I think we have lost sight of what this truely means.
The purpose of a capsule wardrobe is to reduce your fashion consumption and create a timeless and long lasting wardrobe full of highly selective pieces which mix and match back with each other effortlessly. So in my opinion, the true motivation behind a capsule wardrobe stems from being intentional with our shopping choices and consumption.
As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and I have never been the kind of person who likes to play by the rules.
There are a lot of strict capsule wardrobe fans out there, but this post is for those of you who genuinely struggle with the rigidity that a capsule wardrobe might represent and are looking for a more easy going approach which still provide as all of the value of a traditional capsule wardrobe.
Also, those of you who love structure and rules to base decisions off, this method is perfect for you too as I will be breaking down the percentages of each product group that makes up a balanced wardrobe.
As I mentioned in my post about how limiting capsule wardrobes can be, in applying those Buying Principles I spoke about before, there are in fact three key capsules that make up a balanced wardrobe.
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The Seasonless Capsule
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The Spring/Summer Capsule
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The Autumn/Winter Capsule
To find out exactly what goes into each of these capsules click HERE for a full run down.
On top of these capsules we have out little trend edit, which can trade out each season, although I strongly advocate purchasing trend items which compliment your personal style enough that you can envision wearing them for multiple seasons in order to maintain that level of intentional shopping we are striving for.
So what are these ratios I hear you ask? Rather than boring you with more writing I have prepared a little graphic that you can save to your phone or pin to your Pinterest as a reminder next time you are editing your wardrobe or out shopping, and don’t forget to tag me when you’re applying this method to your own wardrobe!
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