One of the most sought after services of a personal stylist is the wardrobe edit. Seemingly easy to execute, this trick of the trade can certainly go awry, ending up with you taking everything out just to re-fold and put back in, or worse – chucking key pieces out in a bid to get rid and declutter. Wardrobe editing, or the great closet clear-out as it often named, has been gaining a lot of notoriety of late with the rise of minimalist living and ambassadors such as Mari Kondo. But aside from sparking joy, there are a lot of advantages to a wardrobe well edited.
Benefits of Wardrobe Editing
- Savings Galore!
Slow down your fashion spend as you start to wear more of what you already own. With a clearer closet and well-organized wardrobe, you will know exactly what you’ve got in there, saving on precious morning time too!
- Become Your Own Stylist!
Your day-to-day choices need not be a guessing game anymore. Grow in confidence with carefully prepared outfits at the ready. A wardrobe edit pairs items close by to complete several looks for the wearing.
- Capsule Wardrobe for the Win!
A wardrobe edit ensures you have key ‘evergreen’ pieces in your closet – meaning they won’t go out of fashion. What they will do though, is easily fill the gaps of outfits to create complete looks. A well thought out edit can work to pair items close to each other that can then be augmented with seasonal or occasional pieces.
The 5 Step Personal Stylist Wardrobe Edit
STEP #1 Decide on Your Objective
At the fashion consult, we always kick off our Wardrobe Edits with ‘the why’ before the what. We conduct a mini lifestyle audit to assess why you feel an edit is necessary to understand what your day-to-day needs from your clothes. So we suggest that you start by setting your intention and deciding on your objective.
Think about the problems and patterns you face with your wardrobe and clothing. That might be things like unflattering clothing by not dressing for your body shape, too many tops but not enough bottoms, or a recent lifestyle change from brunch o’clock to a breastfeeding schedule for instance.
STEP #2 – Declutter to Design
Now we dive into the wardrobe – You will need to create enough space to make three piles – Keep / Donate / Unsure. An easy way to get you started with sorting is to ask the question ‘When was the last time I wore this?’ A minimalist approach would be to donate anything you haven’t worn in the last thirty days – brutal we know! So decide on what feels like an acceptable time frame to you, we would suggest nothing more than a 6-month hiatus for that item to go into the donate pile.
Now and then, you will come across an item that falls into the category of clothing that you don’t wear every day. A gown, a power suit, or something glitzy, then the question becomes: ‘If I had to an event tomorrow, would I be excited to wear this?’ If you don’t get that little flutter at the possibility of getting to wear your finer threads, then it’s one for the Donate pile and at very least, the ‘Unsure’ pile.
STEP #3 – Organize
This stage is all about the best way to present your items for greater clarity. Start with identifying which pieces should be folded and which to hang. As a great rule of thumb; anything that blows in the wind should be hung, all else can go in draws or on shelves.
A few tips for organizing your wardrobe:
- Invest in some Perspex boxes that will fit in your draws. It keeps things tidier when you remove items to wear and helps to maximize space and homogenize shapes for storing.
- Test out both folding and rolling in your wardrobe. If you decide to roll (check the KonMari method) then you’ll need some boxes that sit on your shelves.
- Top Tip: Make sure all hangers are the same – this makes a big impact out of an easy move.
STEP #4 – Create a System
There are a few different ways to sub-divide your wardrobe space and which one you choose will depend on what your personal needs are and the objective that you set for yourself in step #1.
An approach that I take for my wardrobe is to group similar items together, shirts/t-shirts/jeans etc. and within those groups, I colour code. That way I can see what I have doubles of, what I don’t need to buy more of, but also identify personal preferences that I perhaps wasn’t consciously aware of.
STEP #5 – Mood Board Time
This is the fun part! It is where you’re going to put everything you’ve learnt through steps 1-4, it’s also where you get to fill in the blanks and curate your ‘when needs must’ shopping list. But don’t let get carried away with it. You’ve just created so much clarity and we want to create more.
Take note, stay conscious and pay attention. Lay out all of the items from your donate pile and look for any unhealthy buying patterns so that you don’t make that same mistake again. Start matching outfits together now that you have clear sections and identify what you’re missing to elevate & complete those looks – footwear/handbag/statement necklace/fitted white tee etc. You can arrange all of these notes onto a mood board using screenshots from eCommerce sites, take pics of your paired outfits, and a list of No-Nos.
Now you have your clean and tidy, clear and concise closet, your personal styling mood board and a new understanding of what your personal style is, you’re almost done. Now you can take the ‘Unsure’ pile and use any of the pieces from it to fill in the gaps that you have identified and donate the rest. Make your shopping list and hit the stores.
If this all sounds a bit too much for you, if you have any questions on other systems for organizing your wardrobe, or would like some help on creating outfits with the wow-factor that look like you, get in touch.
