Book It Out: Making the Most of Your Closet
When it comes to creating outfit combinations, you don’t actually need a great quantity of clothing. Even with lots of clothes, you can end up standing in front of your wardrobe and thinking, ‘I have nothing to wear!’
In many cases, it’s not about the amount of clothes you have, but how effectively you can put together the pieces to create unified outfits. What if I told you that you can create more outfit options by reducing the number of clothing you have?
Curating Your Dream Wardrobe
As The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees reveals, building your dream wardrobe is not about quantity but quality.
“I might have had a full closet, but I didn’t have anything to wear that I was actually excited about, and because of that, I always needed more.” — Anuschka Rees, The Curated Closet
Instead of picturing a dream wardrobe to be an unlimited mass of clothes, imagine it as a minimal collection of clothing where everything goes well together. In this collection, the pieces are hand-picked by you and carefully organised so that they can be easily mixed and matched to create new outfits.
In addition to selecting and organising the clothes you already own, curating your dream wardrobe also entails taking good care of the clothing pieces! Take care of clothes and they will last you for a very long time. Start by ensuring that the clothes you select are of good quality and not damaged. If they are torn or worn out, try mending it or bringing it to a tailor for altering before setting it aside.
This Is About You and Your Clothes, Not Fashion or Trends
Rather than set out more rules and guidelines on how you should dress, The Curated Closet is all about figuring out what you want to wear.
“The Curated Closet is a wardrobe that’s perfectly tailored to your unique personal style and your life. It contains everything you need to feel confident and inspired everyday–no more and no less. It is not based on trends, style typologies, or a cookie-cutter list of ‘wardrobe essentials’. Your life isn’t cookie-cutter, so why should your closet be?” — Anuschka Rees, The Curated Closet
There are plenty of books about creating a dream wardrobe and finding your personal style. The Curated Closet takes a simpler approach that includes your lifestyle into the creation process.
This book won’t tell you to chase after fashion trends or prescribe what to wear based on your body shape and size. After all, this is not a book about fashion but a book about clothing. Besides giving tips on picking a colour palette and matching your lifestyle to the wardrobe of clothes you have, the book also gives tips on how to shop consciously.
The Curated Closet Philosophy
If you’re a fan of books like Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Dominique Loreau’s L’art de la simplicite, you will find yourself resonating with the philosophy in The Curated Closet.
Here are five key principles of The Curated Closet philosophy:
- Be selective: reserve your closet space for items you love 100 per cent
- Be authentic: forget conventional style typologies like “classic” or “bohemian” and create your own unique look
- Aim for quality: build a wardrobe of high-quality pieces that last more than just a few years
- Style trumps fashion: get excited about fashion trends that suit your own style, but ignore all others
- Put in the work: invest time and thought into developing your style and selecting the perfect garments
Curating your dream wardrobe and perfecting your personal style will take time and effort but it’ll be worthwhile. In the end, you’ll have a wardrobe that you can open up and always put together an outfit you’re excited to wear!
Still sceptical? Check out my experience in the video below!
You can find The Curated Closet in NLB’s eBook collection or pick up the physical copy at a public library branch. If you want to read up more on capsule wardrobes, check these titles out:
From left to right:
Practical Princess Perfect Wardrobe — Elika Gibbs | Physical Copy, eBook
The Capsule Wardrobe — Wendy Mak | Physical Copy, eBook
Work Your Wardrobe — Gok Wan | Physical Copy, eBook
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Text by
Giselle Lim
National Library Board
