Have you ever stood in front of your closet and felt like you had nothing to wear, or perhaps, realized that your wardrobe is full of fast fashion trends that are not in style anymore? Well, you are not alone.
Whether you’re a digital nomad, a stay-at-home mom, or a busy businesswoman, you probably struggle with finding the right versatile, sustainable basics for your wardrobe. Trawling stores for clothes is no easy task, especially with a busy schedule. Not to mention the difficulty of flipping every clothing label to see whether the garment’s made of synthetic or natural fabrics.
Luckily, a sustainable capsule wardrobe makes dressing consciously as easy as ABC. Not only does it help you tackle fleeting trends but also assemble sustainable outfits that are better for the planet. So, let’s dive right into it.
What is a Capsule Wardrobe?
A traditional capsule wardrobe is a small collection of cherished, interchangeable garments that go well together. Each garment is versatile with many options to mix-and-match, serving you well in multiple looks.
With the ready-made clothing combinations, you can simply wake up in the morning and throw on stylish outfits in a matter of minutes. Call it the magic of sustainability!
However, there’s more to the concept of a capsule wardrobe. Apart from the element of convenience, it teaches you a lesson about fashion – you don’t need to overconsume to be stylish. If you choose garments wisely, they will multiply into hundreds of hundreds of outfits.
The catch is finding the right balance – with enough essentials, you can form outfits that are classic, dressy, casual, and put together. You can over- or under-dress by switching up the accessories, adding an accent piece, or playing around with different silhouettes.
Ultimately, a capsule wardrobe revolves around the concept of slow fashion, which prioritizes quality over quantity. The underlying philosophy focuses on building a mindful closet and becoming a conscious consumer.
From shopping to styling, you should be deliberate about your fashion choices, purchasing garments that align with your ethics, image, and lifestyle.
The Benefits of A Decision-free Closet
Apart from its environmental impact, fashion overconsumption causes lower life satisfaction and decision fatigue. While we all enjoy looking our best at all times, bombarding our closets with useless clothing is counterproductive. It causes us to feel like we have ‘nothing to wear’ and leads to clothing anxiety.
Besides, due to the endless influx of fashion inspiration online, it’s hard to resist the urge to overconsume. Every day, we scroll through superfluous content online, including 5-minute styling hacks, OOTD pictures, and brand-new trend insights.
We end up comparing ourselves to influencers who, as a matter of fact, get paid to advertise us products. Yet, when we replicate their fashion choices, we lose our personal spark and sense of authentic style.
A capsule wardrobe solves the issue of overconsumption. It provides simpler styling choices and less options that work well together – exactly what your heart desires.
Unlike fashion guides, videos, and influencer-generated content, a capsule wardrobe cultivates sartorial satisfaction dedicated to you only. It is minimalistic, customized, and personal, which lets your style have a say in a oversaturated world of fashion. Every garment in the wardrobe is curated to speak to you, acting as a calling card for your unique fashion sense.
With that being said, here are some of the benefits of a decision-free and sustainable capsule wardrobe:
Versatile Basics to Mix-And-Match
The art of mixing and matching is something you must master to maintain a capsule wardrobe. This will involve getting out of your comfort zone, or perhaps, reaching out for a garment you’ve never worn in years!
Try picking items you wouldn’t normally wear together and try them on. Some outfit combinations might surprise you. Restyling the clothes you already own will give you more outfit options.
Above all, if you master the art of mixing and matching, you will eliminate decision fatigue. When picking outfits, you’ll have an easier time reusing, reworking, and reviving the same items in different ways.
Expressing Your Style with Accessories
Contrary to popular belief, capsule wardrobe doesn’t always have to be vanilla, full of earthy and neutral colors. It can be eccentric and quite special, as long as it’s equipped with bold statement accessories.
Every fashionista gets bored of rotating the same clothes, color schemes, or silhouettes every season. Yet, overhauling the closet with trendy pieces is not the answer. Instead, you should incorporate minimalist basics and later embellish them with accessories. This is a great way to extend the life of your existing clothes and transform their character.
The basics provide the plain canvas for delicate necklaces, statement earrings, or luxury handbags, which can make boring garments pop. Accessories can dress your outfit either up or down, adding a flavor to the most boring ensembles. With the right shoes, scarves, and even brooches, you can elevate a casual outfit to eveningwear or an office look to dressy – the possibilities are endless!
Getting Your Space Back
Forget about your annual closet clean out. A capsule wardrobe is not about occasional clothing purges – it’s about changing your mindset around fashion.
Let’s embrace some tough love. The key to long-term, sustainable closet happiness is moving away from clothing we rarely wear. The only garments that belong in your capsule wardrobe are the ones that fit well, express your authentic self, and are versatile.
With that being said, getting rid of unwanted clothing frees up mental, physical, and emotional space in your life. So, say goodbye to trends, ill-fitting garments, and bad-quality fabrics (yes, no matter how much you’ve spent on them!) – your capsule wardrobe deserves long-lasting classics.
Traditional vs Sustainable Capsule Wardrobe
While an ordinary capsule wardrobe merely rotates 30/40 articles of clothing, its sustainable counterpart is more intentional about garment quality and eco-friendliness.
A sustainable capsule wardrobe is exclusively made of natural fabrics like organic cotton, wool, hemp, linen, and others. It also focuses on the idea of buying better quality essentials that will last longer.
As compared to fast fashion, sustainable garments require little to no chemical treatment, little water, and no fertilizers to grow. This makes them a more environmentally friendly choice.
Besides, thousands of chemicals like formaldehyde, disperse blue 1, and PFAS are sprayed on conventional apparel. Sustainable clothing safeguards you from these toxins, as it requires less processing and is hypoallergenic. So, take a closer look at your clothing labels and identify the following natural fabrics:
- Organic Hemp
- Organic Cotton
- Bamboo
- Organic Linen
- Recycled Wool
- Peace Silk
While fast fashion garments break down after a few washes, sustainable clothes never shrink, pill, or lose their shape. So, opt for basics made of natural, long-lasting fabrics. They’ll hold up over time without showing any defects or damaging your health.
Most importantly, sustainable clothes made of natural fibers are 100% biodegradable and durable. You can wear them for years, even decades, to come. This makes them an ideal component of a sustainable capsule wardrobe, as they reduce waste, conserve water, and regenerate soil – all while prolonging the lifecycle of your capsule wardrobe.
How to Build a Sustainable Capsule Wardrobe of a Lifetime?
Whether it’s for curbing your shopping addiction, discovering a sense of style, or reducing your environmental footprint, a sustainable capsule wardrobe is the ultimate solution.
Given that, here are a few things to consider before curating it effectively:
Be Realistic About What You’ll Wear
Are you ready to wear and re-wear the same clothes in many ways? Well, you need to make a commitment. Stop viewing shopping as entertainment, and get better mileage from your existing clothing.
A sustainable capsule wardrobe is about making sacrifices. Whether it’s using cash only or deactivating social media, you should trick yourself into staying laser-focused while shopping. The key is only buying what you need, rather than getting distracted by discounts or FOMO of ephemeral trend cycles.
As Mignon McLaughlin mentions, “women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.” So, before you purchase a garment, make sure that you’ll wear it often once the shiny object effect wears off.
Declutter or Revamp Unwanted Clothes
If you don’t actively wear a garment, there’s no reason to keep it. Declutter your closet with no hesitation – review all items one by one, try them on, and reimagine them into new outfits. Remember this tip – If you can’t decide what to do with a garment, do not hold on to it.
As you declutter your closet, keep in mind the KTAGS formula, which categorizes garments into 5 different categories – Keep, Toss, Alter, Give, and Sentimental. Here is a breakdown of them all:
- Keep – this is an item you wear regularly, as it fits right, is made of high-quality fabrics, and is in excellent shape. You can totally keep it in your capsule wardrobe.
- Toss – you don’t feel the best in this garment. It’s something that you either rarely wear, doesn’t bring you joy, or is an outdated trend. So, make sure to donate it and let someone else enjoy it.
- Alter – this item can stay in your wardrobe, only after a quick errand to your local tailor shop. Once it’s altered, you can mix-and-match with the rest of your garments.
- Give – this item is in excellent shape but no longer works for your current style. Since it’s new enough, you can give it away to your friend or organize a clothing swap.
- Sentimental – this is a garment that reminds you of a certain person, place, or time in your life. Since you won’t wear it often, store it away from your main closet to avoid clutter.
Assess Garment Quality
Before you introduce new garments to your sustainable capsule wardrobe, you need to make sure that they will last you for years to come. After all, timelessness is not only about the longevity of designs but also the garments themselves.
The main pillar of sustainable capsule wardrobe is outfit repeating. Sturdy garments are less likely to suffer from wear and tear over time, allowing you to re-wear them many times.
Besides, quality garments will save you lots of money, time, and mental energy in the long run – all while minimizing the environmental impact of your closet.
With that said, here’s how to recognize a high-quality garment:
Examine the Fabric
The first step in recognizing a high-quality garment is scrutinizing its fabric composition. When touching the garment, concentrate on its weave and weight – is the garment on the heavier side? is the fabric weave tight and dense?
With securely woven yarns and heavy composition, quality fabrics leave an impression of luxury. They have a substantial weight to them. Besides, they tend to feel soft to the touch with no detectable rough patches, piling top layers, fuzziness, or poking threads.
Quality fabrics always feature a certain level of thickness or density, which lets them drape gracefully without feeling too heavy on the body.
Prioritize Natural Textiles
When perusing the clothing label, make sure the garment is made of natural fabrics, such as cotton, linen, hemp, and wool, as they last longer than their synthetic counterparts.
To ensure that the textile is natural, you can conduct a quick test. As you touch the fabric, notice how the fabric reacts to your body temperature – does it stay cold and plasticky or does it adjust to your skin?
This is important to gauge, as low-quality, synthetic fabrics never work around the body heat. Natural fabrics, on the other hand, feature thermal adjusting capabilities and are more high-quality.
So, if a fabric warms up after you touch it, it is more likely to be made of natural textiles that help your body stay cool in summer and retain heat in winter. Such thermoregulation is a great indicator of quality – natural fabrics, which absorb your body moisture and work around your temperature, feature greater durability and are biodegradable.
Embrace Slow Fashion
Throughout the lifetime, your individual identity will constantly change. As you adopt new hobbies, interests, or identities, your wardrobe may no longer reflect who you truly are.
This may prompt you to purchase more and more items to renew your closet and revamp your aesthetic self-expression. Yet, reimagining yourself through fashion often leads to overconsumption. It essentially fuels the fast fashion machine, which thrives on our desire for novelty, change, and style evolution.
Fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, and Topshop are notorious for promoting the so-called throwaway fashion. Churning out disposable clothing, the brands tempt consumers with all the excuses to shop more – whether it’s new trends, influencer marketing, false needs, or last-minute discounts.
To avoid the ploys of the fast fashion world, follow these slow fashion principles when building your sustainable capsule wardrobe:
Combat The Stigma Around Outfit Repeating
On average, people wear clothes only seven times before throwing it away. The rate at which we dispose clothing is alarming – every 10 minutes, the Australian discard 6000 kilograms of clothing. And to make things even worse, today’s fashion is not biodegradable or sturdy enough to stand the test of time.
For the sake of protecting the planet, we must fight the urge to overconsume. And it all starts with combatting the stigma around repeating outfits.
We all know that outfit repeating is frowned upon, as it is deeply rooted in the notions of classism, consumerism, and even sexism. Women are expected to flaunt non-essential items to emulate wealth, which not only hurts their financial standing but harms the environment in the long run.
So, delve into your subconscious desires – what prevents you from repeating outfits? is it because you seek novelty or simply feel ashamed of being perceived as “boring”?
In any case, it is crucial to stray away from the throwaway culture – even if it involves taking a break from social media and unfollowing certain fashion influencers. Above all, strive to adopt the mindset of cherishing your clothing as durable, instead of perceiving it as disposable.
Stop Online Window Shopping
The itching desire to hop on the latest fashion trends haunts us all. As active users of social media, we are not immune to viral fashion marketing and its gimmicks.
When scrolling through an influencer’s feed or watching fashion hauls on YouTube, the feelings of anticipation and excitement grip us. As they advertise the latest fashion trends or last-minute sales to us, we can’t help but empty our pockets.
Truly, the hardest part about embracing slow fashion is detaching from the dopamine hits of the checkout button. However, it is possible. Here are some simple tips to overcome online window shopping:
- Unsubscribe from fashion newsletters
- Detox your social media
- Delete saved payment information from your browsers
- Block fast fashion websites on desktop and mobile
- Limit your screen time
- Follow a dopamine/fashion detox challenge
- Invest in repairing, upcycling, or repurposing your existing clothing, rather than shopping for new items
Choose Ethical Brands
Do your purchases reflect your ethics? Apart from micro-focusing on clothing quantity, composition, designs, you should macro-focus on fashion brands and their impact on the planet.
In other words, you should not settle for sustainable materials only and demand that your clothing is made in ethical conditions.
Unfortunately, many fashion brands refuse to disclose how their clothes were made – starting from chemical treatments to waste management. They only showcase what appeals to the consumers while harming the planet in the process.
Luckily, you can visit the B Lab’s directory, Good On You, Panaprium, Done Good, or Project Just Tell to see whether a particular brand aligns with your values. These databases do a deep dive into brands’ corporate transparency, social responsibility, labor conditions, manufacturing, and material sourcing practices.
Moreover, look for the following certification standards to evaluate fashion brands:
- B Corp
- Fair Wear
- GOTS (The Global Organic Textile Standard)
- Cradle to Cradle
- Oeko Text
- Bluesign
- EU Ecolabel
Final Thoughts
While individual perfection is impossible, we should all strive to reduce our environmental impact, curb overconsumption, and incorporate sustainable brands in our clothing collections. By this, we will contribute to creating a more equitable fashion industry.
A sustainable capsule wardrobe urges us to make informed and mindful purchasing decisions, which in turn, helps the planet thrive. It also brings us additional benefits that boost our mental well-being, such as eliminating decision fatigue, stopping mindless shopping, and celebrating minimalism.
So, don’t be afraid to kickstart your capsule wardrobe journey – a minimalist wardrobe is sure to make your life easier, more ethical, and mindful!