Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
You’re standing in front of your open closet and wondering why you don’t have anything to wear. Sounds familiar?
You’re not alone, if you’re a woman at least.
A recent study has shown that the average woman spends about $104,000 on clothes in a lifetime. Yet 60% of women still feel like they don’t have anything to wear. That’s a bit odd, right?
Even though most of us have a closet that’s overflowing with clothes we don’t feel like we own enough clothes. But the problem isn’t really the amount of clothing that we have, it’s more likely the type of clothing. You might have a full closet, but not very many staple items.
80% of your outfits are put together by 20% of your clothes. These 20% are the clothes you pull out again and again despite the amount of choices you have.
Imagine if those 20% of your closet consisted of great quality and versatile basics, easy to combine and appropriate for nearly any occasion. Your life would be a whole lot easier. Because you’re using just a fraction of your closet, you don’t have to get a complete wardrobe make-over, just replace your old 20% with some staple pieces to build a wardrobe that gives you plenty of options.
Step 1: Decide on Your Wardrobe Staples
Before you go shopping you need to know what items to look for. Grab a pen and create a list of all the basic pieces you always wanted to have in your closet. The key is to only put basic items on the list, meaning classic pieces in neutral colors that can be worn on many occasions. A typical list for women would include a pair of dark denims, a little black dress, a white button up top, a neutral cardigan, and so on.
Depending on the length of your list you can either narrow the list down to a number of pieces that you’re comfortable spending money on right now, or you can keep the list and work your way down in the coming weeks and months.
Step 2: Pick 1-3 High Quality Brands That You Love
This is a very important step as you’ll be purchasing your wardrobe staples from these brands and these brands only. If we want to create a fashionable wardrobe, we’ll have to do quite a bit of shopping so we want to be strategic about it. Narrowing down the number of stores to shop at is a very important step in simplifying the process.
Pick brands that offer high quality clothing. You’ll be wearing your basics a lot so you want them to last long and feel great. Also don’t be shy to pick brands that you’d usually find a bit over your budget, we’ll talk about a way to get your clothes cheaper in a minute.
Make sure that the brands you choose fit your fashion taste. You shouldn’t pick a brand solely on pricing and quality, you need to enjoy the clothes they offer or otherwise you’re never going to wear the pieces you buy. That would defeat the purpose of our mission.
Step 3: Go Clothes Hunting
This is when the real work begins. It’s also the fun part, especially if you’re a woman. 
To make sure that you suceed it’s important to operate acording to some rules. What does your average shopping trip look like? Do you go out to buy one specific item and end up with a few items that have nothing to do with your mission but looked “oh so cute”? Yeah. That shouldn’t happen if you follow the strategies below.
Rule #1: Only Do Online Shopping
Online shopping is fast and convenient. It elliminates the time you’d spend driving, walking around and eating pizza on a traditional shopping tour.
It also minimizes the risk of impulse buys as you won’t be able to take the clothes home immediately. You’ll have to wait for them coming to you in the mail. Maybe that pink pair of high heels won’t look so compelling anymore after a few days of waiting.
Be sure to check the delivery options of the online shops you chose. Sometimes you’ll get free delivery if your order is big enough. Some stores offer free shipping for their VIP customers. Some have a reward system that will get you reduced prices after you’ve spent a certain amount of money at their shop. To become a member you usually have to hand out your email or your mailing address. Since you’re only purchasing your clothes from 1-3 stores this shouldn’t flood your inbox.
Important: Check the return policy to see how much time you have to return the clothes you don’t want to keep. This is critical as you might otherwise end up with a bunch of unwanted clothes that you have to pay for.
Rule #2: Always Buy on Sale
Buying on sale allows you to save a lot of money and buy more and better quality clothes. I haven’t paid full price for a clothing item in a year. It’s not as complicated as you might think and once you get the hang of it you won’t want to do it any other way.
Most people think that buying on sale means going through the leftovers of the last collection. The truth is, you can get items from the nearly all the current collections on sale. In fact there’s nearly always a sale going on, whether it’s a mid-season sale, some special offers for valentines day or an exclusive pre sale for their newsletter subscribers.
Shopping on sale is not as convenient as paying full price, but the the extra effort is definitely worth it, especially if you’re on a budget. If you have $30 to spend on a new cardigan you can either buy a cheap one for the regular price at Forever 21 or get a good quality one on sale at Ann Taylor -for the same price. If you’re willing to accept the quality of the Forever 21 cardigan as good enough, you could get yourself two cardigans for your $30 if you bought them on sale.
Sure, you won’t get the hottest trends right when they come out, but you won’t have to wait long either. Besides, every collection includes some staple items which makes it less important to buy from the current collection.
Before you finish your order, check coupon sites, apps and newsletters for additional discount codes or free shipping.
Rule #3: Look for Clothes with a Twist
Even though you’re shopping for basics, that doesn’t mean you should buy plain and boring items.
In fact, it’s important to look for clothes with a twist, that have little details that you like about them. This is important as you have to really like the pieces so you’ll want to grab and wear them whenever you see them sitting in your closet. Otherwise you’ll end up with a ton of clothes that you don’t really want to wear. You’ll end up where you are now, spending a lot of time in front of your closet struggling to pick an outfit.
Hello stressful Monday mornings!
Rule #4: The Love it or Leave it Test
When you shop online you’ll get the order delivered right to your door steps. While this is convenient it runs the risk of keeping pieces you wouldn’t normally buy just because it’s so easy to hang them in your closet. To prevent piling on a ton of unwanted clothes I came up with a little test that I do whenever I get a package in the mail. After I have tried on all of the clothes and have put back the ones I definitely don’t want to keep, I put the box and all the clothes out of sight for three days.
If I think of a specific item several times during that time I take it as a sign that I really want it, and I allow myself to keep it. If I don’t think of an item several times I have to send it back.
Make sure that you don’t go to long before reevaluating your order, otherwise you might forget about it and miss the return deadline. This happened to me a lot in the beginning and I can tell you, it sucks.
Rule #5: Only Keep Pieces that Fit You Perfectly
You’ll never want to keep an item that you don’t feel fully comfortable in, whether it be because of it’s material, style or fit. If you do you’re not going to wear it and you’ll end up tossing it out after a year of trying it on and hanging it back into your closet.
Even if you’d decide to wear something that doesn’t really fit you that won’t make it better. Wearing clothes that are two sizes too small or too big never makes you look good. A piece that fits you like it was tailor-made on contrary has the nice side effect of making you look very polished.
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If you follow this guide you should have a fashionable wardrobe in no time.
Build from there and you’ll never experience any “I have NOTHING to wear” moments ever again. I promise. Even if you don’t use all of the exact strategies shared here, you’ll still experience a good level of improvement.
Do you feel like your closet is stuffed yet you still have nothing to wear? Have you ever tried a strategy to change that? If yes, please share in the comments and if not, just tell us your worst “What should I wear” moment.
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OH MY GOD! Just one thing: THANK YOU!
I’m glad I could help.
This is great advice. I’ve been buying a few new pieces here and there, but have probably been a bit too frugal about it. Not to mention, I’m not shopping online. Maybe I need to rethink my approach.
The main difficulty I would have with his advice is style. I never know what is going to look good on me and have no one to ask. I think I would be returning a majority of my new clothes…
Perhaps you could ask some styling advice in either a smaller boutique or a bigger warehouse (with personal shoppers)? Alternatively, you can think about a few things when try to figure out what suits you:
- What style are you looking for? Sporty, smart/business,
casual? Buy staple items that fit your personality.
- Buy the right size: not too wide, not too tight!
- Look what colours go well with your skin tone.
I think that for men, a dark wash jeans (straight or boyfriend), one pair of smart trousers (grey or black), a business type shirt, a colourful tshirt and a woolen cardigan (V-neck, round or boatneck) make great staple items!
Hope this helps and good luck shopping!
That’s a really good list, Jennifer. I’d add a white and a black simple t-shirt that can be combined with anything and a good quality belt in black or brown.
I return about 90% of the stuff I order. If you want to lower your return rates, you should make sure that you’re not just ordering an item because it takes nothing but a click. I’m definitely guilty of this and have ordered way to much stuff so that I had to return most of it (yeah, what a minimalist approach..). You should really like the style of the pieces you order, otherwise you’re gonna end up sending them back and it was a complete waste of time.
But don’t be shy about returning stuff either, don’t keep something just because you already have it at home!
As far as the fit of your clothes you might enjoy this post: http://www.guystyleguide.com/2011/09/the-ultimate-mens-clothing-fit-guide/
Can you do a similar advice post for men? There are some common principles that can be transferred (focus on sales & online shopping) but I would be curious to see if there is men specific advice.
It shouldn’t be all that different for men, I just have a feeling that clothes for men don’t go into sale as much. Correct me if I’m wrong though!
Other than that the advice should be pretty much universal. I wrote the post with both men and women in mind.
I think the most important thing is to buy clothes that fit you amazingly. I think this more applies to men than women – women are generally good at picking clothes that fit them well, while guys seem to be terrible at it, so a guy in clothes that fit great stands out
Therefore I always try on the 3 or so brands I like in shops first, so I know what size I am in that particular brand, and I then buy them online for hella-cheap
With that said, I loved the article!
That’s a really good strategy and I’m thinking about doing that as well. As you can imagine my return rates are really high. My favorite brand (Esprit, don’t think you can get it in the US) doesn’t like people who have high return rates.
So I plan to pick out what I want from the current collection either online or in store and then go try these clothes on and take quick notes on the sizes I need. That way I only have to order once when the sale starts and Esprit won’t stop sending me stuff.
So thanks for sharing your strategy.
PS: Really liked the article you had about banning the s-word. True, true, true!
Iris, great post! Like so many other things in life and business, the 80/20 rule applies to our closets as well! It’s taken me years to figure out this very same approach, especially finding pieces with a twist. I I would add that this approach also applies to our jewelry. Investing in good quality, classic, timeless pieces, layered or worn by themselves, helps to extend our wardrobes and complement any look. I will definitely be sharing this post with the women in my life. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for your warm words, Carol. Yes, 80/20 seems to apply to everything, I heard it again just yesterday in a seminar in college. Really cool.
Great point about the jewelry! I used to buy a crazy amount of chep jewelry until I figured out that “real” pieces look 100x better. Now I’m using 80/20 here as well.
can sooo relate, of course! I used to have a walk in closet, 10+ pairs of pants, and still wouldn’t know what to wear! lol. and yep, it tends to be the same sorts of stuff instead of the actual variety I did have.
it’s hard to find quality brands in the philippines. since clothes are, in general, cheaper here, it also means its less quality. 10 washes later and they already have holes, etc! It’s frustrating when the styles are cute but the quality is just poor. Never thought about exclusively shopping with three brands only. I should try that.. I would LOVE to shop at Anthropologie but there are none in the Philippines!!
Maybe you can find good brands online? I don’t know much about shopping in the Philippines, but shopping online is always a good alternative if you can’t find good brands locally.
Hope that’s somewhat helpful!
LOVE this Iris!! I honestly identify with the quote regarding loving what I buy…yet hating what’s in my closet. I guess part of traveling (alot) is I have to lug everything with me…
If you’re traveling a lot minimalism might be for you. It’s definitely helpful to have wardrobe staples that you can build many outfits from when you’re traveling. So it might be worth to give these strategies a try!