It is 8 in the morning. You have a meeting at 9 am. Imagine you’ve just 15 minutes to get ready. A wardrobe filled with many clothes makes choosing your outfit for the day very challenging. We fail to realize how much time we tend to spend on picking the perfect outfit for the day.
The word ‘sustainable’ seems to be paving its way into every sphere of life. No matter how annoying it is to see the same word appear everywhere, its significance is nevertheless going to remain the same or rather increase. This time, ‘sustainability’ is going to cast a spell on your wardrobe, turning it into a capsule wardrobe! But before that, I’d like to enlighten you with some information about it.
A capsule wardrobe is basically a set of a wide variety of clothing and essential accessories which would be ‘mixed and matched’ and worn over a specific period, typically a month. It is an integral part of sustainable fashion; it is not just the fabric that makes up your clothes which matters, but the way you organize and utilize them efficiently too. Susie Faux coined the term ‘capsule wardrobe’ in the 1970s. Though it has been around for a good amount of time, its importance has increased significantly in the wake of sustainability. It is a very interesting concept and here are some tips on how to build a capsule wardrobe and the reason to.
The process of creating a capsule wardrobe may be a little stressful as you will have to make sure it is as minimal as possible. A decent number of elements present in a capsule wardrobe is around 30-50, which would have to be chosen from your current wardrobe. But once a capsule wardrobe has been set up, no changes should be made to it until the end of the desired period. You could also design your capsule based on different themes of your choice. Once you’ve decided what goes into your capsule wardrobe, you must ensure that you strictly restrict your choices to the ones available in it only! It is totally up to you as to decide how you would design your outfit/look for the day using the limited number of elements you have. It may seem like you are repeating clothes quite often, but I’m sure you’ll slowly get the hang of making your own style statement in the best way possible.
“I would rather pick anything that’s in my wardrobe! Why should I spend time tailoring my look every day?”, you may ask. Fair enough, capsule wardrobes involve a tad bit more effort. But on the brighter side, as you unleash the designer in you, using a capsule wardrobe provides some room for your creative quotient to increase. It also helps you save some time as your choices are limited. It also provides you an opportunity to develop your style and promote an expression of yourself.
As I had stated in my previous article, sustainable fashion is indeed expensive, and the most sustainable clothes are those which are reused. In a capsule wardrobe, you use the same set of clothes for almost a month! In this process, you realize that it isn’t that bad an idea to shop a little less, to keep your wardrobe as minimal as possible and that quality matters over quantity. It prevents impulse purchases and in the long term, this would be a money saver. Another major advantage is that a capsule wardrobe can prove to be extremely efficient during travel. If some clothes or accessories in your wardrobe never belonged to any capsule wardrobe, then you could also donate or sell them. Being aware of the fact that the fashion industry is one of the major killers of the planet, the feeling of being a responsible consumer will kick in gradually as you start using a capsule wardrobe which may even lead to you deciding to invest in sustainable fashion!
A capsule wardrobe serves as a prototype in a world where resources are scarce and you are bound to use them judiciously. The best part is that at the end of the month, there would be a bundle of joy and satisfaction that you’ve successfully managed to fight a battle of your own kind and you come out looking nicer. You might also look forward to a new set of clothes and accessories, probably with a new theme. The little things that add value and happiness to our mundane lives must be given more importance; this could be one such little thing for you and in turn, for the planet! So, let sustainability cast its spell on your wardrobe now! Happy ‘capsule wardrobe-ing’!
About the author
Shivani Panneerselvam
Sustainable Energy Technologies Student
She likes to write about how one could walk the path of sustainability and how following that at the individual level could lead to seeing changes at the global level.