Building a Wardrobe Week 3: Making a Shopping List

Now you have (1) discovered the colors that show you off to your best advantage and (2) gone through your clothes to find the gaps in the wardrobe that fits your lifestyle. This week it is time to take those gaps and make a concrete shopping list to work from over the coming months.

Be honest with yourself when you create this list. Maybe you need a lot of things to build a decent wardrobe; maybe you need very few. Maybe you are tired of items you have from last year and want to freshen up your wardrobe by giving away old pieces and buying new ones. It is okay if your list seems too long or too short. You have a budget and you will stick to it, so you don’t need to feel badly about your list.

Make a list of EVERYTHING you need based on the gaps in your wardrobe and your lifestyle. EVERYTHING means clothes, shoes, jewelry, accessories, and even underwear. Don’t be too specific yet about style or color — you should do a little preliminary browsing first to decide what you like. I generally use Microsoft Excel for my wardrobe lists because I can add columns if I like to keep track of where I buy things, how much I paid, etc.

Now, divide your list into two: one of things you are willing to buy cheaply/secondhand/deeply discounted and one of the few things you are really picky about and on which you are willing to spend some extra $$$. This is the hard part. Only list a few things — maybe four or at most five.

For my part, I am in the market for two things that I am willing to spend extra money on: a new bathing suit and a new pair of amazing sandals. Everything else I am perfectly happy buying off the Goodwill or Value Village rack.

Happy listing!!!!!!

Building a Wardrobe Week 2: Seeing the Gaps in Your Closet

Now that you’ve set yourself a budget and figured out your colors, it is time to start looking for the “holes” in your wardrobe. What basics are you missing?

For the past weekend, I have been performing an analysis of my summer wardrobe (I know, I know, there are 2-1/2 feet of snow outside) so I can get a start on warm-weather shopping before prices skyrocket. Thus I will set out some general questions and tips for working on your wardrobe, by using mine as a particular example. Obviously my preferences will be different from others’ likes/dislikes.

What do you like to wear? Do you feel more comfortable in pants, dresses, or skirts on a daily basis?

I love to wear dresses and (sometimes) skirts.

What do you dress for on a daily basis? Do you work outside? Do you work in a dusty library? Do you work in an office environment? Do you teach? Do you have a dress code?

In the mornings, I work in an office environment, and then I work in a lab with nasty chemicals and black lab benches every afternoon. Thus, my wardrobe needs to both be ready for foreign dignitaries, and conform to basic lab safety requirements (closed-toed shoes, skirts/dresses at least knee-length).

What is your daily environment like? Is it normally cold in your workspace? Hot? Dirty?

Both my lab and my office are freezing cold on a daily basis, so I need sweaters and scarves whether it be winter or summer.

A brief perusal of my current wardrobe from summer 2009 shows me that I have three dresses, four skirts, two pairs of cargo pants, and a pair of jeans. My collection of shirts to go with these (I find summer shirts wear out so much faster!) is scanty. I own three summer scarves, three sweaters in basic colors (cream, black, and brown) and two pairs of flat shoes (black and brown).

For a decent wardrobe, you should have enough outfits to wear for ten days without repeating.

While the pants are awesome for casual weekends, obviously I have some work to do when it comes to dresses and skirts. At this point I have seven outfits, and need three more. I will definitely need some more summer shirts and accessories (scarves!) to change things up. Time to do some eBay shopping and get to Goodwill when the snow melts!

What about you? If you prefer pants, how many pairs do you own? Some basic short-sleeved shirts in several colors and well-chosen accessories (statement necklaces, scarves) will take you a long way and save you $$$ on a bunch of fancy blouses that only match one outfit.

Now, make a list of what you need for summer!

Building a Wardrobe Week 1: Discovering Your Colors

Welcome to Part 1 of a series of posts on how to build a versatile, fashionable wardrobe on a budget, because you really need the basics before you can start playing with anything quirky or trendy, or even set your own personal style.

What colors you wear are extremely important. You want to wear colors that are going to compliment your skin tone, your hair, and your eyes, not clash with them or (worse) overwhelm your lovely natural coloring.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what “season” you are, i.e. what colors suit you best. There are a couple ways to do this. You could use some of your monthly clothing budget to pay a consultant from Color Me Beautiful to do it for you (my mom took me to see a consultant for my sixteenth birthday) or you could do it yourself. Many websites have tutorials, step-by-step instructions, or even quizzes to help you figure it out.

Once you know your season, I strongly recommend you buy the corresponding swatch from Color Me Beautiful. For example, I am an Autumn, so I own this swatch. The color swatches are indispensable when you are starting to shop; after a time your eye will get used to picking out the colors you can wear and will no longer need to carry the swatch with you.

I was approached last week by a male friend who said he liked the new blog but wondered “what about the guys”? Colors are key to male wardrobe as well — you don’t want to wear a suit or tie that clashes with your natural skin tone and coloring (God’s gift to you!) either. Here is website with a flowchart to help figure out your season and recommendations for suit, shirt, tie, shoe, and even briefcase colors that will compliment you.

How do I make myself a fashion budget?

Money has been on my mind a lot today. As I pulled my W-2 out of my mailbox at work this morning, as I wrote my monthly check for rent, and as I perused my bills due at school for the class I am taking this semester, I laughed quietly to myself at the idea that people on average pay $28,000 for a wedding and usually more. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again: money is crazy.

I realized that I didn’t even mention how I came up with a $200 per month budget for clothing. That budget is certainly not one-size-fits-all. Last summer, I called my mom to complain about how guilty I felt about a recent purchase and she (in all her motherly wisdom) suggested I set a budget for myself so I didn’t have to feel guilty anymore about my clothes and simply enjoy them. This is what she had me do:

1. Carefully, with a fine-toothed-comb, go over my bank statements for the past 12 months and add up what I spent total on clothes, shoes, accessories, underwear, and jewelry.

2. Divide this number by 12.

3. Start by budgeting that much money for myself per month. Later, if it felt like too much, I could adjust accordingly.

My problem had been that every time I tried to start a budget before, I fell right off of it because I tried to stick to something unrealistic (for myself!) like $50 a month. It just isn’t going to work.

Noting trends like (a) I spend twice as much as usual in November on Black Friday and (b) I spend much less than usual (almost nothing) on clothing in December, I budgeted my $200 and have stuck to it very well ever since. Not a shadow of guilt!