Raise your hand if you don’t have a closet full and yet never know what to wear. If this is your case, you need a capsule wardrobe but what is it and how do you get it? Although Marie Kondo herself has given up, at MagasIN we give you tips to end the chaos in your closet and, in the process, define your personal style.

It’s time to say goodbye to overflowing closets: can you dress better but with fewer clothes? Yes, and the capsule wardrobe is the answer. However, this concept is not new: its origins are found in 1973, when the headhunter Susie Fox opens the Wardrobe’ store in London.

Located at 42 Chiltern Street, she aimed to “help women develop their style and confidence.” Faux had worked as headhunter, recruiting talent for advertising agencies, and realized that women, who were entering the labor market en masse, needed more self-confidence.

To achieve this, it was A more professional and credible wardrobe is essential, like what men achieved just by wearing a suit. And so he coined the concept of a ‘capsule wardrobe’: a limited number of quality and versatile garments and accessories that combine with each other, with which to better communicate our style.

“Intelligent people learn from their mistakes,” says Faux in his book Wardrobe: Develop Your Style and Confidence (1988), in which he collected the keys to reorganizing an overflowing closet and forever forgetting about the clothes we haven’t worn in a year and keeping only what you know you are going to use.

On his list of essentials, the first item of clothing was the jacket, in their opinion, the essential item, which was followed by a skirt, a pair of pants, a blouse, a sweater, a pair of shoes, some tights, a coat or trench coat, a dress, a bag, a belt, jewelry, a pair of gloves, a party dress…

His method forced us to be creative and combine clothes in different ways, with skill and intelligence, to enlarge our wardrobe without having to expand it or buy more. And how? through functional, timeless and quality clothing, “that is used more” because “women and men who go to work need the best clothing possible.”

Yes indeed, there is not a capsule wardrobe permanent: “If we apply the capsule to everyone, we have to ask ourselves: What is your lifestyle? What is the most important piece for that lifestyle? For some it could be a fitted dress to see friends or a crisp jacket for office. For others, it might be jeans and blouses.

It was also against excess clothing and impulse purchases. the first collection that Donna Karan launched in 1985, which was called Seven Easy Pieces (in Spanish, Seven easy pieces), which included seven feminine garments with which to cover basic needs, without complicating life.

With thick tights, a bodysuit with multiple uses, a white shirt, a pair of classic pants, a jacket, a sweater and a skirt, which had more than five options to combine with each other, the American designer built a more practical and less consumerist

“Do you have a closet full but you never know what to wear? The same thing happens to me. But with this method and my dessinetas We will create a practical, long-lasting and stylish wardrobe with just 40 items of clothing. Does it seem impossible to you? Well, you can,” he says. Saray Martín, author of the book The capsule wardrobe method.

This Barcelona-based artist, better known on social media as Dansvoguewas the first to take up the capsule wardrobe concept and explain, through advice and illustrations, how to create a practical and long-lasting wardrobe, with less than 40 items.

How to make a capsule wardrobe?: Through very wearable basics that can be easily combined and that allow us looks more or less formal depending on our needs.

To solve the aesthetic equation of how to achieve, with a limited number of garments, the maximum amount of looksit helps to opt for basic colors and not excessively marked prints or workmanship.

How many pieces does a capsule wardrobe?: The number varies according to experts, but is between 7 and 40, although most place it around 30.

What includes?: Tops, bottoms, dresses, coats, shoes and accessories.

What’s left out?: Underwear and sports clothing, and other garments for occasional use, such as party dresses, costumes…

The challenge is to wear only that number of items for an entire season, without buying anything else. And the honor is to ensure that the greatest number of them survive the change of season.

Like jeans, which can be part of both the capsule wardrobe summer and winter and, if you have them in three colors (blue, white and black) and different shapes (wide or tighter…), they can be used to style more or less dresses.

The advantages of this system are obvious:

First, it is an easier to build of the looks daily, from morning to night, so the task of getting dressed is simplified and, at the same time, you avoid having things forgotten or dying of laughter, because you never put them on.

Second, it helps to better know and communicate your style, your personal and professional identity, because it requires reflection before undertaking the cleaning, ordering and selection process.

And thirdly it is a commitment to a more sustainable way of life and more responsible consumption: reduce your environmental impact on the world. And, by opting for quality basic garments that, year after year, you will continue to wear because they are as good as the first day, you also save money.

Stores help a lot to find these treasures. vintage or second hand. And to see them well in the capsule wardrobe, it is advisable to put identical hangers, organize by color or by garment (the shirts together; then the pants, etc…). You dare?

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