On personal style...sewing a capsule wardrobe...

Over the past 18 months or so, I've been working on trying to build a capsule wardrobe...or more accurately, cull the items that I don't wear to reduce to a capsule wardrobe.

My initial inspiration came from reading Jennifer Scott's (from the Daily Connoisseur blog) book Lessons from Madame Chic which described her experiences during the year she lived in Paris. Whilst I'm not sure I will ever be able to reduce my wardrobe volume to that utilised by Madamce Chic, it did make me start thinking about what the core elements of mine should be.

Over recent months I've had some revelations about what constitutes my personal style...perhaps it is a reflection of getting older, but I'm more readily able to identify what suits both my shape and my style. It is actually quite liberating to realise which fashion styles do not suit me and focus on those that do. It certainly made reviewing my current wardrobe a much easier task. I was easily able to identify those less than useful purchases - often those I had made in an attempt to introduce colour or styles that were fashionable, but did not in fact much suit me or my lifestyle.

The one concern I did have was that most of my wardrobe is neutral (black, grey, navy, camel etc)...I'm drawn to brighter colours, but my attempts at introducing them were never long lived.

So, I've recently taken a different approach. I culled the colour 'mistakes' from my cupboard. Then, I took one of my favourite work dresses (a navy a-line knee length shift dress from Hobbs) and used it as a pattern to make myself some new options. Firstly, a lovely soft green in a fine weight fabric that will be perfect for work...

It is undeniably a 'colour', but is soft and subtle enough that I think I'll wear it quite regularly in rotation.

And then, using up more of my fabric stash I made a second version in a bright cornflower blue...

...which I think will be perfect for my time in Sydney in January...

Given the adage that we wear 20% of a wardrobe 80% of the time, I'm hoping that replicating a favourite style in other fabric/weight options will mean that I'm increasing that 20% a little...

And, now that this task is complete, I can now get on with starting to pack up my household non-essentials in anticipation that I may hear in the next week or so about confirming my flat purchase...