It’s been almost 1 year since I took the challenge to define and refine my wardrobe palette, and how quickly that year has gone by!
For those who may have missed the original series a year ago, here’s a refresher–
Defining Your Wardrobe Palette:
- Part 1: Why Develop a Wardrobe Palette? Why refine?
- Part 2: Developing Your Own Color Palette Eliminating and admiring colors, truly admitting what colors you will & won’t wear, and reassuring yourself that you are, in fact, making a choice & change.
- Part 3: Evaluating Your Current Wardrobe Some pieces work– some pieces don’t. It’s up to you to figure out which do and don’t based on the palette you’ve developed.
- Part 4: Planning for the Future You’ve picked your palette, now plan (and hold yourself accountable) for the future!
In the past year I have found my shopping life to become so much more easy; my wardrobe is cleaner and feels more refined; shopping is less of a headache and hassle, and shopping decisions are much easier to make.
Cleansing my wardrobe palette was, in many ways, the magical little pill for my shopping habit.
At the beginning of the month, Miss Malaprop & I were on a shopping excursion in our childhood hometown, where I came across a pair of Coach shoes I had been coveting at a TJ Maxx (but hadn’t been in my size). They’re a bold shoe, I’ll say, and almost a bit preppier than I’m accustomed to. I wasn’t sure if I really liked them or if I liked that they were Coach and so discounted. It really struck me though, when Mallory said, “If it were anyone else, I think I’d discourage them from getting them. But they’re really you, and they’ll go with everything you own.”
It’s true. I’m now at a point where almost everything I own coordinates with some other pieces in my wardrobe. Getting ready in the morning isn’t a game of what matches and what doesn’t. Shopping has become easier because I can immediately discount something because I know it won’t work in my wardrobe.
That’s fabulous.
For anyone else on a limited wardrobe palette, or who may have taken up the challenge last year, how do you find it? Do you find the end product (your closet) a more fulfilling place?
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You know…I didn’t intentionally start the challenge, but over the past year, I’ve ended up with a palette of my own. It’s basic – mostly black, grey, cream, and tan – so everything matches. So much easier.
Alicia, do you find yourself deliberately looking for pieces that are those colors now that you’ve identified them as the bulk of your wardrobe?
Your palette challenge has been just that…a challenge! I’m still refining my pieces, but I’ve found shopping to be so much easier the last few months. Thanks for your original series, it’s been an inspiration. I’ve found my palette to be the same as the “bold” crayola markers, my favorites growing up!
Those “Bold” markers were my favorite too! I hated sharing them… I’m glad to hear that this series has been an inspiration– I’d love to hear in 6 months or a year how it’s going!
I guess it’s easy for me to match because everything almost is neutral in my closet. So as I add colour, I need to be careful to keep to a palette.
.-= Laura Connell´s last blog ..Crystal Renn at Chanel Cruise =-.
Love your example of the Coach shoes. It definitely is easier to make purchases when you know they will go with many pieces in your wardrobe. This series has really made me want to go weed through my closet.
XO Piper
.-= DailyDivaDish´s last blog ..QVC BE In-The-Glow Sweepstakes =-.
I’m so glad that you’ve posted these updates!
Rather than using a limited palette to expand the options in my wardrobe, I’ve been using one to expand my wardrobe in the first place as I clamber out of a rut. It’s not that I never want to own another colour, it’s that after ending up with various one trick pony items in the past and then getting bored because I had few *combinations* of clothes, I really wanted to make sure that as I expanded the range of my wardrobe I was able to use each new piece with as much versatility as possible.
It’s so helpful to buy within a specific range – I’ve become much more discerning about what I buy, and I also find it helps to mentally file things as ‘red skirt’, since I know if I’ve just bought a couple of things in that category I might want to lay off the red skirts for now and keep an eye out for blue ones instead.
I figure that that colour range can always be expanded carefully if I need it to be (for instance, I set the original palette with Spring/Summer in mind so I may want to expand it to add a purple come Autumn/Winter), so long the newly-introduced colour works well with the existing ones.
.-= Cat´s last blog ..Ties that bind =-.
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