If you’re here, my first piece of advice is to feel free to ignore any advice I give. A little backstory: I hate shopping. The last time I went shopping, I passed out. Just because I hated shopping. I’m not sure how qualified I can be to give fashion advice if I hate shopping, but here I am anyways.
My first (second oops) piece of advice I’d give is find the clothes you like the best. These are probably clothes that have stuck with you for a while. My personal favourite are these jeans. 1) They’re my favourite colour 2) they’re elastic so I can eat in them (important!) and 3) they can be dressed up or down. I once wore these to work at a law firm.
When I can be bothered to go shopping, I only buy clothes that I know can be worn with multiple different outfits. Otherwise, I am too poor to buy it.
My development of style is rather long, so the tl;dr version is here—I need clothes that I can wear for working out or dressy casual or formal but they must all be high quality so that I can wear them for decades and never go shopping again.
Because we have a uniform, I naturally have fewer clothes. I haven’t grown since seventh grade, so these clothes fit and are generally, basics. In order to look like I’m wearing different clothes, I have a ton of accessories. I loooooove accessories. To be perfectly honest, if I counted all my scarves and earrings and necklaces and bracelets and rings and hair accessories (as I’m supposed to do), I would probably be way over 40. I probably have 40 different hair clips and ties. I’m going to justify these by saying that these are all way better for the environment because 1) my scarves are 100% natural and 2) no way am I ever throwing my babies away! Anyways, accessories can make or break an outfit. Black turtleneck plus black jeans? Meh. Black turtleneck plus black jeans plus ORANGE EARRINGS? Amazing. Find your niche. It may be a couple pairs of snazzy pants or a sparkly dress.
I didn’t go out of my way to purposely make a capsule wardrobe, but my wardrobe (sans accessories) consists of fewer than 40 items. Heck, I’d say it contained less than 30. For me, keeping quality and durability of clothes in mind was enough to limit my clothes to a capsule. Of course, I wear uniform for most of the year, but I can’t imagine a time where I wouldn’t be happy with any outfit from my wardrobe.
That’s it. That’s all my advice. Find one area to focus on and be mindful of what you buy. If you are in need a more regimented course or lack self control, I highly suggest the 333!