A Summer Capsule Wardrobe To Make You Look Great

Looking great in the summer is super easy with a Summer Capsule Wardrobe. Creating a Summer Capsule Wardrobe will help you get dressed super quick and look like you have a professional stylist at home!

Everyone seems happier in the summer. The sun and the warm weather makes people more likely to go out, spend time with others and take a little more care in how they look. 

Are my legs waxed? Are my toenails polished? 

Yes, Summer often means sandals and shorts or skirts!

I’m a busy mum of three, so I don’t have a lot of time or patience to drag my kiddos around a mall when they’d much rather be in a park or a pool.

So I like to make sure that I have a selection of clothes that coordinate well with each other and make me feel great and look put together at the same time.

Slummy mummy? No thanks! Not in the summer anyway. That’s why I created a capsule wardrobe for my summer clothes.

Capsule wardrobes

I fell in love with capsule wardrobes two years ago and I’ll never look back.

The benefits are that you have a smaller collection of clothes and accessories that can be mixed and matched across the board. Meaning, you can get multiple outfits from a relatively small number of items.

And the end result? Less time spent wondering what to wear, greater confidence stepping out of your front door and dare I say, a few more compliments about your outfits! (Not to mention less laundry!)

So how do you go about creating a Summer Capsule Wardrobe anyway?

I thought you’d never ask!

Well, I created an awesome printable to help you create your own capsule wardrobe. And not just for Summer, but every season of the year. You can download it here:

Download my Capsule Wardrobe Checklists here

The essentials

There are some essentials every capsule wardrobe needs to have. These are:

• jeans
• T-shirts
• One or two dresses
• One or two cardigans
• Casual shoes
• Dressy shoes
• Accessories

This is the minimum, and of course, your capsule wardrobe can have more than two dresses or no dresses at all. You might also have shorts and skirts.

But this list is a guide and it’s just the start.

A crash course in creating your own Summer Capsule Wardrobe

Ditch

Firstly, you need to get rid of ANY and ALL clothes that don’t fit (because they’re too big or small) and that doesn’t suit your body type.

If you’ve never read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, then do! You’ll have a totally different relationship to your clothes afterwards!

How will you know if an item of clothing doesn’t suit your body type?

Put it on. Have a look in a full-length mirror. Ask yourself, does this item of clothing flatter me? Is it working FOR or AGAINST my figure?

Does it make my thighs or arms look too big? Does it slim my figure? Do I look or feel frumpy in this item? Does it accent a positive or negative attribute of my body? Is the colour flattering for my skin tone?

If it isn’t working FOR your figure, then you can ditch it. It’s not doing anything for your body type, so why keep it? It would be like keeping a key that you don’t know what it unlocks. It’s clutter and you won’t be using it, so get rid of it!

You should essentially only keep items of clothing that work FOR your body type and make you feel pretty or confident.

Colour

When you’ve whittled down your clothes to just the ‘keepers’, you might find that you don’t have much left! Don’t worry!

A capsule wardrobe doesn’t need a lot of items to function.

Remember that basic list of clothes I mentioned earlier? Yes, it’s small, but totally workable.

Once your wardrobe only contains items that make you look and feel great, you can then look at choosing a few colours for your capsule wardrobe.

Why should you do this?

Having only a few colours in your capsule wardrobe will make mixing and matching items A LOT easier.

Now, everyone knows that black goes with everything. But, similarly, turquoise doesn’t. 

And though you may love turquoise, that doesn’t mean it’s going to match your orange shorts. Or your purple handbag…and your green shoes!

That’s because too many colours make it difficult to quickly pull an outfit together.

And so making a capsule wardrobe is as much about colour coordination as it is about utilising a few well-fitting pieces.

QUICK TIP: Get dressed quicker by only having a limited number of COLOURS in your wardrobe.Click To Tweet

Accent

I recommend that you choose two to four colours for your wardrobe that are NON-NEUTRAL.

Neutral colours are black, white, grey, tan and navy. These colours can be mixed with just about every other colour.

So, in addition to having these neutral colours in your Summer Capsule Wardrobe, you can add two to four ACCENT colours.

The accent colours in my Summer Capsule Wardrobe this year are:

And these colours are in addition to the neutral colours of black, white, grey and tan that I used in my capsule wardrobe.

Colour chart

In my Capsule Wardrobe printable, I’ve included a colour chart to help you choose complementary colours to accent your capsule wardrobe.

My Capsule Wardrobe Checklists also suggest how many tops, bottoms and accessories you can have in your capsule wardrobe so you won’t be left wondering ‘how many shirts should I have?’.

Feel confident

And once you’ve got your accent colours picked and items that fit you well, you can be confident that your clothes will not only mix and match well, but also make you look and feel amazing!

Plus, you’ll be able to get dressed in next to no time. Great, right?

Get dressed in next to no time with a capsule wardrobe!Click To Tweet

Want a peek at my Summer Capsule Wardrobe?

My Summer Capsule Wardrobe contains the accent colours I mentioned above, plus my all-season favourite neutrals (black, white, grey and tan).

Bottoms

In my Summer Capsule Wardrobe, I have a pair of skinny blue jeans, black jeans, white jeans and a jeans skirt. I like wearing white in the summer because it keeps me cool.

Any black in my Summer Capsule Wardrobe is reserved for evenings when I won’t be melting in the heat of the day!

I also have a pair of tan shorts. Those are all my bottom components.

Tops

On top of this, I can layer some T-shirts, vests and tops.

And a few cardigans and jumpers (because British weather is unpredictable in the Summer!);

Dresses

I also have a few dresses to add to the mix;

I haven’t shown you all the clothes in my wardrobe. This is just a snapshot so you can get an idea of what goes into a capsule wardrobe.

Accessories

Because I love shoes, bags and accessories, I haven’t given myself a limit of items in this area.

This is partly due to the fact that as a gigging musician, my wardrobe is also my “uniform”. And wearing a limited number of outfits at the venues I perform at would not be a good thing.

But also because I think that accessorising an outfit can create a completely different look and expand your capsule wardrobe even further without adding more clothes.

Pret a porter

Having a Summer Capsule Wardrobe means that I can be dressed in less than five minutes! It doesn’t take me long to pick something to wear because I know that my clothes can be mixed and matched with everything else.

Can I tell you how AMAZING it is to get dressed in a few minutes and know that I look professionally put together? It’s awesome!

But Elisa, I don’t have your clothes. My wardrobe won’t look the same. How can I create a wardrobe where everything mixes well with everything else?

Girl, that’s why I created this printable just for you!

In this download, I walk you through how to put together a capsule wardrobe.

The Capsule Wardrobe Checklists

So be sure to download my Capsule Wardrobe Checklists and create your own capsule wardrobe that will have you looking stylishly put together and feeling summer confident!

So, do you have a summer capsule wardrobe? Are there any colour combinations that you love? Tell me about it in the comments!