My capsule wardrobe is pretty much geared toward work/church: business casual, jeans only on Fridays, dressier shoes, etc.

On the weekends and some weekday evenings, I dress things down.  I like to be comfy/practical and not have to worry about getting dirt/paint/food on my work wear as I dig for compost worms/make art with my kid/cook with my spouse.

Having a mini capsule for the weekends that’s mostly unrelated to work wear also gives me a chance to wear colors/types of clothing I love but that don’t really fit with my mix-n-match capsule.  And since nobody’s keeping track of rigid rules here, a few things that do match my capsule aesthetic bleed into the work week on casual Fridays, for maximum usefulness/awesomeness.

Here are the main things I wear on the weekends and post-work evenings in cooler weather.

Land’s End oversized sage green roll neck sweater:
Thrifted from the Salvation Army.  Comfiest ever, plus very chic with leggings when One is pregnant (which One is not).  Looks stellar with a pendant necklace but that ain’t how I wore it here…this was a purely temperature-driven fashion decision.

Seafoamy green knit sweater, Old Navy; thrifted.  A little bit shlumpy/odd length at work:

A photo posted by LeahLW (@thriftshopchic) on Dec 4, 2015 at 7:20am PST

But so comfy and a great color, so I kept it for home:

…and cut small slits in the sideseams to let it fall more naturally:
 

Ombre H&M sweater, swapped from a friend.    

It was too itchy for her, but luckily not for me.  I generally don’t wear black as it’s harsh on my skin tone, but the greys and whites soften this up a bit (and my toddler does not care if I look like death warmed over while we read together).  Plus, it’s just the right length to pair with leggings.      

I nabbed this stripey Mossimo number straight off the rack at the local Junior League thrift shop without even trying it on.  It was a brand and size I knew typically fit me; it was 50% off day (aka $1.50 grand total); and my child was about to come unglued that we were still—horrors—shopping.  Done. Happily it fit like a dream and goes perfectly underneath my lone hooded sweatshirt as a base layer, or singly when I work up a sweat but it’s still cold in our house. Bonus: these colors are not in my capsule nor are they my favorites in real life; but they are quite lovely, and they just spoke to me: wear something DIFFERENT!  Even if it’s only on the weekends.

And now for your pieces that fit right into the capsule vibe without missing a beat:

Ol’ faithful plaid shirt right here—worn many a casual Friday and weekend.  Seriously, this gets worn pretty much every. week. end.  Why fix what ain’t broke?

Yikes, that mirror needed cleaning.

With camel blazer + brown suede boat shoes for Friday at the office:

  A photo posted by LeahLW (@thriftshopchic) on Feb 26, 2016 at 1:08pm PST

Moving towards warmer weather, we have a 3/4-length sleeve Breton stripe tee from the Gap, perfect for when it’s just a tad too cool for short sleeves/no sleeves:

I pair with a blazer and jeans in cool-ish weather and frequently wear to work on Casual Friday, à la this very look ^^^.  But it also works peachily with shorts or knee-length cutoffs as the weather warms.

Do you have a mini-wardrobe that’s just for weekends/evenings, or just for cocktail parties, or just for ladies’ night out?  Or do you fit it all seamlessly into the same wardrobe because your style is just that consistent?

Scroll down to share, or click back to this post for some ideas on how to spread your style across your life so some pieces can play in all your wardrobes!

Caroline Rector has returned from hiatus and her capsule wardrobe blog, Un-Fancy, is back.  In her returning post, she shares where she’s been and how she decided to fire up the blog again, this time with a more relaxed, integrated approach to her wardrobe. Same principles, less structure.

As she puts it: “I’d say I’m off the ‘capsule diet.’ Now it’s just part of my lifestyle — like a healthy habit.”

Capsules are fun to assemble and to show off; for me, there’s something appealing about having just the right pieces and knowing I have a tidy, coherent whole.  Like you could tie it all up with a bow and, well, whip up a great blog post about it.

Capsule wardrobe posts generate some of the highest click-rates out there in the style blogging world.  I think that’s because a lot of us like the visual aspect—it’s clean, it’s lovely, it’s not overwhelming in an age of digital avalanche—and we like getting inspiration for how we could make it work in our own lives.  (Daydreaming about spending zilch time to pick out consistently great outfits…and just picturing how your closet will be able to breathe, to quote Duchesse.  Sigh!)

On the flip side, though, spending the time to craft a capsule and create a video about it and then making all of it public puts pressure on the capsule to be JUST RIGHT.  Can I really just scrap this skirt when everyone’s seen it’s part of my capsule and the fabric and color go so well with everything else?

(The answer is YES but it can be hard to remember that when you’re curating something, in part, for other people’s consumption!)

To be honest, I do like the limitations that a capsule-like wardrobe imposes—looking at my lovely, cohesive capsule reminds me that I have enough and have no need or desire to shop to fill holes in a poorly-planned wardrobe.

That’s why I like Caroline’s analogy of diet vs. lifestyle—instead of sticking to a strict regimen to achieve a specific goal—say, Capsule Wardrobe Winter 2015-2016—I can take the habits and principles of capsule wardrobe-ing and apply them daily.

Don’t love it?  Don’t buy it.

Love it but it won’t go with most of the rest of your closet?  Don’t buy it.

We’ll see if this relaxed attitude works this spring—whether I was following the rules long enough for the habits to have cemented themselves in my daily life.  :)

Don’t worry, I’ll still photograph my main sartorial squeezes for you so you can see how I’m putting things together.  Maybe I’ll even do another video!  It’ll just be more like a “core” than a “capsule”—the center around which everything gathers rather than a finite box with hard limits.

What works better for you—distinct capsules or continuous lifestyle habits?  And do you want to see spring clothes even if they’re not a traditionally concrete capsule?

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