Imagine being able to pick any combination of items in your wardrobe and come up with a winning outfit. Creating such a wardrobe isn’t easy – it involves thinking more minimally and potentially replacing a lot of items. Here are just a few tips for building the ultimate mix and match wardrobe.
Start with base clothing
Base clothing is the key ingredient to a mix and match wardrobe. This is plain clothing that can be matched with any other item. This includes t-shirts, vests, and leggings and should ideally be a neutral color such as black, white or grey. Earthy tones such as khaki and brown can also work well as base clothing.
Choose your secondary colours
The rest of your wardrobe needs to be made up of colors that compliment one another. Black, white and grey go well with anything, but you don’t want to just stick with these colors. Choose a couple vibrant colors that you like that work well together. Complimentary colors are a good example of this such as blue and orange. These are colors that sit opposite one another on the color wheel. Companies such as Kettlewell Colours specialize in colorful clothing and are great places to look for such items.
Limit your styles
For your mix and match wardrobe to work, you need to stick to a particular style too. As with colours, try to choose a style that you feel comfortable with. Certain retailers such as Ruby Rd specialise in clothing that’s easy to mix and match. Certain styles may be a little bit more eccentric and harder to work into a mix and match wardrobe – these may be better suited as statement pieces.
Find some statement pieces
Your statement pieces are your bold accessories. This could be a wild hat, a patterned scarf, a quirky coat or some unique boots. These are the items that make your outfit and are the ones that show off your personality. You should ideally only have one statement piece per outfit. It’s possible to incorporate more than one piece on occasion (for example a matching bag and shoes), but beware of too many statement pieces as these could leave your appearance looking cluttered.
Divide up your clothing
Your next step should be separate each type of clothing so that you can easily pair up an outfit. Have a section of your wardrobe for base layers, secondary layers and then statement pieces. From here you should be able interchange pieces and always end up with an effective outfit.
