|
Wendy Mak is head stylist/owner of Smitten With Style, a personal and corporate stylist that is helping women and men of all ages, shapes and sizes to dress their best from head to toe! With a range of services including shopping trips, style seminars, wardrobe consultations and corporate presentations, there’s sure to be a service to help you. |
|
|
Now that it’s a new year, every fashionista should resolve to reorganise their wardrobe as a new year’s resolution!
Not only is culling your wardrobe is one of the most cleansing and therapeutic things to do in the world, it will also help you make room for the new season fashion that is starting to fill our favourite shops as we speak.
As a general rule of thumb, be ruthless. If you can't, enlist the help of a friend, family member or professional stylist. You're guaranteed to rediscover a long lost piece of clothing or a pair of shoes that you can put back into rotation, so you'll feel like you've bought something new!
Where to start
- Create four piles - Keep, Toss, Alter and Give. Get garbage bags ready for the Toss and Give piles (you Toss anything that is too ratty or old to give away, and you give away anything that is still in good condition to charity).
- Go through every item in your wardrobe and sort them into those piles.
- While you do this, keep a notepad and pen handy to jot down any “gaps” – items or pieces that you wish you had or realize that you need as you work through your wardrobe. You will inevitably you will find at least 3 things that you will need to update/replace or that you would find useful if you had it in your wardrobe.
- If you haven't worn it in 12 months or more, unless it's a sentimental piece like your grandmother's jacket or your wedding dress, ask yourself if you can alter it so it becomes updated or wearable, and if not, toss it or give it away.
- Having seen many many of my clients' wardrobes, I find the wardrobes that work most effectively are ones that are organised by type of clothing, and then by colour. So, rearrange everything as you put it back into your wardrobe by categories: dresses in one section, jackets/coats in another, tops, skirts, trousers, suits, so on and so forth. If you can muster the effort, organise each category by colour (so all black tops are together, followed by white/cream tops, etc).
- If you have a bit of an Imelda Marcos thing going on, take pictures of all of your shoes and print them out into a little booklet that you can flick through to remind yourself which shoes you have when you are next getting dressed.
Once done, I promise you will feel so much better. Finally you can sit back, kick off your heels, relax with a cocktail and go online to find all the items on your list that you need to buy! Here’s to happy wardrobes in 2009!
|
