“Shine is my favorite color” ~Marc Jacobs

Today I want to talk about the core items in your closet. Your core items are the garments you wear most – they’re the key items, the foundation, and the heart of your closet. These items are versatile go-to’s that fit with almost everything in your closet. Garments are versatile when you have professional trousers for work that are also easy to combine casually with a white T-shirt, a sweater, and sneakers, for example.

Confident Closet
In previous posts, we have navigated our way toward curating your Confident Closet. The ultimate goal is to have a closet that reflects your Style Personality and values. This will result in saving time and money and is ultimately better for our planet and the people who are making our clothes.

Your Confident Closet is made out of your essentials and accent pieces. So where do the core items live? Your core items are the inner circle, the heart so to speak, of your essentials. Do you remember the circle I drew for your essentials and accent pieces? The core items are the very heart of this illustration, and therefore for your closet and outfits.

Core items in your closet
Do you remember the rules for the essentials? These are often timeless pieces, and because the core items are the heart of the essentials, the same rules apply. This results in not having to invest in new clothing every season. The items feel just as relevant this year as they did last year. This means more money for things that actually matter. What adds value to your life? What brings you joy, or gives you a sense of meaning and fulfillment?

Think about the items you wear most. Can you identify your key items? This can be as few as 5 garments, but also could be 15 – this all depends on your Style Personality.

A Conscious Closet results in not having to invest in new clothing every season

Values for your Conscious Closet
Now I want you to think about what you want from your Conscious Closet. Do you want to save time in the morning? Do you want to create more space and money for experiences that really add value to you? As I’ve mentioned often (and will continue doing so), curating a Conscious Closet will save you time and money. If this is all you wish for, that’s great!

And if you want to take it a step further, then we could talk about the term sustainable wardrobe. My wish is to encourage you to stop mindless consumption. We will always need clothes, that is a given. Consumption is not the problem – the addiction to careless consumption is. If you value your health, and the wellbeing of people overall, a sustainable wardrobe is the way forward. Your money is your vote for the fashion industry. You have an influence on what the future is for fashion and its ethics. When you purchase from a brand with values that are better for the earth and people, it will increase supply. And as supply increases, price decreases, which makes it accessible to more people.

Sustainable wardrobe
There is no clear definition of sustainable fashion or a sustainable closet. Which is great for you, because now you can define it according to your values. My aim is to inform you about all the different levels of clothes and brands, so you can easily recognize whether a brand fits the values of your sustainable closet. For example, we can define brands and clothes in terms of fabric type and quality, as well as a brand’s ethical standards for labor and the environment.

There is absolutely no judgment here – ‘sustainable fashion’ is not black and white. Where one brand does great in using natural fabrics, they might not be transparent on how and where their clothes are made.

Sustainability: the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level

It can also be, for budget reasons, that you still purchase your clothes from fast fashion brands. Even though I encourage you to buy better quality (which usually costs a bit more, but pays off in the long run), there are definitely some good items for sale at high street fashion, but you just need to know what to look for. There are still some items from fast fashion chains that have been living in my closet for years.

A sustainable closet could also just simply be that you wear your garments for a longer time, rather than one season. For me, sustainability means taking care of XYZ. And this extends to taking care of the item, but also to everyone involved in the process – from farmers to retail. This is the initial goal of curating your Conscious Closet.

Curating your sustainable Conscious Closet
The core items would be a good place to start in curating and upgrading towards a sustainable Conscious Closet. This is where it really pays to shop for quality since you wear these items the most. When you invest in quality, you will take better care of these items. And it’s easier to take care of 10 items than it is for 100 items. But remember to first make the most of everything you already have – when it’s time to replace an item, you can purchase a replacement that better aligns with your values.

In the coming blog posts, we will dive deeper into exercises that help you define your values for a sustainable closet. We will also start looking at the values and ethics of individual brands to help you make informed decisions.

Imagine you only wear your core items for a week. How does that thought make you feel? What do you think your biggest challenge will be?

Thank you for reading.
We’re in this together.
~