Whether you have budgetary, spatial or environmental reasons for a capsule wardrobe, this post guides you to maximize the number of potential outfits. Read how to increase your wardrobe options to get more wear out of your wardrobe.
- Who Said You’ve to Wear Your Clothes always the Same Way?
- Reasons to Create new Outfits from Your Wardrobe
- Economic Motivations for Shopping Your Closet
- Environmental Reasons for Slowing down Fashion
- Look at Your Clothes beyond Their Purpose for Outfit Ideas
- Create the Dress-over-pants Look with Items from your Closet
- Try a Midi Skirt under a Mini Dress
- Wear a dress as a skirt or shirt
- Style a Cardigan as a Top to Increase Your Wardrobe options
- Styling a waterfall cardigan in different ways
- Change the look of slouchy boots
- Wrapping up How to Increase Your Wardrobe Options
Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post.
Updated: 7/1/2022
Who Said You’ve to Wear Your Clothes always the Same Way?
Nobody!
This post illustrates several ways of wearing clothes like a waterfall cardigan, slouchy boots, suits and dresses in different ways to increase your wardrobe options with pieces you already own. While this post is a general guide, there are also posts that just focus on one item like for instance how to wear a sheath as a skirt. This general guide leads you to the special ones along the way. Thus, read on or skip to the clothing piece you are interested in to get to the more detailed tips and tricks.
Reasons to Create New Outfits from Your Wardrobe
This post addresses how to shop your own closet for new, unique outfits. It provides solutions to the peer-pressure to have a never-worn-before outfit at any given dressing occasion. Besides career and social media pressure, there are many other reasons to get the most outfits out of the pieces you already own. The most important one is to create a new look for yourself. Being well dressed provides confidence. Furthermore, maximizing the number of outfits is great for the budget and slows fashion down. We are all about more environmentally friendly fashion, right?
Economic Motivations for Shopping Your Closet
Unless you are a heiress like Paris and Nikki Hilton, you are most likely on a budget fashion-wise. For instance, buying new clothes to get a new look yields to a crowded closet. It becomes unmanageable, because you can’t see what you have. Consequently, you never wear some of your beautiful clothes. The next step would be to buy another outfit. It’s easy to see that this feedback loop is unsustainable on the long run.
Another reason to shop your closet is economy in its widest sense. You probably want to use your clothes in an efficient way. This doesn’t mean to wear them until they fall apart like a Hippie in Flower Power Style. However, you want to wear them a certain amount of times before you consign them or give them to charity. Or you strive for a threshold cost-per-wear like I do.
Of course, you can’t wear everything with everything.
Environmental Reasons for Slowing Down Fashion
You may also be concerned about the environmental impacts of your fashion consumption. Even when you commit to buy Made in Your Country there are emission from transport, polluted water from dye, maybe fertilizers from growing cotton, irrigation or soil loss from overgrazing involved. Certain treatments of colored denim lead to airborne particles and dust-lungs in textile workers.
Look at Your Clothes beyond Their Purpose for Outfit Ideas
Look at a dress as a shirt or skirt. A cardigan can function as a top as well. Also take trends for inspiration to make new outfits with what you have. Lately, for instance, wearing a dress over pants is a big It thing. Of course, you can waste your money and buy one of the “pre-styled” dress with pants outfit. But guess what, unless you wear the dress without the pants or the pants without the dress you only get one trendy new look.
Try the dress-over-pants look with items from your closet
It is easy to style a dress with pants. Denim-on-denim is always a good idea in this case. But there are many other possibilities how to make a nice outfit with this trend. When the colors and style don’t clash, you can pair any straight print dress with pants. Use a belt to get nice proportions and to make the outfit look better. Straight black pants or slim leather pants with an A-style printed or texture dress are also good candidates for the look.
Doing the dress-over-pants styling yourself provides you with many additional outfits.
Try a Midi Skirt Under a Mini Dress
Another way how to make new outfits is to put a midi skirt under a mini dress. This dropped waist look permits you to wear your summer clothes in the transition season. When you live in a climate region with short spring and fall this tricks saves you the money for these seasonal wardrobes. The following inspiration photos illustrate the concept of increasing your wardrobe options by wearing a mini dress as top.
Wear a Dress as a Shirt or Skirt
One of my favorite tricks to get more wear out of my wardrobe is to look at a dress also as a shirt or a skirt. Would you think that the top in the next two photos is actually a dress from summer?
Stylist tip: Wear a dress as a skirt or shirt for more chic outfits from your wardrobe.
You can see the great summer dress styled as such in the post at the link. The next two photos show examples of how to style a fit-and-flare polka dot dress as a skirt to get more wear out of your wardrobe.
Style a Cardigan as a Top to Increase Your Wardrobe Options
I think I have worn the cardigan shown in the photos above more often as a top than as a cardigan. 😉 How is that? Alaska is cold most of the year, does that count as an excuse? Or is “I hate ironing blouses or shirts” a better one? LOL.
Styling a Waterfall Cardigan in Different Ways
The following outfit inspirations illustrate several ways of wearing a waterfall cardigan. Why not knotting the sleeves around your neck and wear it as a scarf? From the front this styling trick look like a scarf. From the side, the tails of the waterfall cardigan look like a stylish oversize scarf or cape. The photos below feature the cardigan worn open and in form of a wrap top.
Change the Look of Slouchy boots
The photo above shows an example how boot toppers enlarge your shoe wardrobe options. But you can even go beyond. The “booties” in the outfit below are actually slouchy boots rolled down!
Slouchy Boots …
… rolled down to booties
Look at Other Clothes and Their Options
Don’t stop with the boots and cardigan. Be creative!
Knot a maxi dress at the hem to create a mini dress. #styletip Click To Tweet- Knot a blouse or shirt.
- Use accessories to vary the look of your outerwear.
- Get inspired by these 17 stunning looks with a pink biker jacket.
For variations on how to wear the shearling coat shown in the photo below see five tips to style your outerwear to avoid winter boredom.
When you liked the outfit recipes of this post, and want recipes for all kind of dressing situation in midlife, buy my book How to Dress for Success in Midlife.
Wrapping Up How to Increase Your Wardrobe Options
Be creative. Think about how to recycle your wardrobe items in many ways. Get inspirations from colors. Ask yourself what pieces of your closet could you wear in a different way? Try to get more outfits of the items you already own with these above easy to copy tricks. Which outfit idea pops up in your mind with your own pieces?
Photos of me: G. Kramm
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