The Four Keys to Your Best Decade Ever: Style

Some of the biggest movers and shakers the world has ever seen have this odd little hack in common. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg famously wear (and wore) a minimal uniform. They both wear a simple shirt and jeans citing the reason as efficiency. They just have too much to create, build, and operate to worry about painstakingly curating an outfit every day. The selected areas in their lives to eliminate decisions, starting with their wardrobe to save time and free up their brains for other more important projects. This is an easily adoptable practice.

Starting today, you’ll no longer go to your closet and say you have nothing to wear because you see the value in having less that are quality faves. I am a complete believer in less is more. Less creates clarity and focus, helps you move into the day fresh and empowered. By the end of this post, you’ll have a few specific wins:

1. Be able to identify your favorite pieces
2. Be able to dress according to your lifestyle
3. Create a capsule wardrobe you can pull on each and every day so you can tackle your biggest dreams.

Identify your favorite pieces.

Full disclosure: I love a good closet purge. It’s the perfect blend of catharsis and Type A personality where by the end, you have magicked your closet bigger and made tomorrow-morning-you so blissfully prepared. Read all about how to double your wardrobe by merciless editing here. After you’ve subtracted all the sizes that don’t fit, styles that no longer speak to your aesthetic, and anything with a tougher-than-spot-treatment stain, you’ll be left with only what you love to wear.

Now it is time for a deeper, more intentional edit. This time, you’re going through each item individually and asking one simple question á la Marie Kondo: does this make me happy? If it when you hold the item and ask the question you feel expansive, lifted, there is a thrill in your chest, warmth across your cheeks, you’ve got a keeper. If you hold an item and you feel wistful, guilty, torn, shrunken, small, or itchy, you’ve got something else for the donate pile.

PRO TIP: Ensure you keep some basics like a white tee-shirt, a black turtleneck, camis. These items probably won’t spark joy the same way your favorite items will but they are still essentials in your wardrobe.

Out of what is remaining, take time and effort to organize and appoint them their rightful place in the closet or dresser. Think about how the garments need to be homed in order to preserve the quality and how you’ll need to access them each morning.

How to dress for your lifestyle

Get out your trusty journal or a scrap piece of paper. It’s charting time! Write the days of the week down the left side of the paper. Then think back on your last week and in bullet points write down how you spent your time and where.

Some prompts to get you started:

• Did you go for a jog?
• Run errands?
• Go to a networking event?
• Play hostess?
• How often were you at work?
• What is the dress code at work?
• Did you attend other social functions?
• Did you do housework?
• Did you work from home?

Now assign these categories. My categories are the following:

• Work
• Home
• Work from Home
• Errands
• Athletic
• Networking

Feel free to create your own categories based on your life. As you create your list, you’ll refine it and refine it until you’ve got a narrow 5 (ish) categories.

Now that you’ve got your categories, you’ll see patterns emerge. You’ll start to see how often you need elevated looks and how often you’ll need causal choices. If you are in a professional setting three out of the five categories, you’ll need to reserve about 60% of your space for work-appropriate attire. If you’re a work-from-home type, you may notice casual and athleisure takes over the majority of your closet. Knowing how you spend your time directly influences how much money and square footage you invest in your closet.

Create your capsule uniform

Creating your signature go-to look is a life saver. A capsule uniform is a small wardrobe of pieces you can mix and match that you know always looks great and makes you feel empowered, happy, or creative. If you always feel great in a long over lean look, then a streamlined bottom, crew-neck tee, finished with a dramatic floor-length cardigan, that’s your “uniform.” Your wardrobe maybe have a variety of streamlined bottoms, tees, and long layers (meaning you don’t have to have just one). Having a go-to look means you have a copiable, plug-and-go template your outfit always takes. You can mix and match within your closet with lightning speed, choosing a look that works every time! You’re in the closet and out the door!

We’ve all heard of the capsule wardrobe. A few years ago, all the influencers had their own blog or YouTube video all about the more efficient capsule wardrobe, how many pieces you need, cohesive color stories, and basic items. This post takes this idea a step further. It’s about simplicity and adding more clarity and time to your day by having a mix of classic and signature pieces that creatively emulate you and help you create a look in 30 seconds each morning. We are so excited to see you try this! Work through the steps and share on your Instagram Stories tagging us @starnerstyles so we can see your look!