If there is one area of my life where I could possibly be a minimalist, it is in my clothing. I love the thought of looking at my closet and seeing only the things I absolutely love! I crave guidelines for curating my wardrobe to be full of pieces that I am excited to wear and am always on the lookout for new outfit “formulas” to fall back on for days when I am rushed or feeling uninspired. Culling through my wardrobe and fleshing out much needed pieces to make my wardrobe better suited to my life is what, The Curated Closet, by Anuschka Rees helped me to do!
The Curated Closet isn’t just another style book, or a book alerting you to the newest trends, instead this is a book about identifying your personal style and building a wardrobe that is timeless to you, built around your style, and usable for your everyday life.
Identifying Your Style
In the first part of the book, Ms Rees takes you through an in-depth study of your own style. She gives you assignments to complete that delve deep into finding and honing in on your specific style. She doesn’t just suggest looking on Pinterest for 20 minutes, rather gives you a step by step guide of where to look for style inspiration and gives you a guide for what to look for in order to identify your personal style. Then Ms Rees then walks you through step by step, how to do a complete overhaul of your closet.
Curate
Ms Rees helps you clarify what you need in your closet; if you work from home everyday you don’t need as many formal pieces, if you hardly ever get dressed up you don’t need a million different pairs of heels. This helps you look at your closet with a critical eye and see the holes in your wardrobe. Ms Rees stresses the importance of taking time to build the core of your closet around quality pieces- and not just rushing out to buy the item to fill the hole. You want the core pieces to be ones that last you because you have spent the time to make sure they are really pieces that you love, then you can spend less on pieces that aren’t essentially to your wardrobe.
Simplify
I started implementing the advice in The Curated Closet early last year, and looking back now I am pleased with how my wardrobe has evolved. I now have several good quality core pieces that I know I can fall back on to build an outfit. I have invested in a few better quality pieces that I know I will have for a long time, and while there are still a few more core items that are on my list that I would still like to get soon, I also know that taking my time to find them will pay off because taking extra time now will give me more time to mull over the decision and help eliminate buyers regret- I haven’t had any buyers regret over the core pieces I have purchased to date!
Ms. Rees also sets forth several different methods to simply your wardrobe and make getting dresses easier. For example: how to build a color palette for your wardrobe, how to implement and use outfit formulas, and how to identify the quality of an item, (Hint: Quality has little correlation with price) and she provides a troubleshooting guide for common clothing issues and how to fix them- I loved this one!!
My Takeaways
These were my big takeaways from The Curated Closet, but another area that Ms Rees spent a lot of time covering is how to stop overspending on clothes- especially clothes you seldom wear! This section got a little bit lengthy for me and since I really don’t shop for clothes that often and therefore do not tend to overspend. I ended up skimming through that section of the book for the most part. I really appreciate the valuable information in this book and I think there is most likely at least a few nuggets of information that would be valuable for anyone- I even suggested to my husband that he might benefit from reading the section on building and identifying holes in your wardrobe!
If you are someone who struggles to find clothes that feel like you, or if you are someone who wants to simplify your wardrobe then I think there is a lot of valuable information tucked within the pages of this book, The Curated Closet, that you will benefit from reading, and if you do decide to read it let me know what you end up thinking of it!