After years of working one-on-one with women and their wardrobes, I have learned that no two closets are exactly alike, but the problems hiding inside them are remarkably consistent.
There are the women who arrive convinced they need an entirely new wardrobe, as though everything they own has somehow become unusable at once. There are the women who have spent years buying beautiful pieces that never quite became outfits. There are women who have decided that certain silhouettes simply do not work for them, and others who have accumulated so many versions of one particular item that they can no longer see what else their wardrobe might be capable of.
What is interesting is that very few of these women actually need what they think they need. Most do not need to start over. They need to understand what is happening.
That is why I don’t begin my work with shopping. The first part of my process is about looking closely at what is already there: what is working, what is missing, what is being overused, what no longer reflects the woman wearing it, and where she is repeatedly getting stuck. Once those patterns become visible, the solution is almost always more specific, and much less overwhelming, than she expected.
Over time, a few particular lessons have emerged again and again.
1) We are often much better at buying clothes than understanding why we aren’t wearing them.
One of the most common things I see is a woman who has become exceptionally good at one particular category of dressing. She has the perfect blazers. She knows exactly which cut works for her, has found the right color, and has accumulated enough variations to make the collection look almost like a strategy. When she doesn’t know what to wear, she reaches for another blazer.
At first glance, this looks like a wardrobe strength. In reality, it can be a crutch.
I have worked with women who own beautiful blazers but have very little in the way of trousers that work with them, shoes that feel current, or foundational pieces that make the entire outfit feel intentional. The blazer is being asked to do all the work. It is expected to create polish regardless of what surrounds it, and eventually the woman concludes that she needs yet another blazer because somehow the formula still isn’t working.
The same thing happens with beautiful sweaters, excellent denim, dresses, or statement accessories. A woman finds the category that makes her feel safe and then leans on it so heavily that the rest of her wardrobe never develops.
The solution is not to take away the blazer. In fact, I may love the blazer just as much as she does. The solution is to build enough other formulas around it that she no longer needs it to rescue an outfit. A wardrobe should have range. It should be able to move between polished and relaxed, familiar and unexpected, without requiring one particular piece to make everything feel finished.
That is one of the first things I have learned about creating a wardrobe that actually works: the strongest wardrobes are not necessarily the ones with the most exceptional individual pieces. They are the ones in which the pieces work exceptionally well together.