Building a Lolita Capsule Wardrobe #1: What is a Capsule Wardrobe?

If you've read my blog for a little while, you'll know I love capsule wardrobes. In theory at least, in real life I'm all about having all the different things, but capsules are great thought experiments for me - and also have some real life use when travelling! They're also a sensible way to start building a lolita wardrobe so I'm hoping to share some of my thoughts and strategies around capsule wardrobes in this series of posts.

First of all, what actually is a capsule wardrobe? The lady who coined the term back in the 70s defined it as a small collection of timeless fashionable pieces that could then be augmented with seasonal items. More recently, we see things like Project 333 popping up which specify the number of pieces in your capsule and the amount of time before you make seasonal changes. My personal definition is that a capsule wardrobe is a limited collection that is mindfully designed so each item works well with the others so it's both easy to dress yourself from and provides varied outfits.

My personal definition of a lolita capsule wardrobe is a cohesive collection of 2-6 main pieces and the appropriate supporting items. I feel like 7+ main pieces really puts you into the territory of it just being a small wardrobe, not a capsule per se. And having only a single main piece, even if you have a few different ways of wearing it, doesn't really classify as a wardrobe for me either. Of course, it doesn't really matter but it's my blog, so therefore I say that a lolita capsule wardrobe needs to be based around 2-6 main pieces.

If you are putting together a capsule wardrobe for actual use, whether because you're on a budget, have limited space, or are travelling, there are two big things to consider before you start putting things together.

The first is to know what you actually need. Admittedly, this is not something I tend to think about much when putting together hypothetical capsules, but for real life use it's essential. Things like frequency of wear, climate, events, and most importantly what you'll actually wear are really key factors.

I find the last point is actually the more important one, and one that I find I, at least, often don't consider adequately. I love heeled shoes. I rarely wear heeled shoes. Guess who forgets this on a regular basis? You have to know what you're actually going to wear and get good use out of in a capsule. Obviously, if you're using capsule principles to start a lolita wardrobe things get a little trickier as you don't have experience behind you but still, if you sit and think about what you are likely to wear instead of what looks prettiest it will help you narrow things down.

As a lolita example, if you tend to only wear lolita to large events like conventions and tea parties and these are mostly held in winter in your country you'll approach your capsule knowing you want more OTT pieces and warm things for layering.

The other thing to think about is colours. A capsule is by nature going to be somewhat limited in terms of colours, and I find that the best way to approach it is to have a primary colour, a neutral, and two supporting colours. For example you may have a sweet lolita capsule based on lavender, with white as a neutral and pink and mint as supporting colours. This doesn't mean that every main piece should be lavender, but they should all work with lavender while the white is there as a base and the other colours provide interest and contrast.

One way to go about selecting colours is to have one main piece that the rest of the wardrobe is built around, and work from there. If you're starting out this may be your first lolita dress, or if you're making a capsule for travel it may be the piece you think you'll wear the most.

Let's say you had the above dress as a starting point, which is BTSSB's Kumya's Sweet Heart Check. Your main colour would be sax blue, with white as a neutral then pink and either chocolate brown or red as supporting colours. Obviously it's not 100% cut and dried, but it can be a helpful starting point.

Of course, you can have an even more reduced colour scheme in a capsule, and sometimes that does make matching things easier, but I find it also makes things very samey. As I said at the start, while a capsule is all about cohesion, in my mind it also needs to yield as much variety as possible. Especially in a fashion like lolita you don't want to wear the same thing over and over, and building a capsule that is too limited puts you in that situation. The biggest challenge with a capsule is balancing variety with cohesion, and hopefully in this series of posts I can illuminate how best to do that.

Next post in this series will be focussed on choosing the main pieces for a capsule!