Building a Lolita Capsule Wardrobe #3: Selecting Supporting Pieces

Once you've selected main pieces and have an idea of the role your wardrobe is going to play, it's time to choose literally everything else.

In this post about going to talk about the "big" supporting pieces - blouses and cutsews, outerwear, legwear, headwear, shoes and bags. A complete lolita wardrobe, capsule or otherwise, also needs foundational garments and smaller accessories, but those will be yet another post.

Blouses, Cutsews and Outerwear
My little rule for tops is to effectively have one blouse or cutsew for each main piece that requires one, with a bare minimum of three. I normally run with four, two long sleeved and two short sleeved, and dividing between neutral and more interesting colours. I always include at least one cutsew, generally a short sleeved one, because it's great for casual, comfortable outfits.

I then supplement the tops with three to four boleros or cardigans, which generally works out to be the same as one for each non-skirt main piece, and I'd say two is the bare minimum you should have. I tend to choose more long sleeved than short sleeved options here since they're more usable - you can layer a long sleeve bolero over anything, but you can only layer a short sleeved one over short sleeves or no sleeves. For colours I tend to avoid having too many neutrals and go for more complementary colours.

In the overall category of tops it's always a good idea to have a variety of cuts, colour, fabrics and levels of fanciness. If you're looking for an all-rounder kind of capsule I'd suggest the following items:

• A long and short sleeve blouse in a neutral colour (generally white for sweet, ivory for classic, black for gothic) and design (no fancy collars!)
• A long sleeve blouse in one of the wardrobe's colours
• A short sleeve cutsew in a different non-neutral colour
• A long sleeve bolero in a darker wardrobe colour
• A long sleeve cardigan in a lighter wardrobe colour
• A short sleeve cardigan or bolero in a lighter wardrobe colour or neutral

Here's an example of what tops you may want to choose if we return to Kumya's Sweet Heart Check as the central piece of a capsule wardrobe.

Of course, this is just a rough guideline. An all-skirt capsule would need more tops than one with lots of onepieces. Your opinions on colour may differ from mine. As always, the key is to have pieces that are versatile but sufficiently different from each other.

Depending on your climate you may also want to include a coat. I'm Australian, so it's not something I think of too often nor do I regularly include coats in my capsules, but if you climate demands certainly add one.

Legwear
When I put together a five main piece capsule, I invariably end up including seven items of legwear. I'm not quite sure why, so I'm not sure how to distil that to a sort of formula, but I would say you need to minimum have the same amount of legwear as main pieces and can really just go up from there. It's such a simple, and comparatively cheap, way to really get some variety into your coordinates that I really can't suggest being limited here.

While in collage capsules I tend to mostly use patterned OTKS, in real life (especially if you're putting together a capsule as a beginner lolita) my ultimate suggestion would be to get plain tights or knee socks and simple lace-topped ankle socks in all available neutrals and colours in your wardrobe and then have at least one pair of interesting legwear per main piece. It's a lot of legwear, but again it's a pretty cheap way to spice up your outfits. Seriously, ankle socks are like three dollars on eBay and they look fine!

Headwear
I tend to end up with around the same amount of headwear options as I do legwear (again, usually seven items), and for much the same reasons - they're smaller and cheaper (I mean, unless you have an insatiable lust for Triple Fortune bonnets) so why not have more?

These are divided around half and half between more basic pieces, such as a solid coloured headbow or beret, and interesting ones - perhaps even one of the aforementioned TF bonnets. I do try to keep the basic items varied in style but hey, if you find a thing that you love, there's not reason why you can't stick with that and make it a deliberate fashion choice. There's a reason I own every colour of plain beret that'd go with my wardrobe!

Like with legwear, this is again something I think you should have more of IRL than if you are just putting together a pretty picture of a capsule wardrobe, and I'm also a huge advocate of supplementary headwear pieces - but more on that in the next post!

Shoes
Shoes are a topic that seems simple, but kind of isn't. I'm a self-professed lover of shoes because honestly, the right footwear can really make an outfit. Generally I run with three or four pairs for a five main piece capsule and I'd honestly say three is the minimum to have a well-rounded collection, though due to how much space they take up I can understand wanting to run with less and you certainly could. If you're going with a larger capsule I'd say a rule of thumb is to have half as many (rounded up) pairs of shoes to main pieces.

If you want a checklist of shoes I'd say you should have a match everything flat (or low heel), a dressy heel, and a boot. That covers everything pretty well ^__^

Of course, almost more than anything else in a real-life capsule shoe choices vary a lot from person to person. Maybe you can't wear heels, or can't wear flats, or need shoes that support you in a particular way. As with everything else, do what you need to and what you like.

Bags
My rule here is simple - two bags. One that's your "everyday" dag and one that's a bit more special or interesting. Of course, having just one bag that matches everything is also perfectly fine, but I think it's a fun way to add a bit more interest to you coord to have two available options.

With all these main supporting items your capsule is almost complete. If I were putting together a collage, in fact, it would be complete! But for a real-life capsule there are some smaller items and some concepts I want to talk about in the next post, so stay tuned!