Copyright: Kim Gerlach, www.sunandrise.com, published: 22.01.2020
"About me: Kim Gerlach has built her sustainable wardrobe since 2015 and was part of the VinoKilo family, latest as Chief Sustainability Officer. She’s geeky enough to keep an overview of all items in an excel sheet and can proudly say she owned less than half of what her shopping-aversive partner did. Yet, she’s featured in Vogue and other publications for her unique understanding of sustainable style.
"Getting rid of things you own can be a great New Years' resolution but there is more to it than that. In 2020, we’re starting a new decade. And this new decade has to be the most sustainable one for humankind. We need to reach the climate goal of staying below 1.5°C global heating, otherwise, we’re screwed.
And surprisingly, your wardrobe plays a vital role in this!
With a decluttered and sustainable wardrobe, you avoid buying access items and reduce your carbon emissions.
Together, we will look at how you can declutter your closet step by step and how to find out which are your most loved and stunning items.
Why declutter, you may ask yourself. Well, speaking for most who have gone through the process, the fewer items you have in your wardrobe, the easier you can make your everyday life. And that doesn’t mean you need to compromise in style! Having fewer items in your closet means more time for the meaningful things in life. It won’t only decrease the time you spend matching and combining an outfit, but will also make more brain space available. A calm morning while getting ready can mean a calm mind throughout the day. And looking at a tidy closet does heal the mind! Mine at least. And on top of that, a smaller scale closet can also help you be even more unique with your style!
Declutter, step by step.
Reducing the amount of items in your closet is not only a recent trend since Marie Kondo starred with her series on Netflix. And despite some recent critique (after her series on how to declutter, she now launched her own product range of stuff she’s selling), she does make some valid points on how to really get rid without ending up in too many tears.
Capsule Wardrobe: Decluttering in style
In order to understand what we can aim for, capsule closets are great inspirations. So-called capsule closets are collections of only your favorite items that are all combinable with each other. There is no set amount of items to achieve the perfect combinations. Minimalists need no more than 15 items, while other bloggers and vloggers talk about 40-50. Pinterest can be a great resource to find Capsule Collection planners.
To create those perfectly matching items, I’ve decided to ban certain colors from my palette. I don’t have much red, never had purples and avoid oranges too. I went a bit further to realize that my sustainable and unique style doesn’t fancy bohemian clothes or crazy patterns. And for the past three years, I’ve intuitively stuck to mustard yellow, dark denim tones, and some rich greens. Next to black and white basics of course.
Minimalist Wardrobe:
The queen of sustainable wardrobes.
As mentioned earlier, the ultimate goal of some is to maintain a minimalist wardrobe. That means to reduce the number of items drastically to the bare minimum. Laura Mitulla from The OGNC is a prominent style minimalist and shared her closet here. In late 2018, she owned 9 T-shirts, 2 dresses, 3 jackets/blazers and a little more.
Please don’t feel pressured to archive such radical change. Not everyone’s meant to be a minimalist when it comes to clothes. But you may be in other areas?
To declutter your current clothes, let’s jump into the process with the next blog post. We’ll have a step by step guide ready on how to tackle it all!