If you take the minimalist approach to your wardrobe you'll often find it leads to less stress, increased productivity, and less money spent on better quality clothes. You look and feel great because everything you wear is the perfect fit and style for you. A minimalist wardrobe is about curating your wardrobe so it complements your lifestyle. But where do you start?
One of the best tactics for creating a wardrobe full of clothes you love is to create a go-to list of brands that you have vetted for ethics, quality, fit, style, price, and service. It's more efficient to shop from a smaller selection of brands and retailers you know and trust. In order to solidify your personal style and create a wardrobe you love, you must identify brands that reflect your style and eliminate those that don't.
Curating a list of go-to brands makes shopping easy; it eliminates certain shops that never have what you need, prevents impulse shopping, and helps you to shop mindfully so you can be more considered with your purchases. Having a list of vetted brands means you won't become overwhelmed by choice or tempted by new season pieces when you need to buy something new for your wardrobe; enabling you to make better buying decisions
So how do you create your go-to brand list?
Five Points To Always Bear In Mind
There are five crucial points that are important when choosing your brands to shop from: ethics, quality, fit/style, price, and service. Always bear these in mind when adding a brand to your list. You might consider one point, like quality of materials used or ethics of a brand, to be more important than another, such as price or service. It's good to have some clearly defined rules as to what you will and won't compromise on. I have a rule that, no matter how good something looks or affordable the price, ethics are something I won't compromise on; I won't buy anything made of polyester and if the price seems too good to be true then it probably is. But all five points - ethics, quality, fit/style, price, and service - are crucial to your considerations when building a minimalist wardrobe full of well-made clothes from brands who care about the quality of their clothes, their workers who make them, and the impact the manufacturing process has on the environment.
Start With What You Already Own
Pull out your favourite pieces of clothing to wear, the ones you reach for time and time again. Creating a go-to brand list is about the style you are most comfortable wearing on a daily basis and identifying the brands who never let you down when it comes to finding clothes you love. Take a look at the labels of the clothes you picked out, are they all from the same brand or different ones? Run through the checklist and ask yourself: Does each piece fit well? Are the clothes good quality (check the materials)? Would you buy this item again? Are the brands within your usual budget? How was the service when buying each piece? Does the brand align with your ethics? Make a note of the brands you picked and which ones you'd be happy to shop from again in the future.
Ask For Recommendations
Recommendations are especially useful when you're on the hunt for something specific. If you want to clarify your personal style through the clothes you wear or fill gaps in your wardrobe, ask for and seek out recommendations. If you know someone whose style you admire, ask where they shop for their clothes. If you see individuals whose style reflects your own or how you want your wardrobe to look, don't be afraid of asking where their shirt or bag or shoes are from. Asking online (Twitter and Instagram are great for this) for general categories of clothing like activewear or workwear is a great way of getting recommendations for brands. It's important to stay true to your personal style and moral considerations when building your go-to brand list so always bear in mind: ethics, quality, fit and style, price, and service when seeking recommendations.
Make Use Of Resources
Don't rely on brands to tell you how 'good' they are, they will always put a spin on their manufacturing policies. Make use of independent websites and blogs to provide information on what brands are working hard to take care of the people who make your clothes, the environment, and animals. Ethical Consumer and The Good Shopping Guide are excellent resources for vetting brands based on their ethics. They provide independent research, information, and analysis helping you to make informed decisions about which brands to buy from based on their policies. Blogs, like this one, can provide firsthand experience with brands sharing information on the quality, fit, and style of clothes along with the service a brand provides. When building your go-to brand list, make use of these resources to ensure the brands you're considering shopping with reflect not just your personal style but your moral considerations when making purchases.
My Go-To Brand List
I thought it might be useful to share my list of go-to brands. These are the brands that, when I'm asked for recommendations, I share with others as the best examples of what I consider to be great quality, excellent service, ideal fit and style, reasonable prices, and ethics that align with my own.
• Everlane
• Thought
• People Tree
• Muji
• Matt and Nat
• Dr. Martens
• Wills Shoes
• Birkenstock
• Gossypium
• Oh My Clumsy Heart
