Khushi Malhotra
When University of Georgia student Kyndal Coleman moved into her college apartment, she discovered she’d have to make do with a small closet. So she pared down her wardrobe to keep just a few versatile essentials.
Aarati Bhandare, who lives 9,000 miles away in Karnataka, India, has always kept a small wardrobe. Whenever she gets a new piece of clothing, she gives away two old ones. It’s one of many ways she lives out her commitment to a sustainable environment.
The two women are participating in a global fashion trend that’s taking off in the East and West: the capsule wardrobe, a minimal collection of interchangeable clothes that can create many outfits. It’s a newly popular form of sustainable fashion that relies not just on environmentally friendly fabrics or production methods but on buying less.
Fashion experts acknowledge capsule wardrobes can limit personal expression for consumers and potentially reduce profits for clothing retailers. But they point to many groups that could benefit: People with small closets — or budgets. Frequent travelers who don’t want to check a lot of luggage. Or business professionals now working remotely who no longer need so many office clothes.
“Two or three T-shirts, one pair of jeans, one skirt, one dress – that can set you up for success because you can easily mix and match those items to create at least four outfits for the week,” said Atlanta-based stylist Melissa Young.
Stylists and those who use capsule wardrobes say one of the biggest advantages is that dressing this way helps care for the environment during a climate crisis in which every action matters.
According to the United Nations, the $2.5 trillion dollar apparel industry is the second-highest user of water globally, producing 20% of global water waste. And 85% of textiles are sent to landfills, equal to 21 billion tons a year. This often happens with fast fashion which is mass produced at low cost, allowing people to buy lots of things they end up throwing away.
Combatting fashion waste, with sustainable wardrobes and other solutions, was a big focus at Atlanta Sustainable Fashion Week in October, which brought together vendors and officials from Canada, Italy and the Netherlands.
“This is a global movement,” event founder Tanjuria Willis said. “It’s not just specific to Atlanta, it’s global. And we can’t make change unless we all make changes together.”
CURATING A CAPSULE
Sha’mira Covington, assistant professor in fashion at the University of Georgia, said she first saw the term “capsule wardrobe” in the early 2010s in a book about minimalist fashions and closets. But among the general public, the idea has taken off much more recently.
While anyone can shift their closet into a capsule wardrobe, Young said the lifestyle is particularly well suited for business professionals looking for interchangeable work clothes on a budget – or, really, anyone who wears a consistent style.
Some make the choice at least in part to save space. Erika Messerschmidt, a curator at Rent the Runway in Manhattan, keeps a capsule wardrobe of work clothes and basic jeans and shirts in her small New York City apartment. She rents designer clothing for special occasions.
Others are trying to save money. Bhandare – who directs the Amulya Boondh Foundation, a nonprofit organization emphasizing sustainable living – said her first capsule wardrobe came as a necessity and not a choice. She grew up in a lower middle-class family and said her parents “chose to spend (their) money on eating healthy, teaching us various kinds of sports, maintaining physical health, learning languages, rather than buying new clothes every day.”
But capsule wardrobes aren’t always budget-friendly. While they can be built with thrift store finds and other inexpensive items, they can also include more expensive clothing that’s hand woven or made of high-quality, sustainable material, said Sonika Bhasin, a sustainable lifestyle and parenting blogger in India with over 60,000 Instagram followers. Still, she said, if consumers buy a small number of long-lasting clothing items, they can avoid spending too much.
Whatever pieces they contain, the idea of “squeezing maximum utilization” out of a clothing collection is common in India, so the capsule notion fits right in, said Matrika Bhandari, co-founder of Inkriti, a sustainable, gender-neutral fashion brand working with both garments and handicrafts to make Indian textile crafts accessible. She said the ideal pieces for a capsule are “versatile,” like a black T-shirt, or “evergreen,” like a favorite sweater or saree. Other clothes can be donated or recycled. “You can mix-and-match – again something that Indians are brilliant at doing.”
And a pared-down wardrobe doesn’t have to cramp personal style. Vidhi Adhikari, a sustainability influencer with 24,000 Instagram followers, for example, has a capsule made up of denim items, timeless black dresses and versatile shirts for a more Western versus traditional Eastern look.
Janhavi Poola of Tula Organic Clothing, a nonprofit social enterprise in Chennai producing handloom-spun, naturally-dyed garments, said whatever their style, people should buy clothes only if they need them because producing even eco-friendly garments consumes a lot of energy.
“If you ask me then 3-4 pairs of clothes would be good enough for your capsule wardrobe and the best thing to buy is chemical free products,” Poola said. “Less is more, less is enough.”
MAKING IT WORK
Still, for some, limited wardrobes have a few downsides – although people have found ways around them.
When Atlanta-based fashion designer Alea Riley launched her sustainable fashion brand ALEIMAN, she said she quickly realized that “women want options” and “sticking to a specific thing is difficult.” Some clients missed the variety of mixing and matching more apparel pieces.
So she came up with a unique solution: “I started to look at being able to wear things backwards, being able to wear things inside out, so that you truly have a different look,” Riley said. “That kind of extends the life of your wardrobe.”
Other people solve the problem of repetitive outfits by expressing themselves through accessories like jewelry, scarves, or ties, or accent pieces.
(Inputs by Cassidy Hettesheimer, McCain Bracewell, Asya McDonald and Roshni Vernoika)
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