Building a minimal wardrobe is a constant learning process that will, over time, teach you about shopping, fashion, style, and investment; sustainable fabrics, ethical practices, and quality craftsmanship. While there will always be new lessons to be learned, mistakes to be made, and knowledge to be gained, these are five of the key lessons a minimal wardrobe will encourage you to embrace in your life and become the foundations of your new approach to shopping.
Lesson 1: How To Be Creative
A minimal wardrobe teaches you to get creative with colour, texture, and shape. When you have fewer items, each piece will need to suit your lifestyle in a multitude of ways so you don’t end up with several pieces of clothing you only wear occasionally. This encourages you to define a colour palette, buy clothes that pair well together yet can be worn alone, and vary in texture, shape, and cut so your wardrobe remains interesting and enjoyable to wear.
Lesson 2: How To Refine Your Style
When you’re focused solely on purchasing and wearing clothes that make you feel and look fantastic you begin to develop and refine your own personal sense of style. Avoiding fashion trends allows you to explore the realm of independent retailers free of seasonal cycles with more unique cuts, textures, and shapes on offer. You start to actively seek out clothing that appeals to you, personally, rather than having to choose from the narrow selection of trend-led fashion from the high street. Individuality - it’s something the high street lacks but a minimal wardrobe allows you to explore without limitations.
Lesson 3: How To Invest In Quality
A minimal wardrobe is all about investment and with the higher price tag comes the need and desire for quality pieces. You’ll start to understand fabric and identify what differentiates a quality piece from a poorly made piece. Understanding and identifying quality is a crucial lesson, which over time is gradually developed from paying close attention to how clothes are made, the fabrics used, and techniques employed to create them. It teaches you that investment in quality pays off in the long term.
Lesson 4: How To Care More About Less
Fast fashion brands encourage you to enter into a “buy-cheap-and-throw-away” cycle; it encourages you to care less about clothes because they were so cheap to buy. When you invest in fewer, higher quality items, you want to take care of them to make certain they will last for years. A minimal wardrobe teaches you how to care for your clothing and to make sure you treat them well so they are protected when being worn, washed, or stored away.
Lesson 5: How To Quit The Shopping Habit
For a lot of people, shopping is a habit; it can be a therapeutic hobby, a short-term solution to pleasure or relieving stress. It’s an unhealthy habit that’s bad for our minds and our wallets. Breaking the cycle of "shopping for fun” makes you a more conscious shopper both in terms of the money you're spending and the things you bring into your life. Shopping becomes a chore (albeit a pleasurable one) as opposed to a hobby to pass the time.