How to Put Together Outfits - Fast and Easy!
At some point or another, most of us have found ourselves staring at a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear. This was me way more often than I’d like to admit, until I figured out how to pick out my outfit without overthinking.
In the spirit of spring cleaning and closet cleanout season, today I’m sharing the best outfit planning tip I’ve ever come across that’s completely changed the way I get dressed and decide what to wear.
It’s a concept called outfit formulas, and if you’re not already using them prepare to rejoice and make peace with your closet once and for all.
Outfit formulas is a concept I learned from the book The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees, and if you haven’t already read it I highly recommend it. Rees defines an outfit formula as a recipe for a specific combination of items that you can wear in lots of different versions.
It’s basically just a simple case of this piece + this piece + this piece = a potential outfit. Math has never been my thing, but this is a formula I can get behind.
Here’s how I put the concept of outfit formulas into action:
Take stock of everything you love and want to keep
(ie get rid of shit you don’t really like that doesn’t spark joy etc etc)
Categorize your stuff
What kinds of pieces do you have in your closet? I personally noticed I had a lot of flowy blouses, skinny jeans (sorry Gen Z), mini dresses, midi dresses, ankle boots, blazers, leather jackets, and chunky sweaters. Once you have a sense of what types of pieces you have, you’re ready to start combining them to see which ones work well together!
Try out different outfit ‘recipes’
You might already be wearing a certain outfit formula most days without even realizing it. For instance, once I thought about my clothes in terms of categories, I realized I often combined a top from the floaty blouse category with bottoms from the boyfriend jeans category and a top layer from the chunky cardigan category when I work from home.
If you notice any go-to ‘recipes’ that you already wear and love, snap a pic of an example outfit and write down the recipe or formula. Then, try creating new ‘recipes’ or formulas with different ingredients. Combine different items from different categories (ie a midi dress + leather jacket + ankle boots) to see what looks good together and what types of ‘recipes’ you can see yourself getting excited to wear.
Think about outfit formulas for different seasons and different functions
I love that the book also encourages you to think about the things you actually do in your day-to-day life and what you’d ideally like to wear when you’re doing those things. This step helped me a lot, because I realized that I like wearing different types of outfits for different activities in my life.
When I work from home, I wanna feel like I tried but also be really comfy. When I go out for dinner with friends, I like to dress up more and wear something bolder. I also reach for different pieces when it’s cold or warm outside, so I created separate Warm weather and Cold weather work-from-home outfit formulas.
Make a cheat sheet of outfit formulas you can reference
I like to think of it like a well-laid out cookbook, which would typically have chapters related to different types of recipes. So instead of Breakfast, Appetizers, Salads, Entrees and Dessert, you might have ‘chapters’ of your outfit cheat sheet encyclopedia like Summer Work From Home, Summer Office, Summer Casual, Winter Work From Home, Winter Office, Winter Casual, Sleepwear, Vacation, etc.
If you wanna get really granular, you can even list out all the pieces you own in their respective categories so that when it comes time to pick an outfit, all you have to do is pick a formula and fill it in with a piece from each category.
This process helped demystify my closet so much, because anytime I buy a new wardrobe piece I have a pretty good sense of which outfit formulas I can plug it into.
During the pandemic, I wrote all about the confusion I was feeling trying to figure out what to wear while working from home (since I was seeing exactly no one and feeling very unmotivated to “try”) and finding an outfit formula that was both comfy and made me feel cute was a game changer.
This technique I also hugely helpful when you’re going on vacation or traveling for work, because it makes packing (especially if you wanna travel with just a carry-on) a total breeze.
Here are a few of my go-to outfit formulas:
Cold Weather Casual:
Cotton turtleneck + wool cardigan + warm jacket + scarf + skinny jeans + ankle boots
Warm Weather Work From Home:
Flowy blouse + boyfriend jeans + comfy flats + light oversize top layer
Cotton crop top + wide leg pants + mules + light cardigan
Warm Weather Office / Outside the House:
Jumpsuit + ankle boots + hat
Midi dress + short jacket + ankle boots
Mini dress + knee boots (I wear this formula onstage a lot)
How do you feel about dissecting your closet and creating outfit recipes or formulas? Does it help you make better sense of how to actually wear the stuff you have?
