Capsule Wardrobe

The term was coined in 1970s London by Susie Faux, who ran a boutique called Wardrobe and spent her days persuading professional women that they needed fewer clothes rather than more. Her argument was that a small number of well-chosen, well-made pieces, in colours that agreed with one another, would dress a woman better than a full cupboard bought piecemeal. It was advice against her own immediate commercial interest, which is part of why it was believed.

Seven Easy Pieces

The idea reached scale in 1985, when Donna Karan launched her first collection under her own name and built it around a bodysuit and a handful of components that could be recombined into a working week. Seven Easy Pieces gave the capsule a form that could be photographed, merchandised and taught, and it arrived at the precise moment a generation of women needed clothes for offices that had only lately admitted them. Almost every subsequent version of the concept is a restatement of that collection.

Two Words That Are Not the Same

A capsule wardrobe should not be confused with a capsule collection, though the retail language has done its best to conflate them. The first is a philosophy of buying: a restricted, coherent set of garments intended to be worn constantly for years. The second is a philosophy of selling — a small, tightly edited release, frequently a collaboration, designed to be exhausted quickly and never repeated. One argues for permanence, the other for urgency, and a house will often make both arguments in the same season without embarrassment.

For the luxury sector the capsule is an unusually comfortable idea, because cost per wear is a persuasive case for a very good coat. It is also the language clients increasingly use themselves, and advisors who can build a coherent wardrobe rather than close a single sale tend to keep those clients for a very long time.