Articles on capsule wardrobes usually begin with the author singing their praises as a cures-all to the current plague of wardrobe malady. It is, after all, hard (at least for me) to conjure the image of the woman who does not wish to buy fewer, better quality clothes (none of which sit languishing in the back of the closet) while still being effortlessly well dressed with plenty of options for any occasion. And I’m no different, either when it comes to myself or for my clients.

That being said, even if you are a woman who works in a professional office 4-5 days per week and a Soft Summer, buying exactly what is shown here will likely not work that way for you. The reason is quite simple – it wasn’t chosen for you, so it won’t have taken your body type, your features, your particular eye hair and skin tone within your season, your personality, your lifestyle, your climate or any number of other factors into consideration. And a wardrobe, be it capsule or otherwise, that provides the effortless ease many women seek will necessarily need to factor in all of that. (As an aside, if you want to talk more about how to make it all work for you, I’d be happy to talk). This group of items was chosen in the abstract, and a wardrobe without a woman to wear it is, to a certain degree, just a bunch of clothes.

However, when women find their season, they can often struggle to imagine how those colors translate into actual clothing at all. So, I urge you to take this not as instruction on what should go in YOUR wardrobe, but simply as a guide to show how Soft Summer colors can be used in a real world concept of A wardrobe.

In creating these capsule examples, I have decided to use 4 neutrals from each palette and 3 colors. These were chosen largely because they are some of the easiest colors to find in shops for the particular season, and to some degree also to have a mix of colors that didn’t look too monotone. So here for Soft Summer we have off black, soft navy, medium-light grey and campfire white as neutral colors, paired with pine green, soft pink, and sky blue.

Women in this season often imagine their colors as a sort of watered down mid-tone buffet, but in fact many of the most commonly found versions of professional neutral staple colors belong to them, as Soft Summer has a relatively high tolerance for darkness, as long as it is quite soft. Likewise, there are plenty of colorful options here that can be used as accent colors, which won’t look faded or washed out when paired with the right neutrals on the right woman.

For the pieces, I’ve chosen 1 jacket, 1 cardigan, 8 blouses, 2 skirts, 3 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of shoes, 2 necklaces, and a purse that could be worn without switching from outfit to outfit for a total of 20 pieces. It’s not a miniature capsule, but it’s far less than almost any woman I’ve ever worked with owns. I’ve shown ten outfits, enough for 2 full work weeks for a woman who works 5 days in an office, though in theory dozens more could be made. This particular combination was envisioned for the sort of “dress for your day” offices many women I have worked with have to dress for, meaning that there’s a range from more formal outfits for important meeting days to more comfortable, casual options.

I hope this has been helpful for you as a step towards envisioning your own wardrobe in the colors that make you look and feel vibrant and beautiful.