PART I: Create a concept

First comes the fun part: create an overaching concept for your capsule wardrobe or, in other words: define your style for the coming season. The best way to sum up abstract, creative ideas and get a feeling for the overall concept is to collect everything that inspires you in one place (e.g. pinterest, your bedroom wall). Look for inspiration everywhere: Browse lookbooks, click through runway pics on style.com, scour personal style and street style blogs and save any outfit that speaks to you in some way. Once you have collected a big pile of pictures, look for themes. Write a long list of all the elements you want in your capsule wardrobe: specific items, colours, textures, trends, fabrics, combinations. Use all the adjectives and metaphors you want (ethereal, soft edgy-industrial, posh but punky), it's totally fine if the list doesn't make sense to anyone but you. If you like, you can also put together a digital or paper-based mood board to summarise your overall style concept at the end.

The next step is crucial for translating visual concepts into a functioning selection of items: pick one uniform or outfit formula. An outfit formula is a specific combination of items that expresses your style perfectly and that you can see yourself wearing a lot in slightly different versions (click here to read more about outfit formulas). Even if you haven’t yet consciously adopted the concept of a uniform, you might already have one: Do you tend to reach for the same combination of button-down shirts and boyfriend jeans whenever you want to feel extra comfortable? Do you find yourself pinning every pic of someone wearing a maxi dress with a cropped jacket? Your capsule wardrobe will be developed using your outfit formula as a starting point and include several items for each of its item categories. Also write down a few additional proportions (=combinations of items) to broaden your selection.

I use pinterest throughout the year to collect everything that inspires me, so when it's time to plan a new capsule wardrobe I only have to edit my selection and identify themes. I like to organise all style-related pics by seasons; this is my spring board, which I used to plan my spring '13 capsule wardrobe for this post. I want a simple, layer-less capsule wardrobe based on slim-fitting jeans/trousers, shorter jackets, flat, ankle boots and my beloved longsleeves. My colour scheme will be relatively monochromatic, with lots of white, black as the base colour and a few pastel shades.