Building a wardrobe isn’t something you do overnight. It’s not a checklist that you can read on a blog or forum and follow. Sure, there are many general guidelines you can follow and “wardrobe must-haves” that should be in your closet, but the process isn’t as simple and sterile and straightforward.

Just like an off-the-rack suit won’t fit every guy the same (or even correctly) despite all the guys being the same size, neither does there exist a wardrobe that is universal to everyone. If that was the case, we’d all look like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek.

If you’re a student, then your wardrobe is obviously different than if you’re an office drone. The investment banker doesn’t have the same wardrobe needs as the startup employee who works in a place where business casual is getting “really dressed up” and involves a shirt with more than three buttons. We all have different lives, different jobs and different tastes – so, really, we’d better have different wardrobes.

This is something that didn’t really hit me until a few months ago, despite reading a bunch of style blogs and even some books. Over and over, you are exposed to a great deal of amazing clothing and there exists an extreme desire to get all of these wonderful things in brilliant patterns and colors and materials.

But what you don’t realize – and maybe you only realize it after you’ve bought a few things you didn’t exactly need, but wanted – is that you should be thinking about the situations in your life in which you actually are wearing these articles of clothing. Unless you’re a model, then your life isn’t a lookbook.

The past week or so, photos have been coming in from Pitti Uomo, which is an inspirational mecca for new style ideas. And I really like a lot of the stuff I see (although some of it is really way too out there for me). But what I realize now is that as cool as so much of that stuff is, that just doesn’t fit into my lifestyle.

My style is determined by my everyday life. When I’m working in a formal environment at the state’s capitol, I wear a suit with a solid-colored dress shirt, a conservative tie, a basic square. When I’m at work during non-legislative days, a sport coat or blazer, a less-formal dress shirt and a less formal tie with dress slacks. When I’m home or out and about on weekends, jeans, an oxford shirt, a tie, a sweater or odd jacket, some casual footwear.

And so that’s now how I decide on whether or not to add an item to my wardrobe (or to get rid of something). I ask myself if it fits within the uniforms I’ve created for myself in each situation. It’s easy to see a single item and get caught up in thinking, “Oh shit, that’s awesome! I want it!” but it’s harder to think about if it makes sense for you.

This is the way I’ve come to think about building a wardrobe. It’s not a checklist, because lists can get endlessly long and added onto. Rather, it’s a deliberative process of having your clothes make sense for what you do.

(Thanks to givemeindiana for sparking the idea behind this post.)