I love Angie’s articles on work wear wardrobe capsules—the ones from spring 2012 are still faves. Then came the post on shopping with clients and taking photos and putting items aside as “maybe’s” while still shopping.

I aim for several overlapping workwear capsules, but since I have an existing wardrobe, I tend to add one thing at a time, and usually order one on-line thing here or there. Sometimes feel I’m in a rut that adding the one piece didn’t help even if it "goes" with a lot of things. Or seeing one item in isolation, out of context, I may miss its usefulness. I may have a new, more fab future capsule in my mind, but then I sometimes find I’m not getting the whole thing accomplished.

I’m wondering if I should gear my shopping more toward acquiring an entire “capsule” (the outfit capsule with a couple of bottoms, tops, shoes, jacket) at once when possible –or if that’s even possible--and less adding one thing here and there. I think my interest arises from the fact that I don’t trust the universality of items anymore, due to proportions & length.

Obviously this is part of what Angie does all the time with clients as part of working in intense time blocks, but I haven’t really thought of it as a one-person strategy.

The compressed time sequence would include the idea that you might bring home, & order, several items to “hold” until you decided which make the best capsule, but you don’t want to delay returns too long. All of the items under consideration should be really good, but at the end of the day item A might prove more versatile than B due to color or pattern or something, and you might not know that until you’d got some other items in front of you to coordinate.

There's no need to think of this as better than or in place of another strategy,or a magic gimmick; just wondering.