Dear Windchime,

I popped back through your WIWs and had a good time getting to know you a bit better. From my reading, it looks as if you're in the wardrobe building stage, still figuring out your ideal style and what pieces will support it, and when you shop, you're looking for timeless, high quality pieces that will hold up for years. To my eye, you lean towards the classic and preppy, whose clean lines and neutral colours look marvelous on your tall figure and set off your wonderful silver pixie cut. So for this challenge, I wanted to help you begin to crystalize your style preferences.

Part One

In comic strips and cartoons, characters only have one outfit, that they wear all of the time. The outfit becomes a part of them, helping to create their iconic look. If an artist drew your life as a comic, what outfit would you choose? This can include items from your closet or ones you've found browsing online, or some combination. Luckily, comics don't seem to have Midwestern weather, so you don't need to choose an outfit that would go from muggy summers to snowy winters: instead imagine you live every day in your ideal weather and create the outfit accordingly. Remember to include shoes, any accessories, and to show your hair style as well so we can imagine cartoon Windchime from head to toe!

Part Two

We all have life situations that are trickier to dress for. Think of an activity that happens fairly regularly, is different from your everyday wear, and that you have problems choosing outfits for. Perhaps Sundays when you play the organ for church services (I saw your post about that)? Next review Angie's fabulous blog posts explaining capsules: Wardrobe Capsules 101 and Three Wardrobe Capsule Archetypes. If you'd like specific examples, you can see all of the capsules she's built via the capsules category. If you're a researcher like me, other helpful posts might be this one on method dressing and this one on capsule building from Into Mind, but only if you enjoy getting lots of information at once.

Armed with this background, it's time to create a capsule for whatever activity you chose. The specific size of the capsule will vary depending on how frequently the activity occurs, but Angie often suggests twice as many tops as bottoms, 2-4 pairs of shoes, 1 bag, and depending on the weather a couple of toppers (jackets or other layering pieces). While accessories depend on your preferences, Angie always seems to include at least one belt. The capsule can be based on your real closet, online browsing, or any combination thereof. Remember it can be as small as one bottom, 2-3 tops, and a single shoe/bag/belt option if that's all you need to satisfy your own taste for variety.

I hope you have fun and find these challenges useful! If you get stuck at any point, the forum is an incredible resource for any questions.

This post is part of the YLF Challenge Chain Spring 2014 series. The previous challenge was Beth Ann's challenge to E.