As personal as your style itself, there is no one wardrobe size to rule them all. There are so many variables that impact the size, including your interest in fashion and desire for variety, your climate, your lifestyle, your closet space, and your budget. 

A wardrobe is too large when it’s overwhelming. Too small when it doesn’t meet your dressing needs. But small wardrobes can be serviceable, and large wardrobes can be manageable. Wherever you are, strike the balance that’s right for you.

A wardrobe is the right size when you can manage it successfully. You can remember your favourite items, create sufficient outfit variety, comfortably cover your dressing needs, and feel at peace when you enter your closet and dressing space.

You’re on Team Cotton if you prefer wearing cotton to linen in warm and hot weather, and vice versa. For the purposes of this poll, I’m referring to clothing items that are 90% to 100% cotton or linen. 

I enjoy wearing linen in the Summer, but in small doses. Usually in tops, and occasionally in pants. I love wearing cotton clothing and much prefer the feeling of cotton against my skin. It also doesn’t crease as much as linen does. I have a lot more cotton in my wardrobe than linen and therefore bat for Team Cotton.

Over to you. Do you bat for Team Cotton or Team Linen? Tell us why, and no batting for both teams. If you can’t pick a side, I’m serving chickpea, cauliflower, and carrot green curry with rice and cucumber salad on the bench. Sambal on the side, and lemon fairy cakes with cream cheese icing for dessert.

The magical finishing touch of accessories is not to be underestimated. The right accessories complete a look taking it from nice to fabulous. Jewellery, scarves, belts, eyewear, watches, hats, and handbags can all add interest and pull the outfit together. Remember that footwear, although important, is not an accessory. It’s a wardrobe category of its own. 

These outfits are well accessorized, and quite easy to achieve. To my eye, the accessories make them.

1. Beads, Bracelets and Dainty Earrings

This earthy and bohemian look of blue jeans, black tank top, and ecru crochet cardigan is completed with small and narrow hoop earrings, layered earthy beads of which one has a pendant, and a wrist of assorted bangles and bracelets. The jewellery pieces are not an exact match, yet they work well in vibe and palette.

2. Big Bold Brooch

A boldly striped maxi dress is combined with aqua mules that work well with the dress. The look is completed with a gigantic rose pin that is as big as the model’s face. It’s pinned onto the turquoise stripe of the dress in the same colour to create a low contrast, which tones down its boldness. Clever!

3. Minimally Hooped

A fairly basic outfit of wide patterned pants, tank top, and refined earthy sandals is simply completed with a pair of big hoop earrings. The pulled back hair of the model make the earrings stand out even more. Although subtle, the hoop earrings take the look from fine to fab.

4. Colourful Complement

Last, dark denim wide crops and a boxy cropped white top are playfully completed with a colourful accessory complement. Big dangly floral lime earrings stand out against the model’s long thick hair. There’s a pretty bracelet that repeats the lime. A mango tote completes the look. It doesn’t match the jewellery, yet effectively co-ordinates. The patterned slides on the other hand, repeat the mango of the tote, which pulls the look together even more.

Spam has been a behind-the-scenes challenge at YLF for years. To deal with it we’ve built automated systems of our own, we use third party anti-spam systems, and we do a fair amount of manual moderation with the help of many forum members. But recently the volume of incoming spam reached epic proportions and started to overwhelm all of these measures. We need to take some additional steps to reign it in. You may have noticed the first of these, which was to restrict the ability to comment on blog posts to logged in members. 

The second step concerns the forum. We will move to a model where only YLF patrons (paying members) can post in the forum. Don’t fret if you are a current YLF member because your ability to post in the forum for free won’t go away. The requirement to be a paying member will only apply to NEW members who join after July 15, 2024.

There are two ways to become a YLF patron: a recurring monthly subscription and a non-recurring annual payment.

We are announcing this a few weeks in advance of the change so that people who have been thinking about participating in the forum, but haven’t yet taken the leap, have some time to get in for free before July 15.

Just to make things completely clear, here are the people who will be able to post and reply in the forum from July 15 onwards:

• Any paying member
• Any member who signed up before July 15, 2024

Here is a summary to clarify the features available to different visitors.

You can see that anonymous visitors can still read all of the content, and all logged in members can still collect items, create collections using the Finds feature, and post comments in the forum.

For members who are posting in the forum, the member levels will continue to apply as before.

Thank you in advance for your understanding. If you have any questions, please log in and post them in the comments below.