This is a follow-on to my earlier post on the summer capsule and Mo's recent posts about repetition and variations of outfits. I was thinking about numbers and it works out like this: if you start with 4 bottoms and 4 tops, and they all work with each other, you have 16 basic outfits, not counting the variations you could make with different shoes or adding accessories etc. Assuming a 92-day season, that means you'd have to repeat each outfit between 5 and 6 times. Or you could exclude one day a week, assuming you'd need to dress up occasionally or you'd just stay in your loungewear one day on the weekend, which gives you ~79 days to account for, which means you'd only need to repeat each outfit around five times. If you added two more tops to the capsule, you'd have 24 outfits, which means you'd only have to repeat each outfit just over three times.
That's basically repeating each specific outfit once a month, which is not very often, although obviously the particular items are getting worn a lot more than that. In real life, unless you were traveling or otherwise only had these specific items in your closet, you'd probably mix it up a bit, for the reason of laundry if for no other. But it just goes to show how a very few items if mix and matchable give you a lot more options than you might think.