The cotton chinos will definitely be too hot for the hottest days. Well, they would be for me. Keep in mind, I never had AC in the house, so it might be a bit different -- but a skirt is always way cooler. Or linen pants/ crops. Cotton shorts can even be too hot some days!

I find the J. Crew T might be too hot for hottest days, too. I ended up using mine for transitional PJ top! Depends on the year/ cut/ fabric, though -- mine was different, actually -- I had the "perfect" which was snugger fitting and ribbed.

I definitely agree some lighter colours would be great.

@nemosmom - I’ll be working out this dilemma right alongside you! Maybe a summer capsule in olive and light blue? Mix with black and white?

Skirts, knit tops, and dresses! Nothing too tight. Cotton, linen and silk rich.

Long shorts too!

Do you find the joggers cool enough? I hate shorts, am always looking for short pant styles with more coverage, and love the idea of summer joggers. I’ve had linen ones that had a gathered linen bottom and were cool, but others that had a knit cuff and weren’t as good because air didn’t circulate.

Thought I would look at my lists for you as we are just finishing summer. I have 18 summer tops of which 6 are sleeveless. One actually has long sleeves but is a very thin mesh so I put it in the summer lists, it should possibly move to the winter list. I have 5 pair summer pants, donated a sixth but used a long thin pair from the winter lists instead for the few times I wanted navy. I also have 2 pair shorts.
I have dresses and skirts but hardly wear them. The pants are either cropped, or summer weight fabric. After a slow start of getting used to them the black and white snakeskin pants have been the most worn pants just behind the silver linen shorts. I think I am weird how I do that. I owned them almost 2 months before I ventured to wear them but now I have worn them 12 times. What gives?

It looks like you are set if some of your tops go with more than one bottom. You may want to add a summer dress and maybe a couple more tops. Remember that there may be some cooler days when you can pull from transitional clothes.

Nemosmom, I'm in hot weather a lot these days. Salt Lake City is 36C to 40C daily in Summer. I wear what I shared in my comment, but my big challenge is A/C. It gets sooooo cold and I freeze - so I'm always wrapping up too.

If you are vigilant about laundry: you will need 10 outfits that you can wear over and over again.

For me, it depends on how often I'm willing to do laundry, and how long the laundry takes to air dry (my summer tops are definitely air-dry fabrics in my book). I tend to go with more tops than bottoms, because people don't notice the bottoms like they do the tops.

I'm now thinking about my summer clothes, and it is sorely lacking in bottoms

As you build your high summer capsule you might want to consider building it in grouping (clusters) of items so that the silhouettes and colors in the grouping all work together. Depending on your body type tops that work with cropped wider pants might not work as well with skinny pants. I have found using a formula of 1 topper + 2 bottoms + 3-4 tops works well. For dresses I might use a grouping of 2-3 dresses to 1 topper. Again the silhouette of the topper should work with all the dresses.