Pack perfect for your next adventure
Every time you pack, you are forced to create a capsule wardrobe. The charm of a minimalist travel capsule wardrobe is that you get a lot of outfit options from just a few amounts of clothes.
In other words, it’s good news if you do not want to push around a heavy bag. You want to travel lights, so let’s create a capsule wardrobe that’s perfect for your next exciting trip.
Consider your specific needs
No trip is alike, so when you pack, you have to take into consideration the climate and the activities. Nevertheless, my 5 examples are excellent starting points for learning how to create your own minimalist travel capsule wardrobe.
Follow my method and you will arrive in the golden land of a small bag filled with casual yet chic outfits.
4 basic steps
- Decide on a color palette. This helps make your minimalistic travel capsule wardrobe cohesive.
- Decide how many items of clothes you want to pack.
- Decide on which specific items you want to bring. How many tops, jackets and bottoms? Generally speaking, 60 percent tops and 40 percent bottoms work best. Here you can decide if you want to bring a shirt? Two jackets? Two sweaters? Are you bringing a dress?
- Lay out your chosen clothes and make sure you can create enough outfits for your different needs. Ask yourself what you can wear for traveling, for exploring, for having dinner, etc.
Think in sets
Here is another trick to get you going. As you pull out a sweater or pair of pants, ask yourself what top or bottom you want to combine it with. This way you think in sets. (And you don’t get any orphaned clothes.)
When you have a set, you can ask yourself if you need to add a jacket.
As you have 4 or 5 sets, you can start mixing and matching and see how well your chosen clothes work together.
Capsule wardrobe 1; white, navy, and denim
In each of these capsule wardrobes, I picked ten items of clothing.
If you need a bigger capsule wardrobe, just keep on bringing pieces following the same principles.
In this first capsule wardrobe, I followed my 60 percent tops, and 40 percent bottoms. (I didn’t include a dress.)
If you want to extend this packing, you could just bring two extra tops and it would still be a good amount of bottoms.
Temperatures
This capsule wardrobe works in a relatively warm (but not hot) climate. If you are traveling and expecting cold, I would add another sweater and a warmer jacket.
Otherwise, I think this example illustrates a pretty perfect capsule wardrobe formula to follow.
Let’s take a look at a few of the outfits you can create when you pack these clothes.
Capsule wardrobe 2; Camel and grey
For this capsule wardrobe, I chose only two colors so you can see how things change with an even more minimalistic color palette.
When you choose more unusual colors, such as grey and camel, you cannot expect the shades to be the same. Just test the actual clothes, different shades of grey absolutely can work in the same outfit, the same goes for camel.
Unexpected colors
There is a reason black and white is so popular when it comes to creating a minimalist travel capsule wardrobe; those colors are always the same shade. But grey and camel are elegant and more unexpected.
My first capsule wardrobe was very casual, so with this one, I wanted to create a more dressed-up feeling.
I achieved this by adding a camel blazer and a silk blouse. I also added both a dress and a skirt. When you have dinner reservations, this wardrobe gives you lots of options.
If you are traveling in a colder climate, bring warm stockings to wear with the skirt and dress. You also do not need to pack such a short skirt 😉
Capsule wardrobe 3; White, black, and denim
Here, I wanted to give the capsule wardrobe a trendier feel by adding a leather jacket and denim. By studying this alternative, you can really observe how well black and white works in a travel capsule wardrobe.
Choosing denim for your travel capsule wardrobe
There is a reason why denim is so popular, both for packing and for everyday use. It looks great in both black and white, and it works with everything else as well.
If you want to extend this capsule wardrobe, I would add some prints, maybe in an additional color. Since there is so much black and white, you will have an easy time creating outfits even if you pack a fourth color.
Capsule wardrobe 4; Light beige and brown
Light beige is one of the trendiest colors right now, so naturally I love this capsule wardrobe. Want to know more trends for 2024, read my article Trendy Summer Outfits – Summer 2024 Edition.
Brown is admittingly harder to find and match than black, but your effort will yield earthy, grounded outfits that are unique and timeless.
Once again, I wanted to create a slightly dressier feeling: packing a dress and two skirts is a good idea when you want to look elegant.
Silk is another great texture to work with when you want to dress up, pack a silk shirt or a silk skirt, or both. It does not need to be real sil 😉 Sometimes, other materials are easier to look after; if they look silky, you still get the desired effect.
Capsule wardrobe 5; Cream and blue
Cream is another color that is trending right now. For a spring trip, this color feels very fresh and joyful. Combined with light blue, the result becomes casual yet stylish.
In this travel capsule wardrobe, I combined casual pieces such as a denim jacket and a college sweater with more polished pieces such as a full, flowery skirt and a ridiculously cute dress.
These pieces actually look great when combined. You could even put the college sweater over the dress and get a great travel outfit.
When you want to combine casual pieces with more dressy pieces, it helps to keep the color palette cohesive, as you can see in this example.
Accessories
I wanted my examples to be really clear, and to let the clothes themselves create the outfits, so I didn’t add any accessories to these examples. But I can tell you that with the right accessories, these outfits will become truly wonderful.
Matching accessories helps tremendously to bring different looks together. As you will see, if you check out some of my other creations, Create the best beach vacation capsule wardrobe and Capsule wardrobe for travel to Europe.
A final Note on how to create a minimalist travel capsule wardrobe
Studying these examples, you will learn all the tricks of the trade and you will become a master at packing for all your fun trips. Keeping things minimalistic is about trying the outfits before you leave.
How many outfits can you get out of 10 pieces of clothing?
You will not know, for sure, what works, until you try the outfits.
Get started, experiment, and take some pictures of your favorite combinations so that you remember them when it is time to get dressed and visit those exciting places you’ve always dreamt about. Paris anyone?
Moa Ailert is the founder and editor-in-chief of Her Brilliant Friend.
She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and plenty of insight into human psychology from traveling and living in different places around the world.
Moa is currently based in Portugal where she has a guesthouse; Villa dos Irmaos.
She has various websites, among others Ericeira Insider, but Her brilliant friend is her true passion project.
