How To Fill In Gaps In Your Wardrobe With Intention

And the life changing wishlist that helps you make better shopping decisions

Nov 24, 2024

When it comes to building a hard working wardrobe, liking our reasons for adding pieces into the mix is possibly the hardest part to quantify. Trying to decipher why we want something, beyond someone else telling us we should makes identifying gaps in our wardrobe a challenge. Of course there are times when pieces we love find us, and not every item needs to be ‘intentional, or fill a gap’, but if you want to increase your creativity in your wardrobe and reduce the frequency of which you clear out your wardrobe (more times than not giving the exact same items away) then we need to be able to actually identify what a gap is, and isn’t.

Use data to help you make a decision

I’ve thought long and hard about this (266 days to be precise) during my no buy wardrobe challenge, and I realised in order to fill gaps with intention, I couldn’t rely on my gut alone. I needed a process that uses neutral data to help me. In order for me to stop seeing my wishlist as a shopping list, I needed to turn it into a decision making tool, one that could help me just as much in a moment of weakness (hello black friday sales), as it could as my style evolves and I grow.

And that my friends, is what led me to create the traffic light wardrobe wishlist. A Notion template where I have to answer questions to help me decipher if an item truly is a gap or not. Simple, but incredibly effective. If your goal is to really, truly wear your clothes, to normalize outfit repeating (specifically outfits you love) then I believe this could be the missing piece. It has been for me.

A lot of people have been surprised by my no buy longevity (and while moral judgments have no place here), I truly believe this tool has had a big part to play in that. So let me show you it in action. I’ll use the sleeveless COS jacket Dave bought me for my Christmas present as an example.

Put some space & time between yourself and an item you’re thinking of buying

One of the biggest things that is evident from watching Documentaries like Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, and The Social Dilemma is how large corporations (including the fashion industry) want to remove the time it takes for us to make a decision. There number one goal is to remove any blocks that give us time to think about whether we actually want/need to buy a purchase or not. An example of this is Amazon’s ‘Buy with one click’. With one click your purchase is winging its way to you, before you’ve even had time to look at the fabric composition, or your existing wardrobe to contemplate what you’d wear this new item with, and how.

What my no buy wardrobe challenge gave me was time. Time to ponder, time to consider why I wanted something and to remove the impulsivity with in which I had shopped previously. I found myself doing more research and turning to my traffic light wishlist system to ask myself the important questions that quite honestly the brands don’t want us to ask ourselves when shopping.

Can you make 20 + outfits?

One of the questions I have on my wishlist now, in order to make something a greenlight is can I make 20+ outfits with this new item? So while I was chuffed that Dave wanted to get me this for my Christmas present (gifts are allowed as part of my no buy) I still wanted to check I could indeed make 20 outfits with it. You can see below the looks I put together on my Indyx app, making 20 outfits felt easy and effortless and along with the other questions on my wishlist tool, I could quickly see this was a green light.

The very act of doing this step alone, slowed down the time between which I saw something and added it to my closet. It gave me the breathing space to add some context, and see things through the lens of my own style and my own wardrobe. More times than not we see something on a model, a creator, or in a campaign and love what we see, but what we need is time to think about the context of our own lives, our own style and whether that item will work hard for us in our own wardrobe.

The 20 outfits I created in Indyx to confirm this could be a hard working item for me…

This act alone made me feel really good about my reasons for adding this piece to my wardrobe. I felt excited to wear every single one of these outfits! Like I said earlier, not every piece has to fill a gap, but there is a lot to be said for building a wardrobe that works hard for you, and in order for that to happen, it helps to identify reasons beyond desire.

Which leads me to share a special project…

During my depression, one of the things I started working on (for me alone) was a no buy styling course. I had no intention of selling it or even putting it out into the world when I first started it. It was just something to get up for. It gave me some purpose. Alongside the joy I found in writing substacks I made what I wanted to see in the world, a styling course that doesn’t teach you hard styling rules like how to dress for your body type (aka how to look thinner) and instead, something that teaches you how to reconnect with your own creativity using what you already have. I wanted to offer up styling tools and philosophies that make me feel at home in my body and allow getting dressed to be a safe haven, as well as a creative outlet that brings me joy. I wanted a styling course where you didn’t have to buy anything in order to find your personal style, and as such, the No Buy Styling Course is what I created.

I’m still putting the final pieces together, but honest to God, even if no one buys it, I’m so glad it will exist in the world, because ultimately I made it for me. It has been a labour of love of the purest kind and I am so proud of it. It feels good to be proud of something I made that I believe can also help others. Making this course helped me come back to myself and for that I am eternally grateful. If you’d like to know more about the No Buy Styling Course and when it will launch (which includes the traffic light system template), make sure you’re subscribed to my Substack to be the first to know. Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading

Harry x

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