We can learn a lot from the retail world, where they use visual merchandising strategies to lure us in, keep us occupied, and ultimately have us buy things.
As advocates of conscious consumption, here at 16 Style Types we don’t support mindless buying, but we do know we can all learn a thing or two from the world of retail shopping. We can borrow their great ideas to create wonderful, working wardrobes that support and activate our authentic and beautiful style.
Your wardrobe should support your style essence and activate your style expression, and there are a few tips and techniques from the world of consumer fashion retailing that you might find useful and thought-provoking, as you ponder and create your wardrobe space.
Consider the information below, then reflect on how you can borrow from these good ideas to make your own wardrobe space even better, more effective, and fabulous for you.
Organize by Type of Garment
When you walk into a store, they’re often organized by type of garment. Unless it’s the discount rack, where everything is deliberately jumbled up together, the clothing you find in stores are organized and displayed by type – dresses together, blouses together, jeans together, and so on. If retail stores are doing it this way, it’s a great idea to borrow for your own wardrobe – it’s such a fabulous way to create a wardrobe space that’s easy to navigate around.
Organize and arrange by the type of item – all t-shirts together, all blouses together, all long-sleeve knits together, all skirts together, all pants, all jackets, all dresses – you get the idea.
Consider sub-categorizing if you have a lot of items in one category. Say you have a lot of skirts: sub-group into short skirts, long skirts, plain/block color skirts, patterned skirts, etc. Same for any other category that you have quite a few of – dresses, pants, jackets, blouses, tops. Sub-grouping large categories them will mean you see more of what you have in each sub-category.
This is an excellent way to get better mileage from the items in your wardrobe.
Organize by Story
The other way stores display their clothing is in outfits – so tops that would work with a bottom that is next to it, in a color story that is harmonious.
This is an alternate way of storing your clothing and arranging your garments, and for some Style Types this may be the optimal way of arranging your wardrobe. It does have one flaw, important to consider if choosing this method – and that is you may not see the variety of outfit options that could be made by mixing and matching with other pieces in your wardrobe.
We advise the “organize by category” method over the “organize by story/complete outfits” option for this reason – we want you to get the absolute best from your wardrobe and to utilize it fully. That said, it’s entirely up to you to discover what works best for you and your space.
Organize by Color and Print
Retail stores often organize their merchandise by color and print. This is another excellent strategy you can borrow and put to use in your own wardrobe.
Example: Blouses – organize by color – all ivory/white/cream blouses together, all blues together, and so on. Same for every other category – once they are grouped together by type, organize again by color.
With prints, display them together in a ‘print’ grouping and don’t intersperse them with your colors, unless you have few prints and it really works better in your wardrobe to put them with the color group most dominant in the print.
The color wheel is a nice way to go – blues next to greens, then yellows, then oranges, reds, then purples. But any color organizing that takes you fancy will work.
Organizing this way not only looks gorgeous, it makes it easy to reach for items when you’re creating ensembles in the morning or whenever you’re getting dressed. For example, want to wear a dark solid skirt and a coloured long sleeve blouse today? Easy to locate: here are the dark solid skirts — think I’ll wear navy today — and here are the colored long sleeve blouses — the orange is calling me. Quick. Stress-free. Simple.
This approach also means you can see everything you have in one particular category – there’s no confusion about what you own.
Make it Beautiful
In retail stores, they make the space as beautiful and appealing as possible – unless it’s the discount variety stores which entice you into believing everything is a bargain with their industrial aesthetic – nothing says “bargain” as quickly as warehouse concrete!
Store designers lay out the store as attractively as they can, they add in features that make it a visual delight to be there, and they generally try to make the experience of being in the space as appealing as possible.
Imagine some ways you can make your space as beautiful, as lovely, as enticing as possible – then add those elements into your wardrobe space. It’s a space you spend daily time in, so it’s worth making it as pleasing to be in as you can.
Hanging everything from the same size and shape hanger makes your items easier to see and the space feel more beautiful at the same time is a really simple tip you can use straight away.
Make it Easy to Access
Retail stores make their merchandise easy to access. To touch. To smell. To lay your hands on. This is very deliberate – stores want you to literally make a connection (literal and physical as well as emotional) with their merchandise, making them even more desirable.
For your own wardrobe, easy access strategies are firstly to make sure your space is clean, and that your hangers are all the same type for each item of clothing. This alone makes your space more useable, and it also makes it easier to maintain on an ongoing basis.
Then use as many organizing tools as you can to help get your space working smoothly. In discount department stores, the kitchen department has lots of great ideas (such as baskets of all sizes and shapes, often stackable) that can be used in your wardrobe. They can also be a great place to buy cheaper versions of the items you find in dedicated organizing stores.
Dedicated organizing stores, such as Ikea, Howards Storage World in Australia, The Container Store in the US, and The Holding Company in the UK, will give you loads of ideas on how to better organize your space. They’re worth a visit just for the ideas you’ll get, if not to pick up some great organizing tools for your own wardrobe and displaying what you have so it’s easy to access.
Lessons from Retail – wardrobe organisation explorations – open up your Module 8 PDF Page 68 and start exploring wardrobe organisation.
