I’ve always been shit at maths. Properly rubbish. Ask anyone – I’m the guy who cried in front of the class when Year 10 teachers realised they couldn’t stamp down the price of pi to a finite two decimal places. “Noah,” my teacher Mr Pritchard sighed on one particularly difficult day, “I think you may have been the only person in the class to actually score a negative mark on my test.” Thanks for that guy, I thought to myself as he marched me out.
Still smarting. Fast forward 15 years and here I am, addicted to a little thing I like to call “wardrobe maths”. You see, I’ve become completely obsessed with the maths of how many outfits your wardrobe can actually create.
Think of it like Dr Bronowski’s unfinished masterpiece: How garments work, exponentially harder than the sum of their parts. But let’s rewind.
Three years ago I moved from a large flat in Manchester to… a studio flat in London.
And by studio I mean something that was charitably described by my estate agent as “cozy”. It had approximately zero square feet of wardrobe space. My warddrobe, by comparison, took up about a quarter of the entire flat in Manchester.
So my clothes shrunk about 70% but I had roughly the same amount of stuff. Crisis. I vividly recall bottoming out at my new place.
Picture the scene. Clothes literally piled up to my knees covering every available inch of my studio apartment floor. Me.
In the middle. Having a bit of a meltdown. Pathetic.
My friend James walked in to find me fairly hysterical, holding up two similar grey jumpers and ranting about “sentimental value.” “You know you can’t keep all of this, right?” He asked, carefully avoiding stepping on what I was suddenly rather defensively referring to as my “core essentials t-shirt selection”. Reader, nobody needs 27 t-shirts. No one.
That night, I got out a notebook. And actually did some maths. I drew out every item of clothing I owned, then attempted to work out how many outfits they could reasonably constitute.
It was embarrassing. I owned enough clothes to outfit several aristocratic households during the Regency period, yet somehow found myself religiously cycling through the same seven or eight outfits. Why?
Because almost none of my clothes actually worked together. I had loads of amazing statement pieces that I never wore, because nothing else in my wardrobe would “match them properly.” I had trousers that only went with one shirt; jackets that didn’t work with anything else I owned. I’d spent years buying clothes like a magpie, swooping in and stealing shiny new trinkets whenever I passed my local Uniqlo without any concept of how they would work with what I already had.
So I began a journey down the rabbit hole of Wardrobe Mathematics. The complicated equations and theories that can mean the difference between owning a hard working system and a miserable pile of garments that stubbornly refuse to fit into any outfits you try to force them into. I’m not talking about those idiotically reductive “Build a capsule wardrobe in 10 pieces!” articles that make you wear the same freaking black dress to your best friend’s wedding and the office.
Proper Maths. Mental exercises and rules that ensure every pound you spend on your wardrobe works exponentially harder once it’s in your closet. The foundations are simple.
The value of any given garment is determined not by how much you like that garment on its own but by how many outfits you can wear that garment in. That £100 jumper that goes with three different pairs of trousers is more valuable than that £50 jumper that only goes with your… well, that £50 jumper that only goes with one pair of trousers. Maths.
I began experimenting on my own wardrobe. Slowly but surely I whittled my wardrobe down by roughly 60%. And yet I ended up with more outfits than ever before.
How? By ruthlessly taking a calculator to my wardrobe and asking myself those eternal questions: How many bottoms do I actually need? Tops?
Jumpers? Jackets? Sweaters?
Cardigans? Knitwear? Coats?
If you’re still with me, you’ll have realised that the answers to all of the above questions can be boiled down to two words: Less. Than. You think.
Ok, maybe not Coats. You’ll probs need more than you think of those. But how many exactly?
For me, that means two pairs of jeans (one dark, one light) navy chinos, grey wool trousers, black trousers, and one pair ofUNUSED teemed smart joggers. Job done. Why so few?
Because when you limit yourself to a small, tightly curated selection of bottoms, each bottom HAS to work with a wide variety of your tops. In my case, that means each of these six bottoms matches with at least 80% of my shirts. If each of your six bottoms matches with 10 tops that’s 60 potential outfits straight away.
Throw in some variables for shoes, jackets, accessories and now you’re looking at well over 100 outfit possibilities even with what most would probably consider “mediumist” sized wardrobe. It took me a long time to actually accept when something doesn’t work with something else. I would lie to myself about it constantly. “Yeah these trousers suit me in a shirt” I’d think, when secretly they made me look ten stone lighter than I actually am.
Or “yeah, I’ll buy this because it goes great with that jacket I bought last year” only to pull a them both out and realise they were different shades of navy. These days I have something I like to call “the three plus rule”. Any new garment I’m considering has to work with at least three items already in my wardrobe.
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And when I say work, I mean work. Not kinda fits, not works if I tilt my head at a certain angle, but truly works. Colour has been a game changer for me.
I used to have clothes in every colour under the sun and think I had options. But by doing that I was actually limiting myself to fewer potential outfits. By painstakingly experimenting with my wardrobe, I’ve settled on a colour palette of around five to seven colours that complement each other.
For me, that’s Navy, grey, olive green, burgundy, white, and denim. Occasionally I’ll have colourful accent pieces in things like mustard or rust. But every colour I own works with every other because they’re all either neutral colours or colours within the same temperature range.
Ask me now what colour my trousers are I put them on in the morning and I’ll probably give you the wrong answer. But I can guarantee that they’ll go with whatever shirt I’m wearing. Patterns.
Follow the same rule as your colours. Yes you can have multiple patterns, just make sure they work with your colours, and don’t fight with each other. I have three and three only patterned shirts at the moment.
All of which are dominated by navy, grey, white, or olive green. Texture is something a lot of people forget about when doing wardrobe maths. The right combination of textures can add real depth to an outfit, even if you’re essentially wearing the same colours.
Take my favourite winter combo – a navy wool trouser, navy jumper made from merino wool, and a navy textured overcoat. Same colour. Different textures.
Mathsticks. The great thing about wardrobe maths is that it works for everyone. Whether you’re rich or poor.
A woman or a man. Live in Finland or the Falklands. Need your clothes to be practical for a physical job.
Or lounge around the house in lounge pants all day. It doesn’t matter. Wardrobe maths is universal.
Honesty aside, it does take a bit more thought upfront. You can no longer just buy whatever takes your fancy in the shop. These days I have an actual list of what I need when I go shopping, often including notes on what I need the new thing to work with.
Friends make fun of me when I whip out my phone at Topman to scroll through my entire wardrobe before buying a shirt. But do they laugh when I trot round Sl sane in a perfectly put together outfit I spent £20 on? Nope.
They don’t fuckin’ laugh. Lifehack: With about 35,000 decisions you make each day being about what to wear, having a wardrobe where everything matches will save you HOURS of decision making each year. I can now get dressed, fully dressed, in around 30 seconds. flat cap and all.
You may also like fewer choices, but that doesn’t mean your wardrobe has to be boring. Amongst my “basics” I’ve still got tons of personality pieces. That vintage military jacket I picked up in a Brighton charity shop?
Lives beautifully with everything. That handknitted scarf my Nan made me before she died? Yeah that too.
The point I’m trying to clumsily make is that now my personality pieces have things to work with, rather than fighting with the twelve other personality pieces in my wardrobe. I am now spending around 60% less money on clothes each year than I used to. But I actually wear everything I own.
I love seeing the average cost of each of my garments go down with every wear. That £120 jumper? Steal at £2 per wear.
Compare that to the kind of pricing you’ll find in fast fashion and it’s a no brainer. So next time you find yourself overwhelmed with how you’re going to squeeze shirt number 57 into your wardrobe. Take it all out.
Have a good clear out. Try something I like to call “the reverse cocktail party game.” Pick a category. Tops?
Pants?
Jackets? Lay everything you own from that category out on your bed.
Then start mixing and matching actual outfits. Take photos. See which items pop up in multiple outfits.
These are the essentials – the ones worth keeping. If something only works with one or two other items? Chuck it.
Problem. Oh and one final note to my old maths teacher; Yes Mr Prichard. I am definitely still rubbish at maths.
But at least now I have a system for my wardrobe that even YOU can understand: Fewer clothes + better relationships between those clothes = significantly more outfits & WAY less stress.
