The five colours I actually wear
After ten years of slowly purging the colours that did not work — the small palette I have settled into, and what it gave me back.
I have, over the last ten years, slowly narrowed the colour range of my wardrobe down to five colours. The five are: a deep navy that is almost black, a warm camel that is almost beige, a soft cream that is almost white, a muted forest green, and a single accent colour — a particular shade of dusty rose — that appears in maybe two or three pieces.
The narrowing was not planned. It happened slowly, as I noticed which pieces I kept reaching for and which pieces stayed on their hangers. The pieces I kept reaching for were, more often than not, in this small palette. The pieces that stayed were in the brighter, sharper colours that I had bought because they were beautiful in the store and that I never quite knew how to wear once they were home.
What the small palette does
Everything coordinates. Any top in any of these colours goes with any bottom in any of these colours. The combinations I do not have to think about. The mornings, which had previously involved a small daily negotiation between my eyes and my closet, became, in about six months, almost automatic.
The pieces also age together. When you buy a deep navy sweater this year and a navy coat next year, the two pieces, when you wear them at the same time, work because they are in the same family. The closet, over years, becomes a kind of unified set rather than a collection of singular pieces.
What I gave up
The brighter colours, which I had been buying out of a half-conscious feeling that I should be expanding my range. The expansion had been an aspiration, not a reality. I had owned, at one point, a bright orange linen blazer that I had worn perhaps three times in two years and that had taken up a hanger of mental space disproportionate to its use. The orange blazer, and dozens of pieces like it, are gone now.
I have also given up the small fantasy that a brighter colour would, somehow, make me into a different and more interesting person. The colours that work for me are the colours that work for me. The other colours, however beautiful in the abstract, are someone else's wardrobe.
On the accent colour
The dusty rose is the small pleasure of the palette. There are three pieces in this colour — a silk scarf, a thin wool sweater, a pair of leather gloves — and any one of them, worn against the navy or the camel or the cream, provides the small chromatic interest that keeps the wardrobe from being monotonous.
One accent colour, in two or three pieces, is enough. The accent colour can be the same colour for years. The rest of the wardrobe is the steady ground; the accent is the small flag.
The smaller offer
If you have a closet that has been getting harder to use, try noticing which pieces you actually reach for over a month. The pieces you reach for are, almost always, in a smaller colour range than your full wardrobe contains. The smaller range is the wardrobe you actually want. The rest is the wardrobe you bought.