Four Months of Outfits, One Big Style Recap - 2025 Q1 Wardrobe Analysis
All the juicy data!!
The moment that I’ve been most excited about AND also dreading has finally come, and now that you’re reading this, passed!
I’ve analyzed every item in my wardrobe that I wore during the first quarter of the year (excluding handbags and jewelry) and while the results weren’t necessarily shocking, they were eye-opening. There were some items that I knew I wore a lot (ahem, black moto boots), some that I wore more than I thought I had and then ones that I thought I had worn more than I actually did.
For the ones that I rarely wore, I’m left with the question of whether or not I should keep them? Objectively, I have the room to keep them, but there’s a large part of me that wants to discard the excess, to have less stuff to care for and think about.
But, then there’s the part of me that’s worried that I need more variety in my wardrobe, but is that really me talking, or am I just letting societal expectations influence that thinking?
How much clothing do I actually need? This is a question that I’ve been repeatedly asking myself throughout this process.
When I did my wardrobe analysis, I decided to use a Google Sheet. I had downloaded the Indyx app at the beginning of the year, but I couldn’t get into it. And since I was mostly interested in the app because of the wardrobe stats, which is a part of the Indyx monthly subscription, and which I can just as easily get from a spreadsheet, that’s the route that I took.
* If you are a monthly/annual subscriber, you can gain access to my working WARDROBE INVENTORY + STATISTICS sheet (as a viewer) AND find a copy of the spreadsheet for you to use here:
In this newsletter, I’m sharing:
1. how I set up my wardrobe spreadsheet
2. the total number of items in my winter capsule wardrobe
3. breakdowns of item category, color and acquisition
4. “10” most worn items
5. “10” least worn items
6. top 10 15 outfits from Q1
7. tips that you can use to start your own wardrobe analysis!
Setting up my Wardrobe Analysis Spreadsheet
In the first column, I listed every item in my winter capsule wardrobe with a brief description. In the next column, I listed the brand of the item. In the third column, I categorized each item into 1 of 6 categories:
Bottoms (pants, jeans, skirts)
Dress
Footwear (boots, shoes, sneakers)
Outerwear (coats, jackets, vests, blazers)
Sweater (crewneck, mockneck, cardigan)
Top (tee, tank top, blouse, shirt)
The remaining 4 columns contained additional information about each item such as color, material, # of times worn, how the item was acquired (new, secondhand or made by me), as well as any notes relevant to the item.
I went through every outfit diary and recorded which items I wore and how often:
How Many Items were in my Winter Capsule Wardrobe?
This is the thing that I think I was most afraid of finding out. It’s the number that has scared me away from ever properly analyzing my wardrobe. For the longest time, I feel like I’ve been striving to have a “minimalist wardrobe” - it’s the one area in my life where I just can’t be as minimal as I’d like, and I know it!
Maybe that’s the result of being a shopaholic. I’m afraid to have too few clothes. I keep thinking that I need more items than I really need so that I can make interesting outfits.
But here’s the funny thing that I’m realizing after going thought this wardrobing process - by listing out every item that I own and how much I actually wore the item, I can see which items truly deserve a place in my wardrobe and which ones I can confidently declutter using data!
Ok, let’s rip the bandaid off…
I had a total of 96 items in my winter capsule wardrobe! While I’m trying not to focus on the number, that seems like a lot!
How many items were in each category?
Unsurprisingly, sweaters and outerwear were my most plentiful categories. However, I did find the number of sweaters that I’ve acquired to be surprising - 22!
I’d been focused on building my knitwear collection for a few years before doing my no buy year, following which I acquired 5 “new” sweaters, before deciding to do a low buy year.