In order to have a mix & match wardrobe, you need to start with a color scheme.  What color scheme should you start with?  Your best colors, of course!

This is why the clothes in carefully curated stores like  White House/Black Market look so great – they’ve chosen everything with a limited palette, and the store works as a whole.   But you are not a store, you are an individual.

What happens when you have a small selection of colors, or at least are working within the seasonal colors?  Everything matches!

I was scouting a mall yesterday, and this outfit grabbed me and dragged me into the store – very nearly literally.  It couldn’t be more me if it tried, and it looked *better* on me than it did on the hanger.  But I didn’t just get one outfit…

I have *seven* outfits.  (Maybe six, I’m not totally sure about the pine green skirt, I think the shamrocks throw it off).  And because I tend to buy clothes in green, ivory, geranium, or turquoise, additional shopping is only going to add to the number of outfits that I end up with.

Of course any print makes a strong statement, but this print suits me perfectly, so I don’t mind making that statement often.

This is how you make a small closet big.

Of course not everything in my closet matches everything else … there are variants of mood and fabric weight/texture… but in general, I don’t own any item of clothing that doesn’t go with at least three other items of clothing.

Hope this inspires you to give a limited palette a try – as you can see, it’s anything except restrictive.