Summer Audit 1

Fashion • Data • Design

Jul 24

Let's review our inventory to maximize combinations.



Hey, it's summer in the northern hemisphere – at least that's what I think.
Companies are rolling out their pre-fall campaigns and reminding me of the 50% off from the summer collection.

Pre-fall? I haven't even dipped my feet into the river...

So, to cheer us up and focus on the ~summer vibes~ we are going to do a summer closet audit.

Does that mean organizing and planning? Yes, yes it does. That's how we relax around these parts. That's what you come to this blog for, no? Putting things in their right place so your brain goes "mmm... nice!".

Besides, sorting our summer pieces will create a natural capsule wardrobe, perfect if you are taking a mini holiday trip and getting your very deserved time in the sun.

Ready to start?

It's even cold and cloudy in July...

Methodology

Ok, we already know we’re focusing on summer, but let’s narrow down our scope even further for a thorough review. Let's look at my basic pieces, meaning:

  • Tops
  • Bottoms
  • Shoes

What about my one-pieces (dresses, rompers), accessories, and layers? We’ll leave those for next week. Why? This week we’re going to try to maximize combinations for packing and efficiency purposes. Even if I also mix and match my dresses, most of the time I wear them as a single item.

We’ll also leave out my workout outfits, note this is different than my sporty tag we’ll see below. These clothes are focused on me going all out during a workout session, not going for a cute, chill bike ride.

Now, do we need any subcategories? I don’t think so, but we can have some helpful tags like:

  • Fancy
  • Sporty
  • Formal
  • Casual

These tags can help me pick outfits depending on the occasion: date night with my favorite engineer, walking coffee catch-up with the girlies, or an important business presentation.

One final thing for our audit: we’ll use my Figma file I mentioned in my Figma fashion article. That way, we can put together some example outfits without me jumping in and out of clothes too much.

1) Inventory

Let’s take a look at what we have. I’ve gathered my tops, bottoms, and shoes for summer, and I added tags for each of them. Yes, I created everything as components on Figma. Product design tricks that stick forever (read about design systems here, wink!).

As you can see, some items have more than one tag. I think it would depend on how I mix and match to determine the final classification of the outfit. We'll review this in the next steps.

The color palette is a subset of my general one. Mostly we have neutrals, which is great for a set of basics. Next, we have a few of my complementary colors and a few accents. Good balance so far.

Note: I counted a piece in several colors if it came in more than one, for example those Farm Rio shorts with hearts are in black, cream, and cherry.

If we look at the colors by frequency in the graph below, we can see there’s a lot of great potential for mixing and matching. Let’s start calculating all of our combinations, shall we?

2) Analysis

If I have 9 tops, 6 bottoms, and 4 pairs of shoes, the possible outfit combinations are 9 × 6 × 4 = 216. That's pretty impressive! But in practice, there are two factors to consider:

A) Not all combinations really work visually with my clothes—and that's okay. We want variety, but also cohesion.

B) I don’t count switching shoes as a different outfit. It just inflates the numbers. Changing shoes feels more like styling—like when you're exploring a new city and want to dress up for dinner. We’ll look at styling options like this in a future blog. Stay tuned!

Back to calculations: if we’re being more realistic, the actual outfit combinations come closer to around 54. But we still need to narrow that number down, since some combinations just don’t feel right to me.

If we lay out all the clothes by top and highlight the combinations that work, we end up with about 40 different outfits. Not bad after editing things down, right?

Click here to expand 🔎

3) Implementation

Now that we’ve mapped out all possible combinations, let’s pick a few highlights to see the capsule wardrobe in action.

Here are a few scenarios and a couple of outfit options for each of them:

  • 1 – Walking around a new city – casual
  • 2 – Running errands on a bike – sporty
  • 3 – Important remote work call – formal
  • 4 – Anniversary dinner – fancy

What do you think? Would you suggest any other combinations? I feel like this scenario exercise is the adult/designer version of playing dress-up. It’s both practical and fun!

As the auditor, I’d say we had a very successful review; out of those 40 combinations, there are some I hadn’t considered before. Doing a thorough review helped me expand my style options.

Let’s wrap it up with some conclusions.

"There are no rules in fashion."

This statement might seem a bit contradictory—yes, I love expressing myself through clothes, but I have a constant desire to organize things. I think this little audit showcases how these two things can coexist together. Having a template that gives you a sandbox to be creative works wonders for me. A fun mix of colorful prints and basics will help you create your own style guidelines and give you enough room to play.

My audit today was pretty straightforward. My closet is already narrowed down—if I don’t wear something too often or don’t even consider it for trips, I place it on hold for a few months. Later, when I do a closet cleanup and I don’t miss it, then it’s time to find it a new home.

One angle I didn’t consider this time was the price of items and sustainability. For basics, I’d recommend trying to get pieces second-hand. I can get high-quality stuff fairly cheap. Note: high quality doesn’t have to be top-shelf pieces—even some "fast fashion gems" will be pretty reliable. My denim and shorts are actually second-hand Primark—surprise! Once I find a brand and size that fits me, I’ll look for it on Vinted, where another girlie will likely have just what I’m looking for.

Summer Audit 1: Completed! ✅
The summer capsule wardrobe is ready for the next trip—hopefully before fall arrives... And while I usually don’t overpack, if I’m going on holiday I want to wear all my pretty dresses— so we’ll see them on the next audit session.

Until next time, I hope this worked as a little organization / styling inspo. It definitely did for me.

That’s Enough About Me!

What do you think? What should I focus on next?

Are you already looking forward to part 2? Do you wanna see me try out some of the outfits? Is it time to play dress-up?

Let me know—shoot me an email! 😊
📩 sifuentesanita@gmail.com