If you missed it, I recently took a personal styling course in London and had an amazing experience. This post covers our final assignment: creating a capsule wardrobe for a "client," who, in our case, was another coursemate.
Last day of the course finally arrived, bringing with it our last challenge: creating a complete capsule wardrobe for someone else in the group. My client was Carol from Brazil.
I spent about 30 minutes talking with Carol about her style, preferences, and lifestyle. She lives in Brazil and works as an image consultant. Not only does she have an incredible eye for color, but she also studied fashion design and has worked as a costume designer for theater and film productions. She understands not only how a garment looks, but also its construction, drape, and craftsmanship.
Her brief was quite clear to me. Carol wants to be taken seriously by her target audience of women over 40 (she’s 26). As someone over 40 myself, I fully understood what she had in mind. She also wanted to look creative and dramatic while projecting presence and authority. At the same time, the capsule needed to transition effortlessly from daytime client meetings to evening outings.
She also wanted the wardrobe to take into account her rectangle body shape and create more emphasis around the hips, which, I suspect, reflects a Brazilian aesthetic preference.
Then we discussed the budget (no unlimited spending for this exercise!). She gave me target prices for each category: around EUR 30 for a top, EUR 55 for a jacket, up to EUR 100 for a bag, and a total capsule budget of EUR 1,000. Oh man, I thought. This is going to be hard. No endless scrolling through Net-a-Porter this time.
Fortunately, Carol loves vintage fashion and enjoys shopping second-hand to reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion. She also loves jewelry but has metal allergies, meaning everything had to be gold or gold-plated. Phew, I thought. How am I going to pull this off?
Her color scheme was divine though. Carol is a warm, bright Deep Autumn, so she can wear rich coppers, burgundies, mustard yellows, warm browns, and olive greens beautifully. She also enjoys unexpected color pairings, interesting silhouettes, and one statement pattern in an outfit.
With that brief, I got to work.
Given the budget, I knew I’d have to scour Vinted, Vestiaire Collective, and a handful of affordable retailers. To my surprise, it turned out to be much more achievable than I expected. One of the first pieces I found was this stunning cropped suit on Vinted.
Well within the budget at GBP 21.
From there, I started searching for complementary pieces in burgundy, warm browns, and coordinating prints. Little by little, the capsule started coming together into a beautiful, cohesive collection.
I also knew that women over 40 can be quite particular about handbags. In many cases, a well-made vintage leather bag feels far more elevated than a brand-new fast-fashion one. After searching Vestiaire Collective, I found a beautiful vintage bag that fit both the aesthetic and the budget perfectly.
Time completely disappeared while I worked on this capsule. I loved the problem-solving, the rich color palette Carol could wear, and the treasure hunt of finding pieces that worked together. After about three hours of focused work, I came up with this capsule.
I normally start with my favorite brands when shopping, but this exercise reminded me that Google can be your best friend when you’re searching for something specific. For example, I was looking for a cream-and-burgundy patterned skirt and stumbled upon a matching set from Mint Velvet - a brand I’d never really looked at before.
After several hours of searching, I ended up with the following capsule for Carol.
From top left: khaki top, orange top, white top, patterned top and skirt, burgundy tank, burgundy jacket, mustard suit, balloon jeans, slip dress, dark brown dress.
Beaded bag, vintage bag, tan flats, burgundy shoes, sunglasses, colorful necklace, floral earrings, gold vermeil necklace and earrings, scarf.
The total came to just GBP 871, and I honestly couldn’t believe it. It certainly helped that Carol was open to buying second-hand, but it also showed me that it’s entirely possible to build a beautiful wardrobe on almost any budget.
Because of her allergies, I also had to allocate part of the budget to gold-plated or gold vermeil jewelry - one category where investing made sense - but even with that, we stayed comfortably under budget.
From what I could tell, Carol loved the result! Her eyes immediately went to the Mint Velvet patterned skirt-and-top combination, which ended up being one of her favorite looks.
There were two pieces we decided to remove after presenting the capsule.
The first was a pair of tan Tabi shoes I had found on Etsy. Since Carol wanted to dress creatively, I thought they would be an interesting addition. Penny, however, pointed out that Tabis are currently quite trend-driven and don’t really align with Carol’s otherwise classic style. Looking back, I think she was right, so we removed them.
The second was a halterneck top. Carol felt the neckline might make her shoulders appear too broad, so we replaced it with a similar strappy top that achieved the same effect while balancing her proportions better.
With those adjustments, the capsule was complete.
I even experimented with some bolder combinations - like pairing an orange top with the khaki trousers - and wondered whether Carol would go for it. She loved it.
Overall, the capsule leaned toward a sleek, modern aesthetic with relaxed tailoring throughout. The softer silhouettes allowed her to project confidence and authority without looking overly formal or unlike herself. The outfit combinations felt almost endless.
This ended up being one of my favorite exercises from the entire course.
It also made me realize what a powerful tool digital styling can be. Looking at your wardrobe virtually allows you to experiment with combinations you might never think of when everything is hanging in your closet.
I’ll definitely keep doing this, and I already have a few friends and family members waiting for me to create capsules for them. Let me know what you think about Carol’s looks!
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This capsule is honestly amazing! 🥳👌🏻 would you be up for doing one for me too? 😇 entirely preloved and with “curation” as the topic 🙏🏻
I love the green/orange/brown classic colors with modern silhouettes! Well done❤️