How to organise your wardrobe

Your wardrobe should only have the clothes you need for this season. (If you’re in between seasons that’s fine, a blend of the two is ok) Otherwise, pack them away into storage boxes or vacuum storage bags, as these will suck the air out and make them smaller and easier to store.

Hang with the right hangers

Make sure you have the correct hangers and never use wire hangers given to you from the dry cleaners. These are the three hangers you’ll need:

Felt hangers 

These are ideal for shirts. As they’re flatter you can get more of them into your wardrobe.

Broad suit hangers 

Suits must be hung on these, if you hang them on hangers such as the felt ones, the shoulder line will be ruined.

Open end non slip hangers 

These are ideal for all of your trousers and allow you to take them off easily in the morning and put back in the evening with minimal fuss.

Clothes which need to be hung

• Suits
• Sports jackets
• Shirts
• Trousers

Clothes which need to be folded

• Knitwear
• T-shirts
• Heavier jeans
• Underwear

How to Organise your wardrobe 

Make sure you can see everything properly and leave ample space in between your clothing, don’t ram all of your clothes in. You won’t be able to pick them out easily, it’ll damage your clothes and it won’t allow your clothing the chance to breathe.

Tips from Marie Kondo 

For those of you who don’t know who Marie is, she’s a wardrobe organising expert who says to only keep the clothes that bring you joy and that you really love. Remember, when having a clothing clear out, be responsible with what you do with them and be mindful of how you recycle them. There are many options such as selling them, dropping to local clothes banks or charities. We send ours to a company who clothe homeless men going back into work. So make it positive.

Colour coding your wardrobe

For each section of your wardrobe, I find that colour coding or shade matching is the easiest. This means very basically, that you’d put all of your black clothes together, all of your blue, all white and so on.

Alternatively, you’d put all similar shades together, such as creams, browns, white and camel. Then dark blue and black together and then a bright colours placed together.

Do this for each usage (as discussed below) Ultimately, you want to be able to go to your wardrobe and say- ‘I’m going to lunch with Jim and I just want a pair of jeans, T-shirt and sports jacket’ and know what exactly where they are and what combination you’d wear.

You can either do this with all of your clothing as a whole or organise by product i.e: shirts.

Organise by Use

You have different areas of your life, which is something I always talk about for those of you who have had a full, made to measure or ready to wear wardrobe revamp with me or even a suit consultation. Whether you work from home (which we all are currently) or work partly at home and partly at the office, or need to wear a suit daily, I discuss how to make your clothes work for you and your lifestyle.

So, breaking things down here, we likely have three major areas of dress codes. Work, weekend and occasions. You may also like to add active wear i.e Gym wear, Cycling and keep them organised in a separate spot.

Organise by your profession

Think about where you work and the practicalities of your lifestyle. Do you work from home with a need to go to more formal meetings during the week or do you work 9-5 in an office every day?

You can then start to build your wardrobe around this and have a good organising session.

So now’s the time to think about what you would wear for:

1. SMART/CASUAL MEETINGS: Arrange all of your tailored sports jackets, smart trousers or smart jeans and business and slightly more casual shirts together. Ideally next to your more formal wardrobe, so that you can mix and match where necessary.
2. FORMAL MEETINGS: Arrange all of your tailored business suits and shirts in one area of your wardrobe. Place your favourite combinations beside each other if you want to get really organised and ready for action each day. One step further would be to put them in shade order with your darker suits for more formal business and lighter for more relaxed meetings.

Working from home

Personally, I think it’s good to keep in a working mindset with your clothing when working at home, while also feeling comfortable. Here’s a quick list for you:

Trousers 

Lightweight jeans and chinos are a great option.

T-Shirts 

You’ll want some quality T-shirts (throw away the Rock concert ones and opt for high quality, great fitting options that make you look and feel good.) Buy 100% cotton always, they last longer and feel nicer.

Knitwear 

Merino wool is always a good option as it works so well with your own, natural body temperature. So if it’s chilly it’ll warm you up and if you’re hot, it’ll cool you down. Clever!

Occasions

Always make sure that if you regularly attend black tie events, or go to events such as Wimbledon you have your wardrobe prepared. Always check your intended outfit 3 months (at least) before an event, so you can check that everything still fits and is clean. Plus, if you need us to make something for you, then we can and in time.

Think about other events that you regularly attend and be wardrobe ready. These may include: The Henley regatta, Glyndebourne, The Rugby Corporate Box. Have a think about what you might need to wear there, or better still, ask us or click the links and read how to dress for each occasion. You’ll likely want to add weddings and funerals onto the list so that you have some go to options. 

Weekend

We tend to like to dress down on the weekends after a long week at work. However, it doesn’t mean we have to let it all go entirely. If you organise your wardrobe effectively, you’ll have some rather nice outfits to choose from. Think Smart T-shirt, jeans, sports jackets, quality knitwear (merino, cashmere or lambswool) Note: anything with Polyester will only make you sweat more, as it locks in heat from your body.

I would have a drawer or two of your more casual clothes, so that if it’s a smarter lunch out, you can select from your smart/casual wardrobe. Note: The trick is that if you’re wearing casual clothing, to opt for quality items. A cheap T-shirt and jeans looks very different to a high quality T-shirt and jeans.

Knitwear care

Always fold knitwear. Due to its delicate nature hanging it up only stretches them out of shape.

Make sure you check them regularly and shake and re-fold.

Adding moth alarms into your dressing room is an ingenious idea. Forget moth balls. From experience they don’t work. The most lethal time is when you can’t even see them, so when they’re flying, the damage has already been done.

Alexandra Wood has designed & tailored hundreds of professional men’s images to success. Taking timeless classics whilst adding a modern twist; to reveal men at their finest. Featured in GQ, Esquire, Tatler,Forbes, she understands exactly what it takes to get her clients image to the next level.

To discover how we can sharpen up your wardrobe and overall style with the power of tailoring book here to arrange a chat or book an appointment