The Curated Closet: A Simple System for Discovering Your Personal Style and Building Your Dream Wardrobe

This book is so much better than I imagined. It is very inspiring and goes in-depth about cultivating your own personal style, regardless of what you're into wearing. It gives, practical shopping tips and styling recommendations. This book is helpful even if you are only interested in a few topics. She even has a simple way of helping you decide which chapters will be the most helpful, based on why you bought the book. Most importantly, it got me excited enough to actually clean out my closet. I ended up getting rid of a ton of clothes months ago, and I haven't regretted selling/giving away even one piece. Additionally, I didn't know I needed an office capsule wardrobe (Chapter 12), but now that I have one, it has been a game changer. Great layout, loaded with information, straightforward and easy to read.

If you are frustrated by the standard quizzes and capsule rules -- pick up this book. Anuschka lays out a detailed approach to developing your personal wardrobe. She stresses that personal style is very different from being fashionable. She explains when a capsule makes sense, when a "curated" wardrobe makes sense, and how to blend both. Most importantly, she teaches you how to define your own clothing rules. She does not provide lists or pictures of what works together -- that's your homework. She does provide completed samples of each assignment. Do not purchase if you want a quick, do-it-in-one-afternoon guide. It was work; however, I have a clear set of personal rules, fabric preferences, and outfit formulas. Pieces a quick-capsule-approach guided me to discard or pack-away are now in purposeful use! While Anuschka is exceptional on the wardrobe element, I was only able to follow everything based on previous work. I'd be a bit lost on color, personalized style words, and garment basics without the prior read of Bobbie Thomas, The Power of Style (similar approach with clearer guidance on personal style & color palettes), Nancy Nix-Rice, Looking Good Every Day (required text for FIT NY Image Consultants), and Jennifer Scott, Lessons From Madame Chic (light-hearted stories underscoring and explaining personal style, quality, upkeep, yep, no quizzes her either). For me, understanding the fundamentals allowed me to maximize Anuschka's approach. Having read those books, Anuschka is exceptional at the final mechanics of building and updating a wardrobe that meets YOUR needs and style personality. Really, no book can do it all. The Curated Closet is the final piece to my personal style & wardrobe journey! Madame Chic -- put me in the proper mindset Looking Good Everyday -- provided the nuts and bolts The Power of Style -- prompted detail work on my style personality, color palette, and clothing details The Curated Closet -- solidified my rules, set my outfit formula, and established an on-going "curating" approach

This is easily my favorite style guide. The title describes it perfextly. It's a book for curating your closet. It's not just for people who want to nail their capsule wardrobes. It has closet cleaning, shopping tips, how to find your own style, questionnaires, maintenance tips... It's pretty packed without being too specific to one type of lifestyle. I'd done a bit of work on my own, but this definitely helped me identify some categories for improvement and will come in handy. I love sewing because I can make clothes fit my body and my life regardless of what's in stores,, but I definitely clutter my wardrobe and pattern collection up every so often. I also found the pictures and formatting to be aesthetically pleasing. Quick tips and questions were in appropriately places and reframed and summed up the main text. Not a one felt like a redundant self-congratulatory blurb. I will say the fabric section keeps things very simple. Not too much about all the types. Just a few. Additionally, while fast fashion is called out, the environmental aspects of fashion are largely left out. I'm okay with that only because I think fast fashion is called out softly enough to not scare people away from making better choices. I think some environmental discussions can bring up guilt and this book is not here for that. The focus is on quality and I can definitely get behind that. Not to mention reminders of repairing and mending! Love that! In sum, if you're down to curate your wardrobe and keep it up, this is exactly the place to start. You'll get where you want to be with a little time and effort.

I love this book! I am a clothing, shoe and accessory nut, and while I was not seeking to minimalize my wardrobe, the ideas in this book have helped me to pare down the misfit items, and to find joy in all the rest. My life toggles from a very conservative job by day to a travel junkie (the capsule wardrobe section helps me pack in half the time and space!), to weekends dancing with friends and the occasional costume party/black tie event. Anuschka Rees has written a visually lovely book that feels good in your hands and will bring a big dose of happy to your wardrobe! Most of her advice just feels spot on, like something you knew all along, but could not quite articulate. All together, the book is thought provoking and larger than the sum of its parts... My favorite idea was to try something you love on others but thought you could never pull off by working it into a look you already love - woohoo, who knew I liked a little boho fringe!?! I bet the author would be a blast to shop with! Final note - I purchased several books on wardrobe organization/improvement, and this one was my favorite.

A delight to read & very, very helpful. I started paying attention to my style about 4 years ago... and it was a messy first couple of years. Two years ago, I fell in love with the capsule wardrobe concept. It completely transformed the way I shopped, thought about clothes and got dressed in the morning. Love it! I'm now transitioning into a wardrobe that is less structured and even more awesome -- and this book was so helpful and illuminating. The things that I especially loved include the styling challenges (it really opened my eyes about what I can do with my closet -- and what I was missing from an accessories standpoint), the tips on how to buy quality (it instantly made me a better shopper) and the detailed information on choosing a color pallet. I'm taking a step away from my historical color pallet this fall and this book made me feel more confident in those choices. Overall, a delightful read and a sane, resonant voice to guide you through dressing in a way that is more "you" and less everyone else. Downsides: the styles displayed in the book just didn't resonate with me (I love saturated color... and they seemed to be very summery) -- but it really wasn't an impact.

Kind of a "dumb" book that could Ave been 50 pages shorter

This is a super helpful step by step guide on how to create a wardrobe with a style that you like, that suits your lifestyle. I really liked that it had specific exercises and not just platitudes, for example, listing out the breakdown of the typical activities you do on a regular basis to figure out whether you should be focusing on buying or paring down workwear or activewear, etc. The advice is presented in a way that it can be easily personalized. There is lots of supplemental material (e.g. how to determine the quality of a garment, more details on color theory for outfit styling) on the author's website and honestly I think you could probably find most of the content of this book on the site through various blog posts. However it is presented in this book in an easily digestible linear sequence so if you're not hurting for money, it I think it's still worth the price. It's not going to do the work of the wardrobe overhaul for you, but if you're willing to put in the time, this book will make the process much clearer.

This is a very interesting and dynamic work. Helped me a great deal in coming up with a reasonable and de-stressing plan for my wardrobe. I've been working on reducing and consolidating and buying in a very focused way, thereby being more satisfied with what I have to wear as well as clothes that feel right, convey my personal style and look good on me. I highly recommend this book to those who, like me are stressed with what to wear and how to shop for what's best to meet the need.