Pregnancy Capsule Wardrobe

Being currently 31 weeks pregnant, I think it is now a good time to talk about my wardrobe during the pregnancy. Early on I decided that I wouldn’t be buying many clothes – maternity or otherwise - as I found it wasteful. I would only be pregnant for 9 months after all and the first 3 months wouldn’t really require any new clothes. This meant that any clothes I would buy would only be for 6 months. I know that some people say that you might use the clothes from your second trimester for the first few months post partum, but even if I did, it would still only bring me to about 9 months of using maternity clothes.

I know this is not a new subject by any means, but I thought I’d share my experience trying to have a Pregnancy Capsule Wardrobe. I might be one of those who took it to extremes though. I was so dead set on not wasting any money on clothes that would be only temporary that I only bought 3 pairs of maternity jeans, 1 maternity top, 2 stretchy dresses, 1 black dress that could be dressed up or down, 1 loose tank top and a belly band. So all up, 9 pieces. I have been supplementing those pieces with pieces already in my wardrobe. Luckily, I’d always been a fan of loose-ish shirts (mostly grey or black) which could be worn with my belly band covering the part of my belly that might need extra covering. I also have a few Kookai basic tanks which work wonders. They are nice and fitted over the bump, without actually getting that much shorter in the front and looking weird. They are so comfortable to wear that they always are my first choice when getting dressed.

Some might wonder if using and stretching clothes from my current wardrobe was a good idea. I made a conscious decision to use those clothes as I thought that whatever did stretch out, I could buy a new one of later on, once the baby weight fell off and then I’d have some new clothes that would last. 

The best places I found for clothes were Cotton On (that’s where my stretchy dresses come from – very comfortable and the only things I want to wear these days!), Jeans West for maternity jeans and the maternity top (the jeans with the over the belly band are from there). They normally have some sort of sale going on, usually 40% off making them very affordable as well as good quality. Topshop for the other pair of black jeans and lastly, the black dress is from Temt – not somewhere I normally shop, but I’d heard that a lot of their clothes could be worn during pregnancy and this one is no exception. Best part is, it only cost $20 or so!

The outcome of this little experiment was that I discovered that I could live on only a few pieces of clothing. It hasn’t always been easy as only having a maximum of 15 pieces to wear is very challenging and at times I got quite frustrated at having to wear the same thing over and over again. Of course, I have been wearing the same clothes over a period of 6 months with barely any changes being made to my wardrobe, making it even harder.

The best thing to come out of this though, is that I am now very excited to try my hand at the 37 piece capsule wardrobe that Caroline of Un-Fancy started. After the 15 pieces for 6 months I’ve just been through, 37 pieces for 1 season will seem like a dream! To be honest, having thought about this quite a bit over the last month, I will probably give it my own twist. I love shoes and bags so I don’t think I’ll be including these in my wardrobe. I haven’t got many of each, having always preferred to have quality over quality so I think that should be fine. I will decrease the number of pieces I have in my capsule wardrobe to make up for that though. At this stage, I’m considering only having 30 pieces. It might end up being less or it might end up being more – who knows.. I am also considering having the capsule for 6 months so A/W and S/S instead of 3 month seasons. This is because the climate in Perth, Australia is quite moderate, with no real extremes. The idea behind this is that I might be able to construct a capsule wardrobe that will last me all year long – of maybe 50 pieces?- that I can then supplement every season with 5 extra pieces just to make it a bit different. This would mean that at any one stage, I’d have 55 pieces in my closet. Not a bad number when you think of it. But before getting to that, I will start with the 37 pieces (or in my case, 30 pieces) a season to see how I go and work my way to the 55 pieces. I’ll let you know how I go with that.

And to finish off, I’d just like to tell the mummy’s to be out there who are on a budget or who are curious about a capsule wardrobe, that it is possible to do.

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