The Fashion Fast Challenge 2022!

Recently in our Facebook group we ran the #FashionFast Challenge for the second year.  This months blog explains more about the challenge and how to give it a go yourself.

WHAT IS IT?

The FashionFast is a 7 day capsule wardrobe challenge where you wear 7 items of clothing in different outfits for 7 days.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Pick 7 items of clothing and wear them in combination for 7 days.  The 7 items are the core elements of your outfit, so you can add unlimited accessories, shoes, and any outerwear (coats).  It also doesn't include underwear and under layers such as vests and tights.  

You can do the challenge at any time, just pick 7 consecutive days to do it.  Although it's a personal challenge, I definitely got inspired by others who were doing it in our Facebook group - so you could get a group of friends and all support each other by doing it together.

WHY DO IT?

The challenge gave me a renewed sense of gratitude for all the clothes I have and it also gave me a break from that daily decision making of what to wear.

I think the challenge forces you to experiment, to try new outfits and combinations you haven't tried before and potentially helps you to create some new outfits to add to your repertoire moving forward.

It also helps you to learn about your own sense of style and what you love, by looking at what I missed and what I most enjoyed from my selection, I got new insights into how I connected most with my clothes.

It teaches us that we CAN create a capsule wardrobe, that we don't need as many clothes as perhaps we think we do, and it's really useful to use as a framework when packing for trips and holidays.

WHAT TO PICK

For my challenge I chose:

1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of smart navy trousers, 1 green dress, 2 shirts (one teal, one multicoloured), 2 jumpers (1 navy, one beige).   Depending on the time of year you do this challenge and your own style preferences will influence what you choose. For example, you might feel happier to wear skirts and dresses over trousers and jeans, or you might not need the jumpers.  

It's especially useful to think about colour; pick colours that work together well, but also make sure some of your favourite colours are in there.  If you can stick to 3 main colours that go together this seems to be the magic number for making the most possible combinations.  I chose navy, teal and beige as my base colours which are in my Autumn colour palette, but pick colours from your own palette that work well together (if you haven't got a palette yet, you might like to find out more about colour analysis).

Before you start the challenge, it's a good idea to take a photo of the 7 items, either grouped together in your wardrobe, or laid out on the bed.  If your challenge is a success, you can use this photo to help you in the future if you want to repeat the outfits, or use it as the basis of packing for a trip or holiday.

As you go through each day of the challenge, take a photo of the outfit you create; this means that at the end of the week, you'll have a photo bank of 7 outfits, some of which you may not have put together before, that you can call on as a reminder to use and repeat in future.

AFTER THE CHALLENGE

Using this challenge as a start point can be a great way of creating a capsule wardrobe moving forward.  For me, I worked out there were 15 possible outfit combinations from my 7 items of clothing.  

Just by adding 1 more top I can create a further 6 outfits.  

By then adding a skirt (or a pair of trousers) that goes with the colours I can create a further 9 outfits.  

And finally one more layer - I used a lightweight jacket but it could be a cardigan in a colour that goes, that adds a further 24 outfit combinations.  

That's 10 items of clothing (my original 7 plus 3 more pieces - 1 dress, 1 jacket, 2 jumpers, 3 tops, 1 skirt, 1 pair of jeans, and 1 pair of trousers) which makes 54 possible outfits. 54 outfits each repeated once would last 108 days which is more than enough for a 3 month period.  Potentially then, you could create a capsule wardrobe of 10 items which would last you for 3 months, and then change it for the next 3 months and so on.

You can use the challenge to create a capsule wardrobe for one area of life (i.e. work) or as a more general capsule.  It's also really useful when packing for trips or holidays.  If you have 10 items of clothing that make 54 outfits, packing becomes much simpler if you keep a record of the pieces that go together well from your challenge.

Have you tried the 7 day FashionFast Challenge?  If so, let us know how it went in the comments below - what did you learn from your challenge?