How a Capsule Wardrobe Could Help Save You Money
Spending a little could mean saving a lot.
This one’s gonna sound counterintuitive, but trust us on this: investing in a capsule wardrobe could help your finances and help heal the planet.
This is especially true if you’re using the Mogo Visa* Platinum Prepaid Card (the MogoCard), because for every transaction, we’ll plant a tree for you, for free. But more on that later.
What’s a Capsule Wardrobe?
According to the internet, the term was coined by a fashion-adjacent ad exec called Susie Faux (because of course that’s her name).
She defined the capsule wardrobe as a limited number of versatile, well made, timeless pieces that will simplify your wardrobe and your life, all while saving money.
She said, “the basic idea is simple: by building a capsule wardrobe you will buy fewer clothes of a higher quality that you will wear more often.”
The capsule wardrobe is a great strategy for folks that love to shop but want to spend and consume less. By investing up front in high quality pieces, you can build a more mindful relationship with your clothing, all while saving money by buying fewer frivolous pieces.
Save Money By Controlling Your Spending
The nature of capsule wardrobes are such that you typically invest more money up front in pieces you know will last many years. It sounds crazy, but this strategy can actually save you money.
Instead of buying from every new Shein drop, capsule wardrobe proponents spend time investigating, bargain hunting, and making thoughtful purchases.
No more seasonal impulse spending on passing fads. No more buying poorly made clothes that immediately dissolve if you wash them.
Instead, you buy a few great things and keep them forever. Because they’re well made, these pieces can be repaired and tailored as your lifestyle or hobbies change.
This could have three big impacts: you could save money because you’re not buying clothes that will eventually fall apart and need to be replaced; you contribute less clothing to waste streams by consuming less clothing; and you get to meet the little old cobbler down the road that can repair your beautiful, well made shoes. Fun!
The MogoCard makes a great little sidekick in this journey. Every time you buy, you’ll get a notification reminding you how much you’ve spent and notifying you of your remaining balance. This visibility could help you stay on budget and consume less.
How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe
There’s literally a Masterclass hosted by Tan France on this topic, so rest assured there are greater experts on your personal style than us here at Team Mogo. But assembling your capsule wardrobe should be a fun, ever evolving activity that facilitates mindfulness in your life.
These are the basic steps:
- Analyze your wardrobe and lifestyle. Think of the things you wear most, and what you’re most comfortable in.
- Donate or re-sell the clothing that you don’t actually wear.
- Make a list of the capsule goods missing from your wardrobe and research the brands you’re most interested in purchasing from.
- Slowly, responsibly accumulate your new capsule wardrobe.
- Wear those pieces forever and enjoy looking fabulous and feeling morally superior to constant consumers! Whoop!
Your capsule wardrobe, while by definition smaller than most wardrobes, should be versatile enough that you always have something to wear.
Your capsule wardrobe should include basics and occasionwear. For women, this might include things like:
- Well made, well fitting T-shirts
- Loafers or heels that a cobbler could repair (i.e. real leather or canvas)
- A classic little black dress
- Two to three pairs of high quality jeans
For men, this might include stuff like:
- High quality, breathable button downs (tailored for the right sleeve length!)
- Comfortable, well made denim
- 100% wool sweaters
- A well fitted sport coat or jacket
There are gazillions of exhaustive capsule wardrobe lists out there. Ask everyone’s best friend Google where to start. (And FYI—you don’t need to pay an expert to “guide you” through a “closet revamp”. Just do it yourself! It’s more fun anyways.)
Help the Planet By Consuming Less
It’s indisputable that personal consumption is a driving factor of climate change. We believe corporations and governments also must take responsibility to fight the climate crisis, but it’s clear that we all need to do our part.
Why? Because when we all buy from Shein, or H&M, or Miniso, or whatever, we tell those companies it’s alright to keep making crappy clothes and polluting the earth. Our dollars justify their actions. So it’s time to hit them where it hurts: their bottom line.
Building a capsule wardrobe can help remedy this problem. By removing yourself from the fast fashion loop, you tell those companies you don’t support their business practices. When we all embrace conscious consumption—by not simply “greening” our consumption but actually consuming less—we can create meaningful change.
Use Your MogoCard to Plant Trees!
It’s important that we note that not everyone is in a position to save up for investment pieces. If money is tight, the most important thing is that you’re comfortable and dressed appropriately for the season.
But wherever possible, we think it’s best to save up and invest in quality pieces that will last.
And when you do need to buy—for your capsule wardrobe, from Shein, or anything else—you can still work to offset your carbon footprint by using the MogoCard. For every single tap, we plant a tree for you, for free. To learn more about Code Red Mode and our partnership with veritree, visit our Code Red Blog.
In fact, nationwide climate positivity is our goal. Canada is working to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but we want to do better, faster. There are approximately 17 billion transactions made in Canada every year. By shifting even 20% of our spending to the MogoCard and planting a tree for every purchase, we can make Canada climate positive by removing more CO2 from the air than we produce.2
Join us in the fight against climate change by consuming more mindfully and using your MogoCard to plant trees. By making these small changes in our daily lives, we can all have an impact! Let’s go, y’all!
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This blog is provided for informational purposes only.
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1-According to research conducted by Veritree Technology Inc. 500 lbs. is an approximate amount based on Above-Ground-Carbon (AGC) and Below Ground Carbon (BGC) sequestration estimates contained in several scientific research papers regarding the carbon sequestration of Mangrove trees (the “Research”). The Research contains various ranges for the rate of carbon sequestration per hectare of land. In order to arrive at the approximate amount of 500 lbs., Veritree triangulated data points from the Research regarding AGC and BGC sequestration estimates, and then converted those results into the approximate amount of lbs. per tree. An average Canadian emits approximately 42,000 lbs of CO2 in one year. Each tree will absorb approximately 500lbs of CO2 over its lifetime (approximately 25 years). For every purchase made with the MogoCard, a tree will be planted. If you used your MogoCard for 10 purchases each month, 10 trees would be planted. If 10 trees were planted every month for a year, that would be 120 trees, and those 120 trees would absorb a combined total of 60,000 lbs of CO2 over their lifetimes (25 years), making the average Canadian climate positive. Learn more: Blog.
2-Based on the most recently available data from 2019 and assuming future data follows a similar trajectory. If 20% of the approximately 17.79 billion transactions done in Canada in 2019, including by cash, credit card, debit card, prepaid card and via ATM, were instead done on the MogoCard that would result in approximately 3.5 billion trees being planted. 3.5 billion trees multiplied by 500 lbs of CO2 equals 1.75 trillion pounds of CO2 offset over the lifetime of the trees (approximately 25 years) which exceeds the approximately 1.609 trillion pounds of carbon that Canada emitted in 2019, thereby making Canada’s 2019 carbon footprint climate positive (by eliminating more CO2 than emitted). Learn more: Blog .