Capsule Wardrobe Calculator

How a capsule actually saves money

Not by being cheaper per item — often the opposite. A capsule saves by raising the wear count on every piece, which lowers cost per wear even at a higher price per garment.

Thirty pieces at £60 is £1,800. If those thirty produce ninety wearable outfits, each outfit cost £20 to assemble, and if each piece is worn twenty times a year the cost per wear is £3. A wardrobe of ninety pieces at £30 costs £2,700 and, worn a third as often, comes out at £4.50 a wear despite each item being half the price.

The outfits-per-piece ratio is the health check. Below about two, the wardrobe is not coordinating; above four it is working hard.

A worked example

A thirty-piece capsule producing ninety outfits at £60 average: three outfits per piece, £1,800 total, £20 per outfit, £3 per wear at twenty wears a piece per year.

Adding five well-chosen pieces that lift the outfit count to 130 costs £300 and drops the cost per outfit to £16.15. Adding five that only fit with each other adds £300 and perhaps eight outfits — the same money for a fifth of the benefit.

Where the answer misleads

The outfit count is an input here, and it is the number most easily inflated. Work it out properly with the combination calculator and an honest coordination factor rather than assuming everything goes with everything.

Wears per piece per year is the other soft number. Twenty is reasonable for a working wardrobe and wildly optimistic for occasion pieces, and mixing both into one average produces a cost per wear that describes neither.

Finally, the arithmetic rewards uniformity, and a wardrobe optimised purely for combination count becomes monotonous. The number is a check, not a target — nobody has ever regretted a capsule for being insufficiently multiplicative.