The Working Wardrobe

The test: hang everything on one rail, and check that any top works with any bottom, in any order, without a single combination that needs explaining. Eleven pieces gives you a lot of mornings. It also takes about four attempts a season to get there, and the piece that breaks it is almost always the one everybody liked most in the buying room.

What it is not is a capsule wardrobe in the magazine sense — a navy blazer, a white shirt, and an instruction to buy quality. Nobody needs to be told to buy quality. What people need is the specific, boring information about which trouser goes over which boot, and that only comes from hanging it up and looking at it.

The eleven

Three trousers

A wide leg that clears a boot, a straight one that clears a flat, and one in something warmer for the four cold weeks. All three break in the same place, which is not an accident.

Two skirts

One below the knee, one longer. Both with pockets, which sounds trivial and is the single most requested thing in the shop.

Three tops

A shirt that can be worn open over the rest of it, a fine knit that goes under a jacket without bulking the shoulder, and one that is not white.

A jacket

Unstructured, unlined below the shoulder, and cut to sit over the knit rather than beside it. This is the piece that decides whether the edit works.

A coat

Mid-weight, 400 to 600 grams, long enough to cover the longest skirt. Athens has eleven days a year that want more than this.

One thing that is not sensible

Every version of this edit has had one. Currently a silk trouser in a green that should not work with any of the above and does.

How people actually buy it

It is bought as pieces, not as a set, and most people take three or four of them. The point of hanging it as eleven is that you can see what you are choosing against — which is impossible on a shop floor organised by fabric, and impossible online full stop.

If you are starting one from nothing — new job, new city, a body that has changed — book a wardrobe audit before you buy anything. Two hours in your own home, and the list that comes out of it is usually shorter and duller than this page, which is the point.