← Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
226 | Revelations From My Recent Spring Closet Audit
00:23:05
It’s a rare treat to work on my own wardrobe these days. I’m perfectly content to invest all my creative energy on helping my clients find their perfect pieces, style their best outfits, and curate their dream closets. But after my recent trip to...
Loading summary
Transcript8 lines
- [00:01]
Heather Riggs
It is a rare treat to work on my own wardrobe these days. I am perfectly content to invest all my creative energy on helping my clients find their perfect pieces, style their best outfits, and curate their dream closets. But after my recent trip to Punta Cana in January, I realized I was in desperate need of a few new spring and summer items. So I got to work following the six step wardrobe revamp process I teach Inside her style collective, my 90 day group coaching program. I knew that in order to shop strategically and fill in the gaps, I had to start with a full evaluation of what I have. In today's episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what I did to prepare for and maximize my recent spring closet audit, how it went, and what I discovered. I was very surprised by some of these revelations, and I think you will be too. If you've been thinking about cleaning out your closet this season and getting your outfits ready for the warmer days ahead, you do not want to skip this one. Here's your cheat sheet to wardrobe planning success for whatever season you're in.
- [01:10]
Co-host or Assistant
Welcome to Her Style Podcast where we're all about empowering you to show up and get dressed every day with confidence. I'm your host, Heather Riggs, a 15 year and counting certified image consultant and color specialist ready to build a wardrobe and a personal style you love. Let's get started.
- [01:36]
Heather Riggs
I cannot believe it, friend. I finally managed to give my wardrobe some much needed attention. I really am so happy to focus my attention on my clients. I generally love what's in my closet. I have what I need. I can get dressed quickly and confidently each day. But if you listen to episode number 214 last month where I shared about packing for my vacation in just 30 minutes and then realized during the trip that none of my bathing suits fit me well anymore, then you and I both know I needed to plan ahead for my spring and summer wardrobe this year because I have made the mistake of rushing out to buy the things I think I need and to shop willy nilly. And then I typically end up forgetting things or I get distracted by what I want instead of what I actually need. And then of course, I end up overspending as well. And I didn't want to have any regrets once the weather warms up this year. Now, thankfully, I know what to do. I follow my own system that I teach Inside Her Style Collective and right here on the podcast. And the beauty of going through this full process is that it gets easier every single time you do it. You truly just need to quickly revisit each step at the start of a new season, and you're good to go. I was able to get through the whole process for my wardrobe this year within my about a week, and not a full week, like an hour or so here and there throughout the course of a week. Now, the first three steps in this process, as you might know, are to dial in your signature style, learn how to flatter your figure, and discover your best colors. These are what I often refer to as your style foundations, and it's super helpful to be clear on all three of these things before you start evaluating what's in your closet and planning for the upcoming season. And I do want to start by explaining why and working backwards through these steps. When you know your best colors and you ideally have a personal color palette to shop from, it's helpful to review your colors from time to time just to see if there are any that you've been defaulting to. You know, sometimes you'll end up realizing you have a wardrobe that's a sea of black. The same thing can happen even when you're shopping from a personal color palette. You might naturally gravitate towards one or two of your colors more than others and end up stocking up on too much of one particular color. So you might want to round things out a little bit and branch out. Or you might realize that there are a couple colors in your palette that you really love, but maybe you don't have a lot of that in your wardrobe and you want to focus your attention there. Or maybe you're just feeling more excited and inspired by a couple of your colors for a particular season, and so you want to focus on those as you're adding new pieces. Or if some of the colors in your palette are trending, it could be a really good time to stock up on those. But all in all, there's really not a lot of work to do as far as step three is concerned. It's just like a quick noticing of the colors in your palette compared to what's in your wardrobe. And then another foundational step, of course, is learning how to flatter your figure. But once you learn this information once about your body's natural shape and your proportions, it really doesn't change much, if at all. And I know you might be surprised to hear that, but your physical weight is a fairly insignificant component to step two. So all I had to do here, as far as my my figure goes, was simply take my current body measurements so that I could double check size charts when I started ordering things online. That took me about a minute. It was easy peasy. So no real work to do there either. But the one step that I do advise us all to spend a bit more time on, I would say probably once or twice a year, is updating your style Mood board. This is the first step in the process and I never skip it. It is so important to make sure that you're clear on the vision that you have for your wardrobe and your outfits. You want to make sure that your style goals and preferences are in line with your real life, that they still resonate with you, and that nothing's changed significantly since the previous year. So you want to plan out your seasonal wardrobe with your current style goals in mind. This is the best way to ensure that you stay out of a rut and that you actually have what you need in your wardrobe to create the type of outfits that you want. Now, my intention when I came up with the idea for this podcast episode was to focus on the revelations that came out of my closet audit. But I actually think the biggest and most surprising revelation happened before the audit even started, and it was in doing this prep work. I went back to my spring 2024 style mood board and Pinterest and I started by repinning anything that still caught my eye to a new spring 2025 style mood board. I will always update this for each year. I also then went and did some more exploring and I added some new outfits that were really speaking to me this year and making me feel excited about possibilities and getting dressed for the warmer weather. And I have to tell you, I was very surprised at how it turned out. And to anyone else it might not look remarkably different than my board from the previous year, but what really stood out to me was that I've had a shift in my top three personal style types. I did not retake my quiz, which you can take for free@herstylellc.com quiz to get your top three style type results as well. I have taken it several times before. I didn't retake the quiz for this step, but in putting my mood board together I could just see from the images and the outfits that I was saving that my taste has moved from feminine, natural and dramatic to feminine, natural and elegant. I know this might seem like a really insignificant detail, but to me it was so eye opening and it really shifted everything about how I completed my closet audit. Just to back up a little bit and tell you some of my own personal style journey, before I became a mom, I would have described my style as feminine Dramatic and elegant. I loved to dress up. I had no qualms about investing some pretty pennies on my pieces. And I was on the weekly pickup and delivery run with my dry cleaner. Things were a lot fancier over here, friend. And then after my son Gray was born, my life changed so much, and I leaned really hard into a natural style for the first few years of his life, which made total sense at the time. That's why there's seasons for everything, and our wardrobes are always evolving over time. And then a couple of years in, I kind of rediscovered myself and my personal style again, and I realized I wanted to embrace the feminine side of my preferences. So I started investing in some items that felt really pretty but were still very practical, like, easy to clean all of those good things, easy to move around in and chase my wild and crazy son. And then just over the last couple of years, I also started adding some small, dramatic elements back in. I was playing with more color again and wanting to feel more like the fashionista I was in my 20s, and I felt really comfortable there and very content with what I have. But holy cow, in giving myself some time and space to dream about my style again and to play and to just save lots of random, beautiful things to my style mood board, I realized, like, taking this step back and looking at everything that I am ready to level up. The elegant side of me is really pushing for a comeback here, and maybe it's the fact that I turned 40 in October and I'm entering this next decade of my life, but this mood board that I made this year year feels sophisticated. It's still colorful and lovely and fun, don't get me wrong. But it looks like the next level version of my style. And I had no idea how ready I was for this until I took the time to build a new mood board for this spring and summer. So it's very exciting. And I want to say, from probably my teenage years or very early adulthood, I always had this vision of having a very elegant wardrobe as an adult when I was a mom and all of that. And the thought has crossed my mind many times over the last few years. Like, I don't know if I'm there yet, but friend, I am here. I am ready for it. I have a newfound desire to raise the bar, not necessarily the budget. We'll have that conversation another day. But I am raising the aesthetic bar to what's in my wardrobe and the overall goal of how I want to present myself and look and feel. So the first revelation that I had 10 minutes into the episode. Sorry, this is a chatty one. But my first revelation in this whole process is that my personal style changed without me even knowing. And this is why we cannot underestimate the importance of step one, which is knowing your ideal signature style with complete clarity. It is constantly shifting and evolving. If you've gone through this process with me before on your own, listening to the podcast inside of the collective, working with me one on one, I have to tell you, taking just one evening or one small bite size amount of time to work on your style mood board can enable you to see that there's been changes. And for me, it was a whole new benchmark for my personal style. And so I didn't just want to audit my closet to make sure that things fit. I needed to be a bit more ruthless with what I was willing to keep and part start with. I was in a private session with one of my clients a couple weeks ago and she's in a very similar situation. We've been working on her wardrobe for the past eight months or so since the middle of last summer, and she had started auditing her spring wardrobe for the first time because we haven't worked together in the spring yet. And so we were looking at some of her pieces the other week and there was nothing wrong with any of them. They were great colors, they worked well for her figure. But we could see such an obvious difference between where her style was then and where it is now, not even a year later. And so it's kind of funny to me now, I didn't even realize it during this session with her that I was in the same boat until I took the time to do the Style mood board exercise again for myself. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make a new mood board for the upcoming season, if you haven't already. It can be incredibly eye opening and it is such a helpful resource to refer back to as you continue through the rest of the steps. And I know I totally deviated from what I promised you in this episode title. So now we can finally talk about my closet audit and what came from that. So the next revelation that I had is I can't believe I'm about to say this. I am out of my dress obsessed era. I know. I cannot even believe it. This might be one of the biggest shockers. I always talk about my love of dresses, how much more comfortable I am wearing dresses. But in going through my pieces pieces, the majority of what I was ready to let go of were a number of my Dresses, I think mostly because a lot of them didn't really fit the new vision that I have for my style, but also because I realized that I have collected a very nice assortment of tops and I have some newer jeans from the fall that I absolutely love. And I'm feeling excited to do more mixing and matching this year with some pants or shorts and my tops. And I also have a lot of button down shirt outfits on my mood board. And I noticed that I have been reaching for those much more often lately. So I felt ready to simplify and get rid of the excess of dresses that I had. And it feels really good. There is a nice amount of space now on the right hand side of my closet and it's kind of awesome. So yes, we let go of some dresses, which I was not expecting at all. And I already knew as we talked about before, that most of my bathing suits had to go. So I did say goodbye to a couple of those were not working for me anymore. And I also said goodbye to a couple pair of shorts and a handful of unflattering sweaters because I edited everything, not just my spring summer clothing. And I had a surprising number of things, again, mostly sweaters and dresses that I will admit to you were fairly frumpy. The things I let go of are things that I have known for a long time that my husband is not a big fan of. And he's very sweet in his feedback and is very kind to only share when I ask his opinion typically. But I had always really loved and felt good in and defended those pieces. And I wore them anyway because I wear what I like. But as I tried them on again during this audit for the first time I saw it, they were frumpy. And I think for a long time, probably after giving birth to my son, a part of me really did want to hide my body more than I maybe even realized. And so my next revelation from this closet audit was that I feel so much more confident in my body than I have maybe ever. And I've seen so many of my clients go through this over the years, realizing that they don't want to hide out in oversized pieces and they actually do feel good when they show their body's shape. And getting to watch these women embrace where they are, even if the scale isn't exactly where they might want it to be, has been seriously one of the most rewarding things for me. And I was very surprised to see that I am finally there too. And again, maybe it's partly age and maturity and caring a little bit less about what other people think of me. But I do feel more confident now coming into my 40s and I was ready to ditch the clothes that just don't really do me justice when I was able to take a step back and really look objectively and admit that to myself. And I also had a shopping bag of very old jeans and pants that I didn't have time to try on before we moved last summer. I just threw them all in a bag. They were ones that I hadn't worn in a long time and I knew that I needed to try them on and see how they looked and if I still liked them. So I did try on a few and I very quickly realized why they were all in the bag. I think 98% of them were mid rise pants and oh girl, I just cannot anymore. I don't think you will ever get me out of high rise pants ever again. Just like my skinny jeans. I'll never let go Jack. They're staying with me forever. So I let go of all the the mid and more low rise jeans and pants that I had sitting in that bag for months on end. And as I took my post audit inventory to see what I had left and what I was missing, the next revelation was that my shopping list is almost exactly the same as it was last spring. You can hear the whole list in episode number 132, which I will of course link up for you in the show notes. Because I didn't buy myself anything on that list last season. I did almost zero shopping all spring and summer. So the last revelation that I had doing this process and going through my closet was that taking the time to make a well planned and intentional shopping list is going to save you so many costly mistakes. I already knew this, obviously. It's what I've been teaching and doing for years, and I know the value in mapping out your shopping priorities ahead of time before you buy anything. But looking back at my actual shopping list from spring 2024 and seeing that I still want and need almost all of the same things one year later, even with an evolution in my personal style, is pretty incredible and super validating. Now I know that if I had made those investments last year, they would have been absolutely amazing and I feel even more confident making them now knowing that they still hold up a whole year later. So I've already done almost all of my shopping for this season and I'm happy to give you a full recap on the podcast if you want to hear about it. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in. I am currently $3 under my budget. Woohoo. I did it. And in reflecting on my 2024 spring shopping list, I would maybe like to still pick up a pair of denim shorts in that sweet spot between booty shorts and from mom shorts. Like the sweet spot in there that's so hard to find. But if I don't find the perfect thing at a really reasonable price point, I know it'll be okay. It's a nice to have item, not a need to have item. And so that's really it. This was such a joy to share with you. I hardly ever take the time to work on my own wardrobe and so it was was really fun to share some insights from my own experience with you today. I hope you enjoyed hearing this and picked up some things to implement as you prepare your own wardrobe for the season ahead. And whether you are planning to do any shopping over the next few months or not, one of the most helpful things you can do is to try styling new outfits from within your own closet first. This is going to give you so much insight about what you actually need and often it can help you cut your shopping list in half. You might feel like you have nothing to wear, but once you get in there and start playing around with things and trying new combinations together, you can realize that you actually have so much more to work with than you even knew and you might find some pieces that you forgot all about and that you're excited to wear again. So I would love to come alongside and support you with this. In just two weeks from today, I am hosting our First first ever 5 day shop your closet challenge. This is completely free, so each day from April 7th through the 11th I'm going to be sharing a quick 15 to 20 minute training so you can gain clarity about your signature style like we talked about and figure out how to infuse it into your outfits even if your lifestyle feels like a mismatch. I hear that all the time that you might want your style and your wardrobe to look one way, but you feel like your lifestyle dictates that you have something very different. So we're going to figure out how to bridge that gap for you. During this event, we're going to talk about easy ways to highlight your best features and adapt the clothing that no longer fits you like it used to. This is especially important if you don't have a huge budget to go out and buy all new pieces. We can talk about how to make what you do have work even better for your body. Right now we're going to look at how to make the colors you own work better for you as well and put together new combinations with confidence. You can wear your colors in new ways and maybe break out of some of the boxes and limitations you've been putting on yourself. And of course you're going to receive tons of expert styling tips to finish your outfits and really make the hidden gems in your closet look totally up to date. So we are going to work with what you have all week long. I'm also going to be hosting a live Q and A after every single training session so that you can get your questions answered by me personally. This is gonna be a very action oriented week. You are gonna learn and apply and get my support along the way. So if you are ready to wear what you own and feel more confident getting dressed and putting outfits together each day, then you have to be there friend. This is what you've been waiting for. So head to herstylellc.comchallenge to grab your free seat and then save the dates for April 7th through the 11th. We're gonna meet at 1pm Eastern Standard Time every single day that week. Of course there will also be revival plays available if you're unable to join us live. So make sure that you sign up@herstylellc.com challenge and I can't wait to see you there.
- [22:18]
Co-host or Assistant
Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to stop copying everyone else's style and start dialing in your own swoon worthy signature look, head over to take my free 5 minute personal style quiz which you can find at.
- [22:33]
Heather Riggs
The link in the show notes.
- [22:34]
Co-host or Assistant
If you've enjoyed our time together, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to her style podcast so you never miss an episode. Finally, I invite you to make this.
- [22:44]
Heather Riggs
A two way conversation and send me.
- [22:46]
Co-host or Assistant
A DM over on Instagram eatherriggstyle to let me know how I can best support you on your style journey. I'm always here for you in style and service. Until next time.