The super basic wardrobe

Excerpt from Three Black Skirts: All You Need to Survive by Anna Johnson (Workman Publishing, 2000).

If you are less concerned with building a personal style legend than with just looking good in everyday situations, you need dress rules that are more practical than prissy. Less a matter of whether to wear diamonds at brunch and more of what's clean and what matches. To have a wardrobe that doesn't laugh at you every time you hit a fashion emergency, you need a balance between basics and luxuries, and you need enough range to accommodate a body that expands in the heat, bloats once month, and shrinks when you fall in love or go to India.

If I had to boil it all down, my ideal wardrobe would pivot around three black skirts: one knee-length (and not waitress tight), for work; one long and slinky, for seduction; and one short and stretchy, for PMS bloat and pigging out. Certain pieces anchor you.

These are the building blocks that help you get to work on time, knowing you don't have a visible panty-line problem or a weird colour that's impossible to match. Shopping for clothes ought to follow the supersensible rationale of foundation stones first, fripperies second.

Of course it doesn't. If you have cultivated an antiwardrobe stuffed to the gills with weird accessories made out of satin, felt and chicken feathers, try this shopping mantra: Does it fit? Does it match? Does it work for or against me? With a realistic grasp on your lifestyle (Metropolitan Opera subscription or pickup truck full of horse feed?), try to funnel your funds into the best-quality basic wardrobe you can afford.

Be tough on yourself. If you can't see yourself in more than five completely different situations in an item, don't buy it -- unless it's a G-string or a wedding dress.

Black is a good starting point for your essential capsule wardrobe but can look a little heavy during spring and summer. Use colour as a transseasonal infusion of energy. A pink scarf lights up your face like a votive candle.

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