Happy New Year! The team here at Cara & The Sky hope that you've had an absolutely divine year in 2024, and are facing towards 2025 with positivity, growth and joy at the front of mind. At this time of the year, we make all sorts of Resolutions to help us navigate through the coming months, giving us purpose and structure. It's also a time of reflection, looking back at the months behind us to celebrate our achievements, commiserate our losses, and plan for the future.

Wardrobe Tips for the Year Ahead

As a sustainable knitwear brand, of course we have our wardrobe at the front of mind, and have put together some wardrobe tips to help you with cleaning out the extras and choosing long lasting pieces that will bring you joy throughout the year.

Dopamine Dressing

We've already answered the question What is Dopamine Dressing in a previous blog post, but in short, dopamine dressing is a way to start your every day with joy by wearing clothes that make you happy. Sounds simple, right? It is! Dopamine dressing is a key part of our wardrobe tips, and we're not even just talking about owning knitted jumpers that are soft and fun to wear (although obviously that is part of it), but in building a wardrobe that makes you happy, ideally every item in your closet and drawers is one you want to wear.

Remove the Excess

One of our top wardrobe tips is to get rid of anything that doesn't fit you, has a hole or a stain, or you just don't wear anymore - taking care to donate quality items and recycle fabrics where possible. Throw away those socks that always fall down in your shoes! By only filling your wardrobe with items that you can (and will) wear, it makes it easier to get dressed in the morning, without having to dig through all those old dresses you never liked or the corporate attire you don't need anymore. Make your life easier!

One tip for finding out which items you don't wear is to put away your clothes on hangers backwards - making them noticeable to unhook - and, once you wear the item, putting it back the right way around. Then, at the end of the year, you can easily see which items you never even took out of the closet, and those could be candidates for donation. If it helps, put those items into an empty suitcase or store it under the bed, and at the end of the next year check again - you might find pieces you missed, or you might have completely moved on and can donate them more easily.

Shop High Quality Pieces

There's nothing more frustrating than buying a piece of clothing that disintegrates, gets holes, or starts to become scratchy after a few washes - all symptoms of the low quality that comes from a lot of fast fashion these days. Instead, our slow fashion brand focuses on creating ageless, timeless pieces like our knitted cardigans that you can wear year after year, made in the UK using vegan-friendly materials, and designed to become staple pieces in your wardrobe. After all, having pieces you want to wear over and over makes it less likely you'll buy more unnecessary items, and make the clean-out next year even easier!

Build a Capsule Wardrobe

You know we love a capsule wardrobe here at Cara & The Sky - we've written in length our capsule wardrobe ideas to help you design a convenient wardrobe full of dopamine dressing feels, and these wardrobe tips are still super helpful - check out the blog post to get more ideas on how to build a capsule wardrobe.

Keep Everything Clean, Dry and Aerated

When investing in clothing that you love, you want it to last as long as possible so that you can continue to enjoy it wear after wear. When it comes to knitwear, it takes a little more time, attention and care to make sure you're treating it correctly - check out our knitwear washing guide for tips on how to care for your knits, and always follow the care instructions on your clothing items. Make sure your home is free of damp, that clothing is properly dried before being put away, and that there is good airflow (or proper vacuum seals) in storage areas.

Final Wardrobe Tips

Hopefully this collection of wardrobe tips have given you some ideas on how to curate your closet for the year ahead, but there's one more tip to share, and it's a super important one: Wear Whatever You Want! Your opinion about what looks good on you, what feels nice to wear, and what makes you happy is the only one that matters, so don't ever feel like you can't wear 'that style' or 'that colour' or any of these judgemental types of wardrobe tips. Wear what makes you happy: that's the Cara & The Sky secret!