How often do you open your wardrobe, stare at the jumble of clothes and then reach for your one trusty outfit that you return to time and again?
Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to decide what you should wear, which means you tend to stick to the same options that you know suit you and serve you well. But what about all the clothes gathering dust on shelves and hangers?
In recent years the re-wear trend has been gathering pace. The concept is simple: instead of buying new clothes, find ways to re-wear items you already have.
Most of us will re-wear our favourite pieces over and over again, but we’re willing to bet that if you dig around in your wardrobe you’ll find some items you have perhaps forgotten about. Now could be the ideal time to dig them out and re-introduce them into your wardrobe rotation.
One fashion writer at Vogue has even described this as “shopping my own wardrobe”, by which she means she intends to seek out new outfits amongst what she already has rather than buying new in 2026.
One of the challenges of adopting the re-wear trend initially is knowing what you have in the first place. When was the last time you went through all of your clothes and really looked at what you have available?
It’s easy for nice items of clothing to get hidden in drawers or at the back of rails if we’re not wearing them frequently. After all, the items at the front will almost always be the ones we’ve just washed and put away – aka the pieces of clothing we wear most often.
So, by better organising your wardrobe, you can ensure that you look at all the clothes you have available when you’re choosing your outfit each morning.
This is also an excellent chance to get rid of any pieces of clothing that you truly don’t intend to wear again, either because they no longer fit or no longer suit your taste and style.
Research by climate action NGO WRAP found that, in 2022, Brits had an estimated 1.6 billion garments sitting unworn in their homes.
By starting with a wardrobe audit, you can see exactly what you have available to you and remind yourself of some of the hidden gems in your wardrobe. But what do you do once you’ve been through your clothes?
This is when it’s time to look at how a new wardrobe could help you going forward. If your current set up is less than ideal, it may be time to invest in a made-to-measure wardrobe for your bedroom.
Not only will this likely make much more efficient use of the space you have available, but it will also enable you to design a wardrobe that truly meets your needs and prevents you from having a stash of clothes you no longer wear hidden in a forgotten drawer.
When you design a wardrobe for your bedroom after you’ve audited your closet, you’ll have a good understanding of what type of storage solutions you need within your wardrobe itself.
After you’ve taken the necessary measurements for the wardrobe to fit your space, you can turn your attention to how that space will be divided up – and there are some ingenious space-saving solutions that can allow you to fit more in and keep everything organised.
Firstly, you can select the precise interior layout of your wardrobe to meet your needs. If you have a lot of full-length dresses, you can ensure you have enough hanging space for them.
Or perhaps you only need to hang shirts and jackets, in which case you can reduce the height of the hanging space and install drawers or shelves below to allow you to make best use of the space available to you.
Depending on what clothes you typically own and how much room you have available, you could also explore handy accessories like a pull-out trouser rack or a pull-out shoe rack.
Not only do design choices like these help you keep your possessions organised, they also allow you to easily see what you have available to wear – no more losing shoes, tops or accessories at the back of your wardrobe or at the bottom of drawers!
A further advantage to a made-to-measure wardrobe is that you can design your closet to fit precisely into your bedroom. That means if you have high ceilings or an odd-shaped alcove, you won’t end up with the dead space you might otherwise have by choosing free-standing furniture.
