How to build a capsule wardrobe.

1. Take stock of what you own

Pull everything out, one category at a time: tops, bottoms, dresses, layers, shoes. It’s hard to plan a closet you can’t see all at once. As you go, sort each piece into three piles:

• Wear often and like.
• Like, but rarely wear. Ask why: wrong fit, nothing to wear it with, wrong season?
• Don’t like or don’t fit. These are leaving the capsule.

A photo of each piece makes the rest of this much easier, because you can plan outfits without pulling everything out again. That’s the job Cotton was built for: photograph your clothes, up to 30 photos at once, and each piece is cut out on your iPhone in about a second.

2. Look at how you actually spend your week

A capsule should fit your life, not a mood board. Roughly split a normal week by activity: work, weekends, exercise, evenings out. If you spend five days at a desk and one evening out, your capsule should look like that too. This step stops you from building a lovely capsule of clothes for a life you don’t lead.

3. Choose a palette

Look at the “wear often” pile. It usually already has a palette. Most capsules work well with:

• Two or three base colors for bottoms, outerwear and shoes, such as navy, grey, black, camel or denim.
• Two or three accent colors for tops and smaller pieces, chosen because you like wearing them.

The test is simple: most tops should go with most bottoms. If a piece only works with one other thing, it is either an accent that needs a partner or a candidate to leave out.

4. Pick your core pieces

Using the piles and the palette, choose a starting set. A typical everyday capsule might look like this, but adjust every number to your week:

Favor pieces that fit well and that you reach for without thinking. Fit matters more than brand, and comfort matters more than trend.

5. Wear it for a month

Put everything else away, out of sight, and live with the capsule for four weeks. Keep a simple note of what you wore each day. You’ll quickly see three things: the pieces doing all the work, the pieces you skip, and the gaps, like the one missing layer that would make five outfits possible.

A closet app helps here. Cotton suggests one outfit a day from the clothes you’ve added and favors pieces you haven’t worn lately, and its free Insights show what share of your closet you wore this month and which pieces have waited longest.

6. Fill gaps slowly

Only now is it worth buying anything. Write down the specific gap, such as “a smart layer that goes with both grey trousers and jeans”, and buy for that. Before you do, estimate how often you’ll wear it; the cost per wear guide shows how to turn that into a number.

7. Rotate by season

At the change of season, swap out what doesn’t fit the weather and bring back what does. Most of your base pieces will stay; the accents and layers change. Each swap is a good moment to look at what didn’t get worn and decide whether it still belongs.