Maintaining a summer wardrobe and a winter wardrobe is one of the foundational principles of fashion, and there’s plenty of advice out there to build wardrobes for each season, when you ought to change over and how you should safely store your clothes until summer comes back round. The area that you may find tricky to navigate is the crossover: days with difficult weather that doesn’t conform fully to heat of summer or the cold of winter – these naturally occur during spring and autumn, but they can occur at any time of the year, leaving it hard to know how to put an outfit together.
Today, we’re taking a look at what you can do in difficult situations like these, and the clothing that can help you bridge the gap between summer and winter, and rescue from tricky days when summer turns cold, or winter is unexpectedly balmy.
Rescue Clothes
There are some clothes that you should keep in your wardrobe all year round, because of their power to rescue you from a situation like this. Clothes that are stylish, flexible, and never look out of place, allowing you to add them to your outfit at short notice to ward off weather you weren’t expecting.
A women’s cashmere sweater should be a fixture of your wardrobe. Cashmere isn’t just soft, it’s warm even though cashmere clothing is very light. This means you can add it to your outfit – even if it’s just hung round your shoulders – without the same disruption to your outline as putting on a thick-knit Aran sweater.
Cashmere is also well known as a high quality material, which means it attracts the attention of high quality designers. As long as you check you’re buying good cashmere, you can be assured you’re also picking a timeless piece that should serve you well for many years. Test it for softness: cashmere should be soft and if it doesn’t have that signature feel, it may have been made with lower quality wool or overtreated. You should also check it for springiness: if you tug on it, it should spring back into shape easily. If it doesn’t, it may have been overmilled or be cheaply made, without the usual high fibre-count.
The Emergency Kit
Whatever the season, you should have an emergency kit prepared that can help you face all weathers. These are the clothes you keep at the office for a quick change if you’re caught by an unexpected rainstorm, or a sudden heatwave: waterproof shoes, a cardigan or sweater, and a spare blouse or t-shirt. These should allow you to improvise together a layered outfit that will keep you feeling comfortable whatever the weather.
