It’s a bit OCD but I work at planning an ultralight wardrobe for travel. One plan that works well is sometimes called a 3 x 3 capsule wardrobe. It includes three bottoms, three tops and three secondary tops. The aim is for all the bottoms to work with all the tops. Sticking to mostly neutral colours helps achieve this. It never actually works that way, I find, when you want both dressy and casual looks.

Here’s the bottoms:

One casual pants, one skirt and one dress trousers.

Three basic tops:

The black T shirt is silk so when paired with the skirt will look more like a dress.

Three additional tops, which will layer with most of the basic tops:

I’m adding a dressy blouse as our trip is almost all city activities with a number of fine dining restaurants.

I’m packing scarves, which take very little room but add more colour and variety, for example:

I’m packing a pair of red shoes (pretty wild for me) and wearing black boots:

Some possible outfits:

I can easily get enough different outfits for a three week trip. And I’ll have room in my luggage if I do some shopping 😉