Cheryl Shops

It's peak summer in the northern hemisphere at the moment, but in San Francisco, we're approaching the time of year I affectionately call Fogust. (That would be fog + August = Fogust.) Today, it was glorious and sunny; I wore a T-shirt and linen pants. Yesterday, it was drizzling and so chilly, I put on a leather jacket. Long story short, layers are the way to go here. My go-to outfits lately might not look anything like what you've been wearing recently, but they're always an option any time of year in northern California. Here are some of my favorite recent looks. 

The idea of a capsule wardrobe is not new; I was first introduced to them by Lucky Magazine (R.I.P.) which had a recurring feature called the Lucky Closet (or something like that) where they'd mix and match a set number of pieces to create infinite outfits. Bloggers and influencers have embraced the concept in more recent years, but I've found I'm often underwhelmed by the results. Too many "classics" or "essentials" and you've got a bunch of really boring basic outfits. It is quite challenging to pick a very limited number of pieces to mix and match, and that's why I've never featured a capsule wardrobe here before—until now. I am not a stylist, but in the interest of getting more wear out of my closet this month, I challenged myself to come up with 10 outfits using only 10 pieces, and I tried to pick the most interesting (yet versatile) ones I could find. Here's what I came up with.