Eight Essential Wardrobe Pieces Every Working Girl Should Own

For ladies leaving the college scene or homemaker arena and stepping into the professional world, it may be difficult to change shopping habits from jeans and trendy skirts and tees or cute comfy sweats and crocs to suits and professional shells. This is a guide to purchasing your first professional wardrobe (or first in several years) and can be used later as you move into new base colors or color schemes.

Before we break down the list, let's review some standard wardrobe truths that we are assuming. Truth #1 - You only need eight pieces to have a complete wardrobe. Truth # 2 - Purchasing pieces that you can mix or match is critical when planning a wardrobe. Truth # 3 - A good way to begin a professional wardrobe is to use a base color (the base color will usually be the prevailing color in the suit you purchase i.e. black, brown, gray, navy, olive, etc.) or color scheme to guide you in future wardrobe purchases. No matter what the color scheme is, these eight pieces will work for you. We will explore several options for varying base colors.

With those truths in mind, we're ready to explore the eight essential pieces to professional wardrobe success. The eight pieces you need are as follows: a dress; a three piece suit that includes a jacket, skirt, and pants; a white top (preferably a button front with a collar); pumps (that match your color scheme); and two additional tops (ideally a patterned top and colored one). Now, those are the pieces, let's look at potential outfits and options for each piece depending on your color scheme.

The Dress

If you are beginning with black or gray color scheme, the dress you select should probably be the little black dress. When planning the initial wardrobe, you will want to select a dress that can be worn in summer and winter and one that flatters your body type. Every girl needs a little black dress to dress up or down for pretty much any occasion. The dress counts for two outfits in your wardrobe: the dress by itself and the dress with a jacket (see item description below). You may even be able to pull off three outfits depending on what kind of shirts you purchase (see item description below).

If your color scheme centers on brown, you can go with a brown or tan dress. Likewise, an olive color scheme could use a tan dress, which is probably easier to find than an olive dress. For a navy color base, you could use a navy dress or possibly a dress of some lighter shade of blue. The key thing to remember when selecting the dress, no matter what the color base, is to make sure your dress can be worn with the jacket of the suit you select and the pair of pumps you purchase.

It is important to note that your dress does not have to be a solid color; a patterned dress will work just as well so long as it falls into the color scheme.

Three-piece suit

A three-piece suit is imperative for any working girl. You have several outfit options when you purchase a suit that comes with both pants and skirt. The suit itself provides two outfits. If worn without a shirt underneath, you will have a pant suit and skirt suit. Once you start mixing and matching the three shirts you purchase in your wardrobe, several outfits are possible. With each shirt, your suit provides the opportunity for four new outfits: 1) jacket, shirt, skirt; 2) jacket, shirt, pants; 3) shirt and skirt; and 4) shirt and pants. With three shirts, your suit creates twelve outfit combinations; every additional shirt, you create four new outfits. The total number of outfits from the suit is fourteen-the two from the suit itself and twelve with the shirt combinations.

Later, we discuss some great shirt colors depending on which base color, you choose. Like your dress, your suit does not have to be a solid color a pinstriped or checkered suit will probably work just as well, but it may be a little harder to find items with which to mix and match.

The White Shirt

Unless the three piece suit, you select is a pinstriped suit with a stripe that is not white, you are going to need a white shirt (and even then, you can probably still use the white shirt). A white shirt under a brown, black, or navy suit does wonders for the perfect professional look. It gives you a clean, crisp, and conservative flare like no other color. It is a basic classic look with which even the professional wardrobe novice cannot go wrong.

While the style of the white shirt does not matter all that much, the button front, collar white shirt has a little more umph that other styles. While not the most trendy of items overall, there are always new styles of this classic piece so you can make your white shirt more in the now by purchasing one with ruffles or an empire waist or extra long sleeves so long as it is white, this piece is a fun classic one that has plenty of room for flare and personality.

The Patterned Shirt

The patterned shirt creates four new outfits with your suit. When purchasing the patterned shirt for your wardrobe, the pattern you choose does not matter. The shirt could be striped, checkered, polka dotted, swirled, etc. The key is finding a shirt with the base color (i.e. black, navy, brown, olive) that makes your suit outfits look totally different and therefore brand new. The style of the shirt does not matter as long as you have the base color and when wore with the suit it gives a fresh new look.

For a brown base color, you will often be able to find patterned shirts with several shades of brown or tan. For a navy base color, you will probably want to look for shirts with patterns that include several shades of blue. For olive, you would look for a shirt with varying shades of green, for gray varying shades of gray. For a black base, you will probably be able to use a black and white patterned shirt or one with shades of gray. Despite the above suggestions, do not feel limited in your choice try different patterns with different colors. It is quite possible that a purple and gray shirt will look amazing with your black suit.

Colored shirt

Like the patterned shirt, the colored shirt should make your suit look brand new. There is not any special science to selecting a colored shirt. One key to choosing the colored shirt and really making your suit look trendy and hip, yet professional is going outside of the color scheme. Some great colored shirt ideas follow for several of the base colors that have discussed throughout this guide.

For a brown color scheme, red (or pink) and purple (or lavender) shirts give very feminine looks and add a fabulous bit of flare. If you chose a navy suit, consider using yellow (or gold), silver, or pink shirts to give your suit a new look. Almost any shade of blue shirt will often look nice with an olive suit. With a gray suit, pastel colors like blue, pink, and lavender often look great. Finally, for the black suit, the sky is the limit when it comes to selecting the perfect colored shirt.

Pumps
When selecting a pair of pumps to complete this easy eight piece wardrobe, think cute and comfort. First, select a pair of pumps and style pump that fits and feels good because cute shoes that hurt your feet are not really all that cute. While it is important to feel good about how you look at work, walking around in pain is not going to increase your productivity. The factors to consider in choosing the right pump are 1) toe style (square, rounded, pointy, open); 2) heel height (low (less than an inch), medium (1/2 inch to 2 ½ inches), high (over 3 inches)); 3) heel (open or closed; sling back, etc.). Finally, when selecting a shoe color for your first basic eight pieces your shoes should be the same color of the hem of your skirt and you are all set.

Creating an easy wardrobe is as easy as eight pieces in the beginning. Once you have these eight, you can increase the number of outfits you have buy adding more shirts, skirts and pants that mix and match or another suit that goes well with your base color i.e. if you start with a black base color add a gray suit or if you start with a brown base color add a tan suit, and once you add a new suit, you can start all over with shirts and pumps and dresses!

Remember to be true to your personality and body type when selecting clothing, and above all else have fun, and you will be ready to change from a college girl or house wife into one of the many girls gone working!