Let’s start with the clothes. I now own the following from MR PORTER: ecru corduroy trousers, navy pleated slacks, a navy merino jumper, an eggshell-coloured Oxford-collar shirt, a camp-collared chore jacket in a dark navy, a cream-coloured T-shirt and a pair of brown reclaimed-suede Derbies. I also allowed myself access to a few items from my personal wardrobe: two T-shirts (navy and white), a pair of jeans and a pair of brown sneakers that I didn’t necessarily have to incorporate into the experiment, but they turned up in the post that week and you know what it’s like when something’s new.

All that – plus, a raincoat, because I did this during the British springtime – brought my tally of wearable items up to 12. This is roughly what you take with you on holiday, and it’s always weird how that doesn’t seem enough by about day four, isn’t it? A little lesson there, already.

The first outfit I put together was the hardest. I was going from one party to another over the course of one evening, and the parties would have noticeably different vibes (east London pints-and-shouting followed by central London cocktails-and-shouting).

This was also the first time I confronted the capsule, so I ummed and ahed in front of the mirror for almost an hour. In the end, I went for the navy chore jacket and pleated trousers as a sort of matching two-piece, with the cream T-shirt underneath and the Derby shoes below. I thought about wearing the shirt instead of the T-shirt, but it looked a little overly smart for east London and a little bit try-hard for central. (Lesson one: your wardrobe contains more moods than 12 items of clothing can express.)

I accessorised with a nice pair of socks (lesson two: socks can be an alarmingly powerful accessory on a simple outfit) and a cream-coloured beanie (lesson three: if you’re going to east London for a pint, it is literally illegal not to wear a little beanie). Done.

The second outfit (to be frank, I skipped a day due to hangover) was a lot easier. I paired the cream-coloured T-shirt (lesson four: when to do laundry may become life’s biggest conundrum) and navy slacks with a flirty little fold over the shoes and added a fun blue-and-cream pair of socks. Nothing major (lesson five: it is not necessary to dress all-out to impress “just some losers at a co-working space”), but it allowed me to think more about the outfit as a cohesive whole. While most of my day was spent hunched like a gargoyle over a laptop, the walk to and from the office and to lunch and back was where I could really show out, which I did with a raincoat (lesson six: rain sucks!) as well as a classic checked scarf and a simple cream cap.

By now, I was oddly agitated, though. It wasn’t that I was bored, exactly, but I just had a gnawing desire to wear anything that wasn’t blue and cream and blue again. In my normal life, I stick to a fairly limited seven- (eight for 2022, back to seven for 2023) colour palette, mainly because it allows me to wear more show-stopping pieces over a cohesive base outfit. These didn’t exist in the capsule, so I had to think around it.

On day three, I went for the cream cords and the brown shoes combo (lesson seven: you can get dressed really, really quickly if your bottom half is literally always decided for you) and the merino jumper, carefully tucked to a nice 1990s-style height on the hip, which I accessorised with far more jewellery than I normally wear. This felt good, and fussing with the tuck of the jumper allowed me to use up all the excess energy that I normally use on getting dressed in a hyper-focussed way. (Lesson eight: a good tuck can transform the way you wear a piece.) I spent a lot of the week agonising over tucking in T-shirts or not.

For the next run of days, I decided to wear the hell out of the shirt I’d been sent. First, as a casual overshirt over a white T-shirt, then to dinner as an actual button-up, then, finally, as a layer beneath a chore jacket. (The shirt got complimented by the same person on day one and day three, so, lesson nine: people really don’t notice what you’re wearing as much as you think they do.) Still, I decided not to wear the exact same outfit to a party on Saturday that I’d worn to the same party the week before, in case I got a cruel nickname like “Joely Sameclothes” or, I don’t know, “Chore Jacket Prick”.

The first day post-experiment, given full access to my wardrobe again, I didn’t really want to veer too far. I relished putting on an unprecedented fourth pair of trousers, and a long-sleeved white tee instead of a short-sleeved one, but more-or-less I kept it the same: a simple neat outfit that allowed a leather jacket that I’d just picked up to shine, a little cream beanie (east London) and the same brown shoes that had dragged me through the last week of dressing.

Is there a moral here? Sort of. Yes, in that giving up a significant amount of the decision-making attached to getting dressed can make the first hour of your day faster and easier. You gain an appreciation for dressing freely after you’ve dressed restrictedly. But unless you’re a slightly annoying artist about to be profiled in a broadsheet newspaper, I’m not fully convinced a capsule wardrobe works as a lifestyle. The human spirit is very complex. Sometimes it just really needs to wear a different pair of jeans.