Fascitelli - Shop Your Closet

Rid yourself of piles of clothes and learn how to stop adding to the clutter

What to buy to craft the best basic wardrobe without sacrificing style

How to get rid of the clothes you dont want, and the different benefits each option offers

Learn the three basic closet types that can best house your wardrobe

How to store everything you put in your closet so its fresh and ready to go

Advice on organizing those all-important fashion boosters

Find out how these special closets have their own unique requirements

Keep it clean; keep it fresh. Discover the joys of maintaining your closet and your wardrobe

The ins and outs of packing, and how your closet plays a pivotal role

How to make room for your significant other and their wardrobe

Other areas of your home can benefit from the principles applied to your closet, from your medicine chest to your pantry, from your bookcase to your CD/video collection

When I began my company a few years ago, I learned an important lesson: Nothing good comes easy. Shop Your Closet is an actualization of that lesson. After several rewrites of the initial proposal, switching coauthors, meeting with literary agents, and almost bagging the entire project, we finally arrived at this pointa book articulating my vision. This book represents the brand, the design niche, the lifestyle mantra that my company, Clos-ette, is today.

The best thing about the Clos-ette vision is that it was an underdog; no one really thought it would take off. And many didnt see the niche market I was trying to create. I heard time and again, I dont get it. Luckily, Vogue , which wrote the first editorial piece on us, got it, encouraging me to stay focused and on vision. Slowly, I became better at explaining our mission, and people began to understand the value and the need for organization in their busy lives. Today, Clos-ette is a holistic organizational design firm, a cabinetry business supporting organizational design ideas and ideals with a comprehensive accessories line to further enhance and achieve the organized lifestyle we all strive for.

Did it matter if anyone thought that a company based on a little girls obsession with clothes, closets, and organization would become a comprehensive business, complete with actual employees, offices, and individual retirement accounts? Not really. I believed in Clos-ette from day one; I knew that a lot of people liked to shop their closet, so I figured out ways to make it easier and more fun. I felt that it was my personal goal (actually, my duty) to clear the clutter in peoples closets (what I like to call their clogged wardrobe chi) and instill a sense of serenity within their master walk-in by putting things in order and awakening the hidden Buddha buried beneath the piles of clothes and layers of stuff.

Shop Your Closet is part how-to workbook, part design guide, and part style notebook. It is a written manual of how we approach our work at Clos-ette and how we accomplish the goals needed to enhance our clients lives. Our secrets and insider tips to styling, organizing, designing, and building closet spaces are clearly and concisely contained within this book to help you begin your journey on the path of organization and clutter-free closets.

Shop Your Closet has been a path of self-discovery. It allows me to share with you all the things that I have learned from building Clos-ette: the joy of working with wonderful clients in their beautiful homes and enhancing their lives by creating beautiful closets and organizing their chaotic spaces into serene havens. It also is a culmination of my years in my former career putting together retail spaces and stores, while editing and styling my own wardrobe and personal spaces. But the greatest influences were crafting and creating my own closets in the homes I lived in with my mother and father and the valuable insights they passed on to memy fathers tips about clothes and his need for quality and quantity in combination with my mothers penchant for arranging things in a neat and crisp way. All of these experiences fill the pages of this book, which I hope will help you shop your closet. Enjoy!

I thank my family, especially my mother and father, who took such good care of me my entire life, for supporting and encouraging my dreams and aspirations, and my brothers John and Luke for being part of the triplets and my best friends. I also thank my friends who supported and encouraged me during this long process, including my literary agent, Stacey Glick; my attorney, Hillary Hughes; Kevin Clark; Keith Geldof; Douglas Friedman; my editor, Anne Cole; and my publishers at HarperCollins. I thank Deborah and Dean Lorich; Burt and Judy Resnick; Christine Schwarzman; Dog Productions; Designer Resale; my In-laws Drs. David Fascitelli and Noel Salem; Mr. and Mrs. Friedman; and Dan Nissanoff. On a special note, many thanks to Caroline Callahan, whose work and vision helped shape the scope of this book. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Jon, who has more enthusiasm about everything I do than I do myself and inspires me every day that I am with him. I love you! Thank you, one and all!