My daughter and I are in the Prima Vista Lounge in the Leonardo DaVinci Airport in Rome right now and we have just our carryons with us. We each have our suitcase (the 21” International…. From B & R) and one “personal Item” (underseat bags from Briggs and Riley – not sponsored, I paid for all of it after research). I love beautiful things so we weren’t going to sacrifice carryon life for packing beautiful clothes to enjoy wearing. At the same time, I fully intended to buy a lot which means we needed to NOT be stuffing our carryons on the way to Italy. In fact, both of our clothes fit in only one carryon, leaving one carryon almost empty. Now that we are on the back end of the trip, on our way home, I’m fully satisfied with how we approached packing and wanted to break it down for you so you, too can arrive in a beautiful city with ALL YOUR THINGS and NOT have to wait at baggage claim – you just zoom right into your vacation and maximize every second you’re there. 

The capsule I put together here is more of a 50-70°F weather capsule because that’s when most people are traveling so it seemed most useful. Here is what I packed: one sweater (it’s February and the temps ranged from 30-50°F), one long sleeve top, one pair of “uncomfortable” zip/button fly pants, a skirt, two pairs of fleece lined tights, two pairs of (really ugly) black knee high socks (because lower socks smoosh down into boots. Smoosh isn’t the technical word but I can’t think of a more accurate one), and a dress. On the plane both ways, I wore my all time favorite pair of pants – crazy looking patterned and ruffled Horror Vacui elastic waistband pants, with pockets (they’re the same cut essentially as a pajama pant so they are as comfortable as it gets, while still being something you could see in Vogue or presented on a runway. The shoe part gets tricky in February in a city so we each only had one total pair of shoes: different versions of an Aquatalia brand boot (because they’re waterproof). My pair was suede and my daughter’s were patent leather. The boots can be worn with dresses and all the pants we had. How did I pick the outfits for my capsule? I looked in my “crazy comfy chic” collection on Adjust My Crown and picked my airport outfit. From there I looked in my “errands” Collection and looked for the outfits that utilized the sweater in my airport outfit. I just picked outfits that used those pieces and voila, one half of a carryon is packed. The shoe part being limited is my least favorite part of carryon life BUT IF YOU’RE looking for the “glass half full” perspective this prevents you from having blisters when you switch shoes. 

The payoff is worth it! We were able to support the local economy and stuff a whole carryon full of our customized marbled paper lovelies, Italian leather galore, and save the 22% VAT tax on things that yes, we could buy in the US but are so much cheaper here (500 euros TOTAL for the shearling glitter slip-on Golden Goose that I paid $895 + 9.25% tax for in the US). Strategizing ahead of time about a tightly coordinated capsule travel wardrobe is worth it, in every way. Honestly, no one cares what we are wearing anyway and you won’t remember in 10 years when you’re fondly browsing the pics from the trip that you repeated tops and bottoms and outfits… 

Oh and by the way, we still had room to shove extra water bottles from the Prima Vista Lounge into our underseat cabin bag… in spite of the things we bought and only using carryon… because delta isn’t air france and I may be a little parched. 😉