As a fashion lover, I love playing with clothes and mixing and matching different items. I did this long before I was a stylist. As a teen I was always stealing pieces from my mum’s wardrobe and mixing them in with my own. For me re-wearing clothes isn’t a new thing – I have always only ever bought clothes with the intention of loving them and wearing them all the time, for a long time. When I started plotting my walk-in wardrobe, I knew it had to be very open and organised. I am a very visual person so outfit building is a lot easier now that I can see everything hanging perfectly.

We designed the wardrobe with Komandor who are experts in the art of space management. I had an idea of the style we wanted and took some images to our first meeting in their showroom. They have a huge variety of materials and styles to choose from so you really can tailor-make your dream wardrobe. Then they were able to use their computer system to develop a layout that would work for the size and space we had. Space was really key for me – I have accumulated quite a lot of outfits over the last eleven years as a stylist [for fashion shoots and celebrities] and wanted to have enough room to display them all properly. That’s why I opted for an open-plan style without doors, so I can see everything hanging and folded really clearly. And obviously the aesthetic was important to me. As I had the opportunity to design my dream wardrobe, I wanted that Carrie Bradshaw effect of absolutely loving every element of it.

I made sure to introduce lots of different types of storage when building the wardrobe. The jewellery display is genius because I can see everything clearly now. Before, I had lots of boxes full of things and it was chaotic. Necklaces getting tangled! Never able to find anything! The drawers have enough space that I can lay everything out. I have a lot of knitwear and cashmere and was advised that a breathable drawer would be best for these, so we opted to include some perforated drawers.

There’s a mix of full-length and shorter hanging rails and I had the wardrobe designed in such a way that each type of clothing has its own space. This really helps when co-ordinating outfits. I have definitely been more experimental with what I wear since the wardrobe was built.

Even before sustainability really became a thing, I loved to reinvent outfits, bringing them to The Zip Yard on South Anne Street for alterations to give them a new lease of life. I love re-working my mum’s old clothes too. I would say half my wardrobe is vintage. The sustainable fashion movement forces people to really think about the choices they are making when it comes to high street shopping, myself included. I now own very little fast fashion and the pieces I have in my wardrobe are keepers, not throwaway trends. Even when buying something dressy, I think about how I can make it work walk-in wardrobe. It whooshes my laundry down into a basket right beside the washing machine in the utility room. People loved the laundry chute when I posted it on Instagram. I wish I could take credit for it but it was my boyfriend Mark’s idea. In fact, I thought it was a bit ridiculous when he first mentioned it but now that we have it, I love it. We had to get it specially made because it’s not exactly something that is requested a lot. But it’s very handy! www.courtneysmith.ie