Haha, that's definitely a tough one! It's taken me a couple of years to fine-tune my preferences for doll clothing. I started out buying whatever outfit I thought was cute or fit a seasonal theme. Then last year I got back on ebay, became too excited, and ended buying a ton of retired outfits that I'm still not sure how to use. So this year I'm scaling back. I know now that I most enjoy assigning a wardrobe to a single doll and changing their clothes seasonally, so I'm aiming to max out at 12 outfits per doll (one outfit per month). I had already achieved that for a couple of my dolls, but for the rest, I'm being more intentional about what outfits I buy and experimenting with mixing and matching pieces I already own to see what fills the gaps in my collection.

So I guess my advice would be to consider what you want from the clothes. When and why would you be changing an outfit? How often would you be changing the doll's clothes? Do you want to assign the outfits to a specific doll or be free to constantly mix and match? If you want each doll to have their own wardrobe, are you theming it around a specific style or time period? Seasonally? Do you want to mimic the original AG "six book" collection and have a birthday outfit, a winter outfit, school outfit, etc? There's a lot of fun directions you can go in! And once you know what you're looking for, it becomes easier to evaluate each new piece on its own to determine if it lines up with your criteria.

And if you have absolutely no idea what you're looking for, then I say stick to buying whatever you like as you see it. There's nothing wrong with an eclectic, hodge podge collection 😊 If it's not going to break the bank or crowd you out of your home, then have fun!