Shopping Reflections: Jan to May

How my Rule of Five shopping goal is going

As of May, I’ve bought three things this year. As someone who loves clothes and seeks sartorial satisfaction, this number feels okay to me.

But the number of hours I spent browsing and thinking about what to buy? Countless. Sigh.

The reasons for this aren’t a mystery. Sometimes, I window shop out of boredom, or to self-soothe in moments of dissatisfaction or frustration. Other times, I’m fuelled by what I think of as a reasonable level of curiosity in certain designers, makers or fashion eras. I don’t mind the latter, but I want less of the former, and above all, I want to be more aware of which is which.

This is why trying the

Rule of Five

challenge been more interesting than I’d expected. It may be been sparked by my concerns around environmental impact of unsustainable consumption, but it’s also at its heart, an exercise in developing emotional intelligence¹. Without reckoning with the emotions that guide our impulses, there can be no mindful consumption.

Also, saying no to more things feels like a way of reclaiming time. Time to think, to savour things, to wear things.

The internet is such a time thief. I love it as a resource when I want to dive deep into something, but I resent it—maybe even slightly fear it—as a source of instant gratification. Whenever I am in need of a quick and easy mood lift, I browse eBay, TRR and Vestiaire Collective, seeking that thrill of that comes from finding something to want. It makes me feel a little sad.

Doing a low-buy shifts my attention from looking for things to buy things to learning to relish the moments where I want for nothing. We all need dopamine (along with other “feel good hormones”) to function, but I’m trying to feel this sense of reward and pleasure from wearing the clothes I have, instead of turning to shopping.

Finding wardrobe satisfaction

One reason I am finding it easier to say no to more clothes is the fact that I am happier with my wardrobe now than I was two years ago—I now have clothes that fit my bigger body, and work for my lifestyle and the climate I live in.

And to get here, I shopped. There were duds and fillers to be sure, but there were also great purchases. I rode the emotional roller coaster that came with all of them, and learnt what I needed and what was a waste of time.

For shopping slowdown of some kind to be sustained, you have to get to a good place with how you feel about your wardrobe. You need to have made enough mistakes and done enough homework to recognise good from bad, and figure out your taste. Or else you could end up stuck in a loop of making one misguided purchase after another, in a haze of frustration and thrill-seeking.

That’s why I find it reductive and unhelpful when people say things like “oh it’s not complicated, just buy less and buy well”, or when people demonise shopping as a frivolous activity. First of all, it isn’t easy to “buy well”—you need time, resources, access, and most of all, knowledge, which is hard to come by when clothing quality is getting worse and worse. We have to tune out the noise, figure out what we like, and recognise what is good. None of this happens overnight.

Secondly, not everyone understands their personal emotional impulses triggering an “unwise” purchase. Understanding and mastering these impulses is a lifetime practice. Buying less takes time (Neela writes about it really well here on

Of a certain Vintage

).

Once I accepted this, I stopped seeing a low-buy as a source of stress and I stopped feeling bad when I wanted to buy things (or bought things). It’s like learning to walk slowly through a park instead of rushing through with no end point in sight. Inevitably, our concentration slips, and that’s ok. We can keep going, and see challenges like the Rule of Five as a friendly guide, reminding us there is a better way to enjoy clothes.

I haven’t left the shopping train, and honestly, I love clothes too much to ever be “done” with shopping. But I’ve gotten a bit better at not buying things out of boredom, or in a twitchy state of discontentment or FOMO. And when I do buy things, I feel more confident and clear-minded about why I’m doing it.

The tally

• January — 1 item: Babaà wool jumper (new, bought online, ordered in December)

• February — 1 item: Vintage wool jumper (secondhand, bought in person)

• March — 1 item: Dries Van Noten dress (secondhand, bought online)

• April — 0 items

• May — 0 items

The Babaà jumper, which was a planned, thoroughly researched buy, has been great; I’ve worn it 18 times since it started getting cold in April. The vintage jumper² was an impulse buy, and I’m slightly regretting it because I really only needed one more jumper in my life, not two. Maybe I will change my mind when winter sets in properly.

The Dries dress was unplanned, but not impulsive (more on that below). I thought about it for a couple of days before buying it, and I’ve already worn it a couple of times since buying it.

One thing I’ve found helpful this year is having a shopping plan as a guardrail or baseline of sorts. By making a plan based on gaps in my closet rather than specific items, I feel free to shop while having points of reference to lean on.

• One winter “without fail” — On the hunt for a jumper » Bought the Babaà jumper

• One basic — Replacement of necessities like a t-shirt (if needed)

• One year-round “without fail” — Nothing in particular, though I like the idea of another button-down shirt

• One serendipitous nice-to-have item — Something emotional and unexpected that I don’t mind not wearing often, but considered and not impulsive. » Bought the Dries dress

• One “open category” item — Saving a spot for unexpected needs, or for spontaneity to happen. » Bought the vintage jumper

What’s next

As the days get colder here in Melbourne, I expect a fresh flurry of desire for things. There are many winter pieces in my wardrobe that I look forward to wearing again, but I can also feel that urge to “upgrade” some things, so I’m going to have to watch out for that.

I’m also still fighting that urge to “collect” things—it’s tough to follow collectors of archival fashion on social media, and not feel like I too, need a wardrobe full of carefully-sourced runway pieces from beloved designers.

It’s a very fine line to tread. I don’t think it’s wrong to have a passion for fashion history and design and to acquire pieces that mean something to you, but the “Label Dickmatisation” described by Liana Satenstein is real. Something about certain designer labels does things to my impulse control—for me, it especially hits hard when it’s nostalgic (eg, Consuelo-era Marni, Nicolas-era Balenciaga) or a designer who permanently lives in my brain (Dries Van Noten, Margaret Howell). I have to be careful of trying to coat my shopping with a gloss of importance by calling it “collecting”.

Thankfully, as the imitable Derek Guy puts it:

I think it was Tiia of Sunday Style Thoughts who shared this. Spot on!

Not having the money to buy whatever I like is kinda great. It puts a hard stop on purchases that are totally out of my budget. It also makes me think harder about exactly what I want to spend my pennies on. I had to put myself on a tighter budget this year, and it’s helped me cut back on the things that don’t matter, which leaves me with more money to buy things I really love.

There will always be room in my closet for special pieces, but I need to remember that I don’t need to go out of way to buy something just to tell myself that I know fashion and I have taste.

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Addendum: Breakdown of an emotional buy

Speaking of special pieces, I did buy a thing from one of my favourite Dries Van Noten collections. Was I “label dickmatised”? You tell me.

In March, I saw this velvet dress (far left, below) on Vestiaire Collective, and initially I thought it was another dress (centre), only to realise upon Googling that it was a variation of the dress on the right:

From left: The original listing on Vestiaire which I thought was the dress in the centre, but it was actually the same print done in the style of the dress on the far right.

Feelings of excitement gave way to hesitation. I knew without a doubt that I loved the print, but I wasn’t sure about the style of the dress—I didn’t like the cropped sleeves and I especially did not like the v-neck. I decided to sleep on it.

Two nights later

I check Vestiaire and saw the dress was still available, so I make an offer that was within my budget and risk appetite. And it was accepted. Eeks³!

When I finally opened the package a month later, I was nervous. Was this a bad idea?

Thankfully, it didn’t disappoint.

That marbled print on velvet is so good. I love that it’s something best appreciated up close by the wearer.

The dress fit better than I’d expected. I still don’t like the v-neck, but I was surprised by how soft and plushy it was—it’s so comfortable that I wore wearing it even when I was just working from home (with a turtleneck under for warmth and to minimise the look of the v-neck).

But it’s the colours and print that really get me, made livelier by the texture of the velvet. The bold, geometric circles make for a sharp, modern contrast. I love it so much.

I’m not much of a dress wearer and I actively avoid prints—in fact, both are on my mental “do not buy” list. Buying this dress, on paper, seemed like a bad idea.

So why did I buy it?

• Personal affinity. This dress is part of a collection that has been living in my head for a long time and I had confidence in why I was so emotionally drawn to the dress (or rather, the print⁴). It didn’t feel like a passing itch to buy something simply because it had the Dries Van Noten name on it.

• It makes sense for my life...The style of the dress is pretty casual, so unlike the Dries blazer I bought last year, it’s actually in sync with the tone and tenor of my wardrobe. I don’t expect to wear it often, but it didn’t feel like something that would languish in my wardrobe.

• …but it’s special enough. It’s not really the sort of thing you come across every day. When you shop a lot, you would have seen enough things to know when something hits you in a way nothing else does. I knew in my gut this was one of those things.

• It speaks to my love of texture. I may not like print, but I love richly textured fabrics like denim, linen, corduroy, jacquard and velvet, and this dress really speaks to that. I don’t think I would have bought this dress if it had been printed on silk.

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If you made it to the end of this long post, thank you! I actually got a bit sick of myself as I was writing as I felt I was repeating myself or points that have been well articulated by others.

But if this helps anyone makes sense of what they’re experiencing while trying to grapple with their buying habits, I’m glad.

And if you’re also on a low-buy, do share in the comments on your journey so far :)

1. The Sustain This podcast had a really good episode discussing this, which inspired me as I was writing this post.

2. Speaking of jumpers, this is a really charming video on ganseys (also known as guersneys).

3. I never make offers unless I really want to buy something, but it still feels very “moment of truth” when it’s accepted.

4. Speaking of Dries Van Noten prints, check out this amazing little video of how he and his team created the floral prints in the FW2019 womenswear collection.