Fly me to the moon
It may have been my being absolutely and wholly broke, or an increasing tendency to eat, you know, actual food instead of ramen, or more admiringly a disgust in my own shopping habits but in May I made a personal pledge to not buy anything non-edible for a month. In the case of the latter, I felt pretty awful about this sort of undying urge to get shiny, new stuff, no matter what. And I have to say, seemingly unlike most in the fashion blogosphere I was inspired by blogs and blogger’s questioning of their own habits and general consumerist zeitgeist to stop shopping and live consciously rather than getting an even more consumerist urge to perpetually show new clothes instead of new combos of old clothes. And to be fair, when I think about it now, the latter is much more interesting. I find it quite inspiring.
So, I ended up not buying anything for four months up until very recently and I am planning on continuing this, no matter how difficult it may be with my soon to be newly acquired money. To keep that in check I’ve laid down a couple of rules.
I am mainly posting this for self-reference and hopefully an outside pressure to keep myself to these rules, hah.
1. Is it well-made and will it last for at the very least two years?
2. Will I wear it frequently? Or will I cherish it mightily and occasionally pull it out of my wardrobe stare, sigh wistfully and wear it while drunkenly dancing, holding a gin & tonic in one hand a brush for lip-syncing in the other on a lonely Friday night? (Let’s be frank here, we all need that kind of dresses –although not too many- , guys, even the men amongst us. Just saying.)
3. And lastly, but definitely not least as I must remember that I am still only a student: Is it in my price range? Or is it worth eating noodles for a month for? (It hardly ever is any more; I literally cannot stomach noodles any more. Oh, the heartache.)
+++ (edit) : at the very maximum one shopping trip per month unless I see a desired item that I’ve lusted after for months/years.
(These rules may not seem impressive, but if I have to keep to all three of these all the time, they are for me! Which might be quite sad…)
I’ve often reasoned that dressing up is my hobby and that I quite deserve buying a lot of stuff because that is basically my only hobby and the only thing I spend actual money on (aside from books) and even so most stuff I buy is really cheap and also second hand so why should I stop, I mean it’s totes okay for the environment? etc. etc. But really, there’s no need for me to have an unreasonably large collection of clothes so I’ve also recently donated four bags of clothes and one bag of shoes and 6 purses to good will and I am quite relieved. And I must remember this! Feel free to remind me of this post when you see some new dresses popping up here, because I kinda have a problem! :D
I am not stopping shopping completely though. I finally have money to spend on decently made clothes that aren’t second hand and 2 Euro a pop. And I am looking forward to buying from some independent designers or whatever, damn it.
