OUT OF UNCERTAINTY OR A LACK OF CONFIDENCE
Some people shop too much, not because it’s fun or stress relieving for them but to fix a problem. If you are unhappy with your wardrobe or the way you look, buying a new pair of shoes or a beauty product is a way of taking charge and solving the problem. If you think your clothes aren’t good, trendy or chic enough, new stuff will make you feel as if you are making progress, at least for a little while. Of course, adding more and more pieces to an already bursting closet without a clear direction will only make it even more difficult to feel confident about your style and build outfits you feel great in.
Try this instead
Take a step back and do a little soul-searching: do you lack confidence in general or are you just not sure about your personal style? If it’s the latter, it’s key that you take your time working through the style-defining steps in this book before you tackle your wardrobe and buy new pieces. If it’s a confidence issue, focus on building up your self-esteem in other areas of your life first.
Do you have a tendency to overspend? If so, what is your personal trigger? And what could you do instead of shopping from now on, whenever you feel the urge?
A quick tip to avoid impulse buys
Identifying your personal shopping trigger should immediately help reduce overspending by keeping you out of the shops in the first place. But what if you really do need something specific and have to enter the danger zone (read: the mall, your favourite store or an online shop)? Here’s a super quick and easy tip for those situations: Delay the purchase!
Put some time between the impulse and the purchase. If you see something that you like but hadn’t planned on buying, put it on hold for a day. If you still love the item the next day, after having had a chance to really think it through, buy it. For shopping online, add the item to a wish list or just save the link.
Go on a shopping fast
In our culture, buying a ton of new stuff every year has become the norm. We are so used to buying new clothes, gadgets and knickknacks all the time that buying less, repairing what you have instead of immediately replacing it, and putting time and effort into selecting new purchases all seem like foreign concepts. An effective way to reset what you consider normal and gain a new perspective is going on a temporary shopping fast. Don’t buy anything for one whole week and see how you feel. Or don’t buy anything new for one month except for food and essentials like shampoo and toilet paper. You can also limit your shopping fast to just one specific group of things you’re having trouble with, like clothes or beauty products. Throughout your fast, keep a little diary of how you feel so you can later go back to identify your personal triggers for wanting to shop and find replacement activities.
Beware the sale!
Holiday sales, end-of-year sales, coupons, limited editions, store cards: Discounts are the Trojan horses of the retail industry. And learning how to navigate them is one of the best things you can do for your budget and your wardrobe. And, in most instances, by navigate I mean avoid.
‘What? But sales help me save money!’ you might say. Do they really, though? Because let’s not forget what discounts are: a marketing tool designed to get us to spend more money, not less. Price reductions are one of the most reliable sales strategies out there and a surefire way for a brand to increase profit.
Why do discounts work so well? Because they tap right into our inherent fear of scarcity and trigger our instinct to hoard resources whenever we can. We tend to use the price of a product as a marker for its desirability, so when something is reduced, we feel as though by buying it we are making the best possible use of our most-valued resource: money. That coupled with the fact that time-limited discounts create a sense of urgency puts us straight back into hunter-gatherer mode.
And sure, there is nothing wrong with feeling a little extra satisfaction when you find a piece you love that’s also on sale. The trouble is when the price reduction is the central reason for purchasing, when hunting down the best deals becomes a sport, and when you spend money so you can save money.
When that happens, we end up with a wardrobe full of pieces that may all have been a bargain but that were still a waste of money.
Because no matter the price, a new piece is worth the money only if you need it, love it and will wear it. A ten-pound scarf that doesn’t work with the rest of your wardrobe is not a good deal, even if it originally cost fifty pounds. And that pair of designer jeans that’s just a little too short may come at an almost irresistible 50 per cent off right now, but that still doesn’t make it a sensible investment if you never end up wearing them.
That’s not to say you can’t take advantage of sales. The trick is just to make sure you are using discounts only as a secondary factor when shopping. For example, if you are on the market for a new pair of winter boots, go ahead and check the sale sections of your favourite stores to see whether they have a pair that fits your criteria.
Notice how that approach is different from browsing the sales to see whether they might have something you like, or finding something to buy at store X because you still have a coupon. Because, even if you head out with the clear intention to buy only things you need, your hunter-gatherer mode will always find a way to convince you that, at 30 per cent off, that black sequinned T-shirt really is too good to pass up because ‘you can never have too many T-shirts’.
The easiest way to prevent that from happening is to make your purchasing decisions independently from the discount. Decide what you want to buy – whether that is a leather jacket, a pencil skirt or a statement necklace – and then see whether a piece that fits your criteria is available at a discount.
Learn how to evaluate the quality of a potential new wardrobe addition and become a pro at finding high-quality pieces at all price points.
What’s the number one prerequisite to building a high-quality wardrobe? Being able to recognise a quality garment when you see one. You need to be able to tell the difference between a durable, well-crafted piece and one that looks pretty on the rack but won’t last more than a few washes. You need to know (1) which properties distinguish high-quality garments from low-quality ones and (2) how to spot these properties when you’re out shopping.
To help you do just that, this chapter will give you a broad introduction to evaluating the quality of garments based on five key components: fabric, seams, tailoring, lining, and details (such as buttonholes and zips).
To build a high-quality wardrobe, you need to set priorities. Not every single thing in your closet needs to last twenty years. Not every single sock you own needs to be made from merino wool. Going overboard is never practical, so decide which items you do want to invest a bit more time (and money) in and which you don’t mind replacing after a couple of seasons.
What is quality?
Let’s go back to basics for a moment: What is quality? And, more specifically, what distinguishes a low-quality garment from a high-quality one?
In general, when we say quality, we mean quite a few different but related things: We want our clothes to be durable, to last for more than a couple of seasons. We want sturdy clothes – garments that we can move in without having to worry about ripping seams or popping buttons. We want our clothes to keep the same shape they had when we bought them, and to neither stretch out nor shrink over time. We don’t want fabric that pills or fades after wearing or washing it a couple of times. We want our clothes to feel good on the skin so we can enjoy wearing them instead of wanting to take them off as soon as we get home. And lastly, we also want our clothes to look like high-quality garments – smooth fabric, neat seams, beautiful detailing – not something that is about to fall apart.
Whether a garment ticks these boxes or not depends on its five key components and how they work together: the fabric, seams, tailoring, lining, and even smaller details like buttons and pockets.
What distinguishes high-quality from low-quality manufacturers are the extra steps they take to make sure a garment
not only looks the part now, but also will continue to do so after multiple wears and washes. All of these ‘extras’ take time and money. That’s why it’s so easy to find pretty pieces at budget stores that end up falling apart after a week: to cut costs, the manufacturer chose to focus on making the garment look good on the hanger instead of its quality, because that is what brings in the sales. Pretty much every shopper makes purchasing decision based on what a garment looks like; only a very few will take the time to assess the seams or the quality of the tailoring.
It‘s important to note that the quality and the price of an item are not always related. Some types of items are easier to manufacture and get right than others, which is why it is totally possible to find certain well-made items at affordable prices. At the same time, just because an item is very pricey does not always mean that the manufacturer used all that extra money to up the quality of the garment. So get in the habit of inspecting every possible new wardrobe addition up close, regardless of its price and brand.
Fabric
The hands-down most important component of a garment is its fabric. No matter how beautiful the details or how well-crafted the seams are, a garment made from a flimsy, scratchy or pilling fabric is never a good addition to any wardrobe.
COTTON
Cotton is a super popular fabric for good reason: it’s soft, versatile, durable (when high quality), washable and comparatively affordable. The most important property of cotton is its staple length, that is, the length of the individual fibres comprising the fabric. Fabric made from long cotton fibres is generally considered to be of a higher quality than fabrics made from shorter fibres. Here’s why:
• Durability. Longer fibres can be spun into a finer yarn. Fine yarn can be more tightly woven, which makes the resulting fabric stronger and more durable.
• Softness. Another plus of long fibres is that they can be turned into a much softer yarn. The shorter the staple, the more difficult it is to spin the fibres into yarn without having tiny ends of fibres sticking out at all angles. Longer cotton fibres can be closely bound together, which keeps them from going in different directions.
• Breathability. One reason some fabrics are less breathable than others is that they contain tiny air pockets in between the individual threads that create thermal insulation. Cotton made from long, finely spun fibres can be very tightly woven to eliminate air pockets and that uncomfortable, sweaty feeling that we tend to associate with low breathability.
Here’s how to estimate whether a cotton garment was made with long-staple fibres or not:
• Touch it! Even cotton fabric that is sturdy, thick or even stiff should feel soft on the skin. If it doesn’t, it was probably made with shorter fibres and will be less durable in the long run.
• It’s free of pills. Cotton is generally not as prone to pilling as other fabrics, so if you already see a trace of pilling on a new garment, move on!
• Check the density of the fabric by holding it up to the light. Even if it is very fine, the fabric should not be transparent. If the fabric lets through a lot of light, it’s a sign that it is not very dense and therefore will not be very durable.
• Cotton needs to be spun, so look closely at the threads that make up the fabric. There should be no gaps or size differences between the individual threads. All you should see up close is a regular pattern of smooth rows.
• Cotton is an especially good choice when you are shopping at low-end/budget stores. Some fabrics are hard to get right at the lower end of the price range, but since cotton is comparatively cheap to produce, you should be able to find cotton items that are affordable and well made.
LINEN
Linen is made from flax fibres that are naturally smooth but not very elastic. It’s a great fabric for summer, because it is breathable, dries fast, has a cooling effect, and is lint resistant. In general, there are fewer quality differences with linen than with cotton, and if a garment already has a high linen content, then that is a good sign. Here are a few more things to look out for when shopping for linen items:
• Make sure the linen feels comfortable on the skin. Linen is not a soft garment by nature, but if it actually feels scratchy or rough, short/low-quality fibres were probably used, which come with all the same disadvantages as short cotton fibres (see here).
• The one downside to linen is that it is not very elastic (therefore it wrinkles easily) and will eventually rip if it is constantly folded in the same spot. Before you buy, make sure that the linen does not already contain any small permanent creases that can’t be smoothed out. These are likely a sign of a style or cut that creates strong natural folds when you move, and these will only become more pronounced with regular wear. Also, think about whether the item will still look okay when it’s a little wrinkled at the end of the day.
• Do not worry about slubs, those tiny, random knots along the yarn of the linen. These are almost always intentionally included in order to keep the integrity of the fibres intact and also add that special natural linen texture. It’s also okay if there are no slubs: very fine linen is usually slub-free because it was created from a very fine thread made from fibres of a consistent diameter.
• Always check the care instructions before you buy a linen piece. Linen is very prone to shrinking, and many linen garments can only be dry cleaned or washed in cold water.
WOOL
The quality of wool can generally be determined by the quality of the individual wool fibres that make up the fabric. These in turn depend on the breed of animals that produced them, their diet and stress levels, and how the fibres were handled during the manufacturing process.
Here are some tips for assessing wool:
• Check for any manufacturing faults: the knitting should be consistent and there should not be any knots, loose strands, holes, or gaps between the individual threads of the fabric. One reason for fibre breakage when it comes to wool is that the animal the fibre came from was stressed or malnourished, resulting in a weak or brittle fibre. If you can already see broken fibres on a new garment, chances are they would only multiply with regular wear.
• Pilling is created when individual fibres come loose and eventually curl up into tiny balls. Wool pills easily, although higher-quality variants will be more tightly woven to prevent fibres from becoming loose in the first place. If you want a wool item that pills as little as possible, choose one with a very dense, finely knitted material. And if there aren’t any pills on the garment when you try it on (not even on the collar, cuffs, or inner thighs), the item gets a major thumbs-up.
• Wool fabric should be elastic. It should bounce back immediately when you pull it and not stay stretched out.
• Unless it’s a part of the design of an item, you should generally not be able to see through the weave. A high-quality wool garment will be tightly woven and dense, without any gaps in between the individual threads.
• In general, fabric made from fine wool fibres will be softer than thicker fibres; however, depending on the item you are looking for, you may prefer a sturdier, coarser type of fabric, even if it is a little scratchy (for outerwear for example). Before you buy a wool item, make sure you test what it feels like, not just on your hands but also on places where your skin is more sensitive, like the inside of your arm, to make sure you like it. Also note that some types of wools are naturally softer than others – for example, cashmere is much softer than mohair – so the softness of a wool item does not necessarily speak for its quality.
DENIM
The quality of denim depends mainly on the quality of the cotton used to create it and how it was woven. Another important property is the stitching on the item (that is not technically a fabric property, but since it’s very denim-specific I want to mention some points about that here). The wash of the final piece is what really tends to drive the price of denim up, but that is not so much a question of quality but of added labour and production costs. Here are some more pointers for assessing the quali
ty of denim pieces:
• Denim made from high-quality cotton feels soft and even, as if it’s a little moist.
• Denim should never feel thin and flimsy or so stiff and heavy that you can’t move (unless it is a raw, unwashed piece), but anything in between is fine and a matter of personal choice. If you want to go for a thinner fabric, make sure the yarns are tightly woven and the fabric feels strong and dense, so it won’t tear easily.
• When you are buying denim secondhand, always check the inner thighs for rubbing. If there is a lot of visible wear and tear, chances are the quality of the denim fabric is low.
• Since denim is a very heavy fabric, strong seams that won’t split or unravel under stress are super important. As a first step, try stretching the denim piece at different places along the seams. If the threads of the seams pull apart, not so good. Then check the stitching. High-quality denim manufacturers will usually use either double stitching (two rows of stitching next to each other) or chain stitching (looped stitches that look like links of chain). As long as the thread is very thick, a single row of stitches is also okay, but make sure you do the stretching test in that case.
• Another way to assess the quality of a pair of denim jeans is to look at how the side seams were done. The cheapest, easiest way is to sew the two pieces of fabric together, then cut off the excess. This method leaves a bump along the inner side of your leg. High-quality manufacturers instead take the extra step to first sew the edges of each side before they sew them together and press the seam flat for a streamlined outline.
The Curated Closet Page 14