Yahoo Finance Why I’ve given up buying clothes for a year
We’ve become so accustomed to instant gratification that the gap between seeing something and owning it has become dangerously narrow.
At the beginning of 2023, I decided to finally commit to something that had been floating around my brain for several months: a whole year without buying clothes. No, not even second-hand.
Why? When I first had the idea, it was a financial decision. I’m paying for post-graduate study this year, which means things are tight – and tightening by the month with the cost of living being the spicy little diva it is. I figured an easy place to shave off a chunk of disposable income was on clothing. But the more I thought about the idea, the more it became a complete overhaul of the way I consumed and engaged with clothing.
Also by Emma Edwards:
Clothes have always been my kryptonite. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been a Shein haul kind of girl, my jiggly, size-16 body has excluded me from the likes of Zara for many years now and, broadly, my spending habits have improved exponentially over the past five years.
But I still find myself scouring for an outfit for an event, or browsing online when I feel like I need an image upgrade. I still get that giddy feeling when I’m buying clothes – it’s the dopamine, of course. That excitement for how I’m going to feel when I put it on, artificially inflating the item’s power to make me more worthy in some way, truly believing the joy will last despite knowing it rarely does. I still have days when I hate my body and look to new clothing to solve that feeling.
Perhaps most critically, I still find that I’m not able to control my responses to stimuli very well. Seeing an outfit on social media, a marketing email from a brand I like, or just spotting something in a shop window. We’ve become so accustomed to instantaneousness that the gap between seeing something and owning something has become dangerously narrow. We see it and, within seconds, we have the information we need to buy it.
I wanted to teach myself to consume clothing differently. To see clothing I like and find power in saying no. To be able to see other people’s outfits and not immediately jump to ‘Where can I get that’? To appreciate the things I already have, and treat them with respect.
A year is a very long time
It’s been three months since I made this decision and, while I’ve learned a lot about my impulses, I’ve never been more certain that a full year is necessary. A year is a very long time. A quarter can fly by with a few busy weeks of work and maybe a bout of the flu, but a whole 12 months is a more significant commitment. A year takes you through all the seasons. All the bad days. Maybe a holiday, a big event perhaps, birthdays and Christmas.
I’ve learned a lot so far. For example, it’s possible to replicate that joy you get from a new outfit by getting creative with things you already have. There are also items in my wardrobe I thought I hated but actually just used as an excuse to buy something else, and there are combinations of outfits I’ve never put together before. A little bit of effort actually goes a long way.
Fighting back against emotional spending
But the biggest thing I’ve learned is that seeing clothing, wanting it, and deciding to walk away feels really, really good. Psychologically, we have a tendency to overestimate the benefit we’ll get from buying something, and underestimate the benefit we get from walking away. In that moment of buying an item of clothing, my brain will have me believing all kinds of nonsense about why I need it, or how my life will be worse without it.
But leaning into what it’s actually like to walk away has been incredibly powerful. It really proves to you that life is the same without that thing you so desperately wanted a few hours ago. It really proves to you how much of what we believe is manufactured or distorted for profit.
And the more I train myself to behave differently, the more I develop a life outside of just the things I consume.
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