One of the worst things about moving flat last month – and that’s a move that involved woodworm, twelve harried phone calls to Virgin Media and three days with no central heating – was coming to terms with the state of wardrobe.
Sifting through years’ worth of accumulated shopping errors is like taking a long, hard look at yourself in an unflatteringly fluoro-lit mirror. Some read tarot or tea leaves, but I think the true measure of a person’s psyche lies in the heap of crumpled clothes they can’t be arsed to put back on the hangers. Within every wardrobe, there are cautionary tales and lessons to be learned.
For example, during last month’s mega cull, every single item bought with the caveat of 'if I lose a few pounds it'll be perfect!' ended up in the charity shop bag. Mostly with the tags still on. Ditto everything that fitted but was itchy or uncomfortable, and those clothes that are only wearable in the morning because they start to cut into you like cheesewire after lunch.
Beautiful prints have overwhelmingly stayed. Anything sheer or requiring weird, awkward underwear has ended up in the 'chuck' pile. Vintage pieces have mostly been keepers – even if I haven’t worn them much, I still picture a time when I will – while Zara and H&M have mostly been nixed (toodles, unravelling hems and crackling polyester).
There isn’t always a direct correlation between price and longevity. While it’s true that spenny things bought because I really loved them have generally won a place in my new wardrobe, expensive things bought out of any other emotion – boredom, PMS, inferiority, because the lady in the empty boutique said she liked my hair – have ended up as guilty cast-offs. Really there’s nothing like the flash of an unworn £200 sleeve in the back of your wardrobe to remind you that those friends who reply “doooooo itttttt!!” to every potential purchase are not always the personal shoppers you need.
Reassuringly, even the professionals aren’t immune to buyer’s remorse. ‘I wish I’d learnt years ago to start collecting better pieces for my wardrobe,’ confesses Bethany Rowntree, Director of Studio B, an online treasure trove of independent brands with the motto ‘buy less, love more’. ‘I’d say the biggest [mistakes] are buying things on impulse that have caught my eye and I’ve instantly decided I have to have, but then actually don’t fit, don’t suit me, or I have nowhere to wear them to. Such as the Zara stripe sequin skirt that practically fell down when I caught the bouquet at my friend’s after-wedding party.’
‘Also, why did I even need a separate after-wedding outfit?’
When I ask people the main reasons for their unworn hoards, there are some recurring themes.
‘I’ll fit into it one day!’ is depressingly common. As is ‘but the discount is so big I am basically making money!’ There are the emergency purchases, when we’re cold or hungover or we packed for a holiday at 4am in the dark. The mood-boosting purchases, when we’re feeling insecure – and, conversely, the confident purchases, where we’re all flame emoji in the changing room, but the fire is extinguished by the time we get home. The inner voice that tells us ‘step outside your comfort zone!’, drowned out later by the voice that says, ‘babe, no. You can’t pull that off.’
And of course, there’s the returns laziness. The one-click ease of online shopping vs the soul-crushing trudge to the Post Office. There’s buying something you love, but have nothing to wear with (my mother operates a strict policy for this one – no purchase unless you can name three items it’ll go with that are already in your wardrobe), and the buying something you really don’t love in the mistaken belief it’ll be ‘useful’.
And there’s the classic: buying for the life you want, not the life you have. Or in my case, the life of a sassy Disney Channel movie heroine who has just discovered she’s heir to the throne of a country called ‘Glittertopia’. The psychological root is as transparent as that mesh bodysuit in the back of your drawer with the tags still on. We buy the sequinned things and the slinky things because admitting we’re not really in a sequinny, slinky place in our lives anymore is just too sad.
‘One of my favourite things in my wardrobe is a dress I've never worn outside the house,’ admits one Twitter follower, whose out-out dresses stay firmly in-in. ’But they do cheer me up. I have been known to throw on the most ridiculous ones just to do the housework.’
Of course, we all know the best ways to absolve our wardrobe guilt. Donate stuff to charity shops, or clothes recycling bins, or sell them on re-sale sites like Vinted. Traid’s 23% campaign is aimed at encouraging Londoners to donate the 23 per cent of their clothes, on average, that are totally unworn. That’s approximately 123 million items languishing in the backs of the capital’s wardrobes – all because they’re an awkward length, or they never found the right shoes, or they wore it one time and somebody said it looked ‘a bit Christine Hamilton’.
‘I think we need to learn how to mend our clothes,’ says Kate Richards, owner of ethical fashion boutique The Keep. ‘There’s so much wastage in the fashion industry, and we often chuck away something that could be easily mended, adjusted or embellished. Once you start to tap into the murky reality, and watch documentaries such as The True Cost, you begin to think differently about popping into those high street stores to quickly grab something “new”.’ She’s right, and especially as maintaining or altering old clothes is now almost as easy as a one-click purchase. Online tailoring services like The Clothes Doctor will pick up your knackered old items and deliver them back to your door looking like new.
But how can we go one better, and stop ourselves buying the clothes we don’t wear before we buy them and don’t wear them?
‘The biggest lesson is to be confident in your choices,’ says Bethany, who advocates a three-point ticklist: ‘Don’t buy something unless you know you can wear it multiple ways, is your style, AND you love it.’ Just like emotional eating, I’m beginning to think the trick is stopping to ask yourself why you’re reaching for your debit card – is it really about the dress, or is the dress a placebo? A placebo with slightly weird sleeves.
‘Be realistic about how and where you mostly wear things,’ adds Bethany. ‘We all like to imagine we have a red carpet lifestyle, but let’s face it – a night out for me is the pub or dinner, and an occasion is a wedding.’ Which is not to say we shouldn’t buy the glitzy impulse items; perhaps we just need to weigh up how happy they’ll make us against how sad we’ll feel each time we see them lying at the bottom of the wardrobe.
And if all else fails, try this. Before you punch your pin in, take a deep breath and visualise what it’ll be like the next time you move house. Trust me, it’s enough to make anyone a minimalist.