This time last year I read L’art de la Simplicité by Dominique Loreau and it changed me.
I’d been making small incremental steps towards changing my lifestyle and shopping habits for more sustainable ones for a while – we’d been on a ‘plastic-free’ crusade for a year or two, I’ve always shopped vintage both for our home and my wardrobe and my whole business is built from my passion to support independent businesses… but I was still, almost by default, ‘buying stuff I didn’t need’ and I wanted to stop and question, why?
L’art de la Simplicité helped me do that – to examine the things I was buying and the motivation behind each purchase and it flicked a switch in me to really look at my ‘possessions’ in a different way. It’s whole premise is about ‘living better with less’, how by detoxing our homes, wardrobes, diet and relationships – we can live more freely and in a much deeper, more connected way. It’s a really short, accessible read I would recommend to anyone; based heavily in Oriental Philosophy (Dominique lived in Japan for some time) it left me motivated and conscious to consume more mindfully.
So, last autumn I set myself the challenge to only buy 6 things. Rather than going cold turkey, I wanted to give myself a limit. I chose classics that I wouldn’t tire of: a camel wool coat, black leather heeled ankle boots, black leather buckled loafers, a vintage leopard print coat and two dresses. It sated my love of shopping, but was restraint enough that it really made me think about every single purchase. I hadn’t read Marie Kondo at that point but I guess I was looking for pieces that ‘sparked joy’. All in all I spent around £500-£550. In context for you, that might be more than you spend in a year, or what you might spend on 1 item – who am I to judge, but for me that was significantly less than I would usually spend in any one season. There were no ‘Zara hauls’ or bored 10pm internet purchases. It weaned me off my ‘passive purchasing’ – but I still felt I could take it one step further…
So as the new year arrived, my word for 2019 was ‘simplicity’ in all things. Paring back my commitments, possessions and friendships to the core essentials – the ones I couldn’t live without and focussing hard on those. So I set myself another challenge – this time I levelled up. My aim was not to buy any new clothing for six months. Over the autumn I had realised that often my purchases were linked to insecurities – if I had a big pitch meeting at work, was feeling low or just wanted to ‘reward myself’ – I would buy something. Sad, happy, stressed – it was my go to. That was the cycle I wanted to break.
So, I declared my shopping detox on social media to hold myself accountable and that was that. The first few months were easy; it was still winter and my 6 wardrobe staples (plus a ton of stuff already in my wardrobe) carried me through. I also made more of an effort to mend the things I already had. Re-heeling boots to enable me to get another year’s wear out of them (my five year old Sam Edelman boots – pictured). Repairing dropped hems, replacing missing buttons. It ensured I wore every single item in my wardrobe (and donated the stuff I didn’t), I dressed more creatively and fell back in love with the clothes I already owned. However, as the new-season collections dropped I started to wobble, but a swift unsubscribe from tempting shopping emails and my resolve held firm. I deleted the shopping apps on my phone and the less I shopped, the less I wanted to shop.
For someone who creates content and champions online brands for a living – for some it was a hard decision to reconcile.
‘So you’ve given up shopping?’
‘Yup’
‘But you still want everyone else to shop at your clients’ brands?’
‘YUP’
In giving up shopping entirely I wasn’t trying to get everyone else to follow suit, but my extreme stance was more of a way of getting people to question their own consumption. I have always, and will always, buy where I can (and when I can afford to) from independent retailers. Both in the town where I live and with with the small online businesses I support. And my message worked; I was bowled over by the DMs and emails I started getting from other women who had also used the new year as a fresh start and were consuming more consciously. Some had quit the high street and were buying less but from indie brands while others were only buying second-hand and vintage.
Four months in to my six-month challenge, I caved. In the most cliched way possible. It was 11pm, I was ill in bed with a raging temperature and chest infection, my husband was working away for 3 weeks, I was juggling full-time work and the boys by myself and something snapped. I had fallen COMPLETELY in love with the Erica Davies for M&S sandals (burnt orange, cross-over flat sandals, encrusted with MASSIVE gems, aka my dream shoes – see main pic) but had immediately told myself ‘no, you can’t have them’. Then, in my fever-induced stupor, I thought ‘fuck it’. Life is too short, you adore them, you’ll wear them until they fall apart and so, reader – I bought them.
The next morning there was an initial disappointment. I’d failed my challenge. But the second they arrived it disappeared. That spark of joy was back and although I’d ‘failed’ it actually taught me my biggest lesson of the whole experiment. I truly love clothes.
That sounds so lame when you write it down but it’s true. Perhaps I needed the complete break to reawaken my true love affair with fashion but beautiful clothes make me happy. They always have – from a vintage obsession teen, through uni, during my career in magazines styling photoshoots, editing shopping pages… I have a passion for fashion. And that’s okay. I love World War I poetry and reading Thomas Hardy too – sometimes simple, seemingly superficial pursuits can bring us genuine joy. It doesn’t need to be any deeper than that.
That said, I feel like my detox helped me recalibrate. After I’d broken the seal, I went on to buy 2-3 more things in the remain few weeks of my shopping detox but over the whole 6 months I purchased less than a handful of items.
The 1 July rolled around and whereas I presumed I would go out on a big fashion binge once the ban was lifted (it was slap-bang in the middle of silly sale season – it was tempting) – I simply bought a couple of dresses that were on my lust list (Dilli Grey dress of dreams above), an organic cotton denim jumpsuit that makes me feel like one of Charlie’s Angels and I added a few skirts to my work wardrobe that I wear with my all-time favourite tees. No huge haul, just a few considered pieces.
As Autumn approaches I intend to set myself the ‘6 item’ challenge again – on this season’s wishlist are a vintage kantha jacket from Dilli Grey, Hiut jeans, some vintage men’s cashmere jumpers and retro cowboy boots – plus I’m currently on an eBay hunt for a vintage Burberry trench… my passion for fashion is back, just more atuned and conscious than ever before.