Somebody knows how to spot a bargain

Apologies for the second family-related post today, but I couldn't resist this three-year old blurb from a Delaware pub that features my mom, also a die-hard Quality Thrift shopper whenever given the opportunity. My sincere thanks to friend and lurker J for finding this gem:

Eek! Zoom! Nobody channeled Audrey Hepburn at the motorcycle-themed Born 2B Wild: A Black T-shirt Affair. Biker chic and biker chicks held sway at this scene, the annual benefit for DCCA. “What If the Hokey Pokey Is Really What It’s All About?” was the existential question on the T-shirt worn by Lora Englehart, publicist at Brandywine River Museum. Art-boosters Lynn and John Wigton arrived in gleaming Harley-Davidson gear, as did many others—an homage to Mike and Debbie Schwartz, owners of Mike’s Famous dealership, who were honorary co-chairs. “Like my necklace? I got it at the hardware store today,” Alice Hupfel of Chadds Ford ’fessed about her linkage. Anna Francis of Cochranville, Pennsylvania, polished off her tattooed torso with a rock-star wig. “Yeah, go ahead and feel it. You won’t be the first,” she quipped. We chatted up Gina Marsilii, whose new biz is permanent makeup, and her friend Andrea Derrick of Newark. Gina, always a live wire, outdid herself in dangling satellite earrings “that have their own weather system,” as she put it. (Gabby just loves it when someone else writes her fashion copy.) Certain biker dudes took a back seat to nobody, sartorially. Bill Shea, a past president of DCCA, nailed that “Leader of the Pack” look in gila monster boots from Arizona and a vintage leather jacket. Dentist Milton Isaacs of Arden, whose daughter Susan Isaacs is adjunct curator of DCCA, played against type in a “Rebel With a Cause” T-shirt. A certain ladylike contingent shunned roadster garb for the safe middle lane—Julie Von Blarcom, Danielle Rice and Jan Jessup, all in long black skirts. The sequined butterfly T-shirt that writer Frances Buttenheim said she bought for $1.99 at Quality Thrift in Claremont, California, showed somebody knows how to spot a bargain. The night’s apocryphal va-va-voom trophy went to blonde Pat Barron of Wilmington, a head-turner in black leather cap, electric blue shades, chain belts and skinny pants. When the band Go Van Gogh played “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” the song didn’t apply to anyone at Born 2B Wild.

I've actually always been fascinated by the "society pages" of newspapers large or small, haute or hoi polloi... I always scan those silly montages at the front of Philly Mag, Town & Country or in the Styles section of the NYT to see what wealthy and/or event-attending people that I don't know are wearing these days. And how many more dresses like that do they have at home? And what in God's name would I wear if I had to go to the Diabetes Fundraiser/Museum Gala/Masked Ball???  I know what my mom would wear: the sequined butterfly t-shirt! (BTW - she clearly should have won the "apocryphal va va voom trophy"for the evening described above....I want me some va-va-voom...)

Mom: please do a post for us about the butterfly t-shirt & and the TSE sweater as the bookends of the QT experience...

Origins of The Wardrobe Project

It probably makes sense to rewind and describe how I got here-- "here" being 3/4ths of the way towards achieving my 2009 New Year's Resolution.

I like decision rules. And I like personal productivity and organizational systems. Personal productivity and organizational systems that involve decision rules are the best. In late December 2008 I noticed that: A) I had nothing to wear (I'm sure you've never felt the same way staring into the maw of your own closet), and B) nothing really fit, and C) the pretty small closet I share with Paul was already overstuffed and D) My penchant for chronic overshopping at the best thrift store in the world (I love you Quality Thrift!!) had been curtailed by my move from LA to the East Coast and E) I had never actually accomplished a New Year's Resolution that I had set and thought it would nice to give that a try. It seemed like a natural next step to try an achievable NYR that somehow dealt with The Closet Problem in a gloriously transformative way.

Thus The Wardrobe Project (2009) was born. The two-fold goal:

1. Purchase no clothes (or shoes or accessories) in 2009, and
2. Get rid of 52 pieces (i.e, one each week) of existing wardrobe detritus.

This seemed straightforward, easily measurable, and, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer sings, "brave and kinda righteous." After a Victoria Secret semi-annual sale spree for bras and underwear, I kicked off on January 3.

And - it's been totally easy, 99% achievable (2 minor failures will be reported later), and...not at all transformative. This failure to transform is at the root of my motivation to do the p&pg blog. Shouldn't this exercise have left me with a streamlined, elegant, well-fitting, lovely and timeless wardrobe? Shouldn't the sifting of wheat from chaff and the noble feel-goodness of getting rid of so much stuff have catapulted me into a new era of sartorial splendor? Nah. It just left me with an empt(ier) closet and the horror of confronting some particularly bad decision-making that I've made over the past 10+ years. Thus -- Wardrobe Project, Year 2,  which will be recorded, processed, and mulled over in p&pg.

When I mentioned the Wardrobe Project to friends and acquaintances this year, I could expect one of two questions:

1. How did you not buy any new clothes for a whole year??

or

2. How did you get rid of 52 pieces of clothing??

Which of the two questions was posed usually said a lot about the clothing, shopping, and hoarding habits of the asker. I will admit that #1 was harder for me than #2.  A lot of money and MBA marketing power is devoted to encouraging us (by "us" I mean women aged 30-49 with disposable income) to buy a lot of new clothes every year. And do we oblige? The numbers I could find on annual clothing spending were actually surprisingly low:

"We've already stockpiled enough clothes to last us for years. The average annual shopping haul swelled from $1,550 per household in 2002 to $1,760 last year. That spending spree was prompted in part by what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says was a 30 percent drop in real apparel prices over the past decade. With cheap imports allowing a dollar to buy more, the physical bulk of garb purchased by the average household has risen 18 percent in just five years."

Only $1760 per year per household? While that's probably more than my household spends (and why don't I know what our household spends on clothing, BTW?), I definitely thought the average was higher.  Until  The Wardrobe Project (2009), my annual clothes purchasing behavior looked something like this:

•  About 8 "sprees" at a thrift store or consignment store, during each of which I would buy 4-12 items for a total of about $40-$100 (usually $3-$10 per item.) I would buy mostly casual tops and pants, sometimes a wacky dress or jacket. The low price does create a low purchasing threshold for me -- thrift store items can almost fit, or be almost the right color, or be missing a button, or be so last decade (as distinct from hipster retro), and I'll still buy.  And I wonder why there's nothing decent in my closet...
  
•  1 or 2 tormented purchases of big ticket items like boots, a coat, a suit, a formal dress, etc. These purchases are tormented because I have no faith in my ability to correctly select the right item, and because spending more than $40 on a single piece of clothing or pair of shoes makes me anxious and usually a little a nauseated. I usually take a spouse or good friend along, and try to stick to a few trusted stores like AnnTaylor.
  
• The above-mentioned early January pilgrimage to Victoria's Secret for exactly 3 bras and 8 pairs of cotton undies. Low sale price always trumps color, style, fabric, or, yes, even fit, so this is not a particularly useful way to buy undergarments.
  
• Occasional shoe purchases as needed, usually by mail from Lands End (I'm exactly their Size 7), or at an  upscale shoe store like Benjamin Lovell in Philly or a Dansko/Birkenstock-type store. Unlike the second bullet point above, there is no torment around these purchases, even those that exceed (gulp!) $200, as my Masai Barefoot Technology shoes did.
• [There is a whole second set of purchasing behaviors for the kids' clothes, but I'll save that for another post. I don't buy clothes for Paul, but occasionally attend him on his infrequent purchasing trips...]
  

Now - back to the two NYR stipulations: Don't buy, and purge. Not buying was definitely hard, particularly when within striking distance of a good thrift store or when then J.Jill or Title 9 clearence catalog showed up. On the other hand, it eliminated the angst of the big ticket purchases (well, postponed more than eliminated as I now have a backlog of major items that must be purchased in 2010. Like, a winter coat. Don't have one of those...). Purging was laughably easy, mostly because my thrift store purchases were so regularly egregious that it was really easy to offload 50+ items. I'll do another post on how I actually did the purging -- it's all about frequency filing...)

Ok, that was a bit of a ramble, but if there are any actual readers out there, tell me:

1. Which would be harder for you - the no buy provision, or the get rid of 52 pieces provision?
2. Do you have any sense of what you spend on clothing per year? How is it allocated (new vs. used, catalog vs. bricks-and-mortar, casual vs. work vs. fancy, lots of little purchases vs. big splurges; predictable vs. unpredictable???)
3. Is buying clothes fun or a chore? What makes it so?

Today's outfit: Drawstring jeans from ?QT or another thrift store; brown button down shirt that didn't survive the dryer so well; J. Jill shelf bra cami in ?slate or some other brown - purchased in Carmel J.Jill store on sale. Shoes: Dansko clogs, recently replaced when my friend's dog ate one of them.