The No-Buy Zone
What one clotheshorse learned by not shopping for a year.
A YEAR AGO this month my friend Sally decided to go a year without buying clothes.
A successful entrepreneur, wife, and mother with a professional history in advertising and fashion and a personal history as daughter of a retail executive who said things like, “You won’t want to be caught dead in those jeans next season!”—she knew it would be tough.
She also knew it was time. “I was grossed out by the economy, by the fact that I was buying clothes on impulse that I didn’t need or even really want,” she told me, her signature character blend—one part princess, three parts principled—on winning display. With characteristic chutzpah Sally whipped up a blog—thegreatamericanappareldiet.com —and recruited a corps of fellow “dieters” to abstain from buying clothes September 1, 2009 to August 30, 2010, while blogging about their experiences. Since its launch the list has grown to some 138 women—and two men—from around the globe.
Clothes could be swapped or handed down. New shoes, accessories, and undergarments were allowed. “Had to have something,” Sally confessed. “And, I mean . . . undies.” But no new clothes. Nada. Zip. Not even unzip.
And so on Day 284 of the Great American Apparel Diet, Sally and I stood in Barneys. I was there to find out what she’d learned, figuring that if she could tell me in Barneys, T minus 80 days till the end of the diet—she must have really learned it.
Lesson #1: Not buying any clothes for a year is really, really hard. Three months in, she was the picture of insouciance—still stylish in the fall clothes she’d stocked up on before the diet, still having fun reinventing combinations from her enormous collection.
Come May—different story. She’d cheated twice. (Once on pajamas—“perimenopausal night sweats ruined mine”—and once on yoga pants she bought at the gym after forgetting her own.)
Crossing the bar into springtime was hardest, when new fashions started filling the stores and Sally’s friends had the nerve to start buying them. One night she left the house all cute in her put-together ensemble but returned feeling frumpy and pissed off. In between she’d gone to a party with her most fabulous friend, a coffee industry exec whose trips to New York and Asia kept her impeccably, creatively garbed. “I came home and thought, ‘I hate this diet,’ ” she grumbled. “That was my low point.”
Lesson #2: Having a full closet doesn’t make it easier. Like Sally, many of the dieters started out believing they owned enough clothes to last a long time. They found that life in one’s own closet grows tedious fast. “I learned that it’s not about how many clothes you have; it’s about reinventing yourself with new ones,” she told me. “It’s like being a painter and having only five colors.”
Lesson #3: Shopping’s not so much about getting new clothes as it is about creating identity. If she’s learned anything, it’s that clothes tell the story of who we are. “Shopping,” Sally sighed, “is so much more than shopping.”
Complicating that fact have been the unique circumstances of a year in which she worked from home and felt the onset of midlife. “It’s like adolescence revisited,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to look like,” she admitted, fingering a Barneys filigreed lace top with bold front zipper. “I am sure I don’t want to start shopping at Chico’s.”
Published: August 2010
I’m a clothing junkie as well and hate to buy things that were made in China. However, one thing to point out is that just because an article of clothing is expensive, it does not mean that it wasn’t made in China. You have to read the label. Over half the clothes in Nordstrom and Barney’s are made in China. I love James Pearse and the clothes aren’t cheap, but they’re made in China. BCBG…made in China. It would be nice if she had actually recommended brands and designers that are responsible, rather than using the word cheap. Not everyone can drop the same amount of money on clothing that Sally can. I buy the expensive brands for cheap, you just have to know how, where and when to shop. The final step is to look at the label to see where the garment was actually made. I’ve found that most items by the following are made in the US (note, I said most not all):
Michael Stars
Splendid
Citizens of Humanity
Perhaps I am skeptical of this “diet” because collecting clothing and trying to be on the cusp of the next big fad is not something that particularly plagues me, but I have to say I’m just not that impressed by Sally Bjornsen’s “diet.”
Granted, I did have the privilege of growing up quite differently from her. Instead of being raised in the retail industry and hearing my family make judgments about clothing and style, I grew up in a third world country—my parents’ work had us living in Africa—and we were lucky to go shopping once every four years. In the meantime, we wore clothing that my mother made for us. If we wore out our jeans before we were in the US every four years, then…we didn’t have jeans.
Even now, when I am back in the US, I have a hard time going shopping. I feel physically ill when I go to shopping malls and see the blatant conspicuous consumption all around me. When I see people carrying multiple bags from high end stores, I think, “The prices of those clothes could feed a family in Africa for several months…” (Where my family lived, the average individual was LUCKY to earn $100 a YEAR.)
These days, as a young professional fresh out of college, I am struggling to make ends meet, especially as I pay off my college debts. I prefer to keep food on the table, gas in my Honda’s tank, and a roof over my head, than to spend money on clothing. SO…when Sally made the comment about super bargain stores, I wish she had clarified. Did she mean Walmart? Target? JC Penney? I realize that there are some stores that have better relationships with their overseas employees than others, but which ones?
I looked on her website to see what stores she recommended—I don’t want to exploit people!—but the stores she suggested were ones that I can’t afford to shop at with my current income. So now what? Do I buy my clothing at Target—I’m still wearing my wardrobe from a few years ago, by the way—and exploit people around the world? Or do I buy one pair of jeans from one of these suggested stores and not have clothes for a year that I can wear to work?
Sally, I know that your intentions are good, and I don’t want to slam you, but not everyone can buy $100 jeans or dresses that cost $250. That’s food for a month and a payment to Sallie Mae. In the meantime, I’m on a forced clothing diet of my own.
Whether a clothing diet is “forced” or not, I think the purpose of Sally’s quest is to prove a point, raise awareness, and make us all think about the things that we buy. I love that her cause has gotten so much attention in the press recently.
I’ve been thinking about my minimalist life a lot lately, and have concluded:
If I could wear only 8 pieces of really rad, super comfortable, versatile pieces, I would be happy.
So I came up with a business idea – 8 pieces of clothing, (fashionable clothing!) that can be worn 100 ways.
I’m in Nicaragua researching fair trade labor to produce, and blog about it at www.allofusrevolution.com. Would love ideas from all those interested in minimalist lifestyles!