Build a Wardrobe You’ll Actually Wear
Frugal Chic® 58: Start Building your Forever Wardrobe
During my shopaholic phase I bought a lot of impulse purchases.
I’d scroll the ASOS new in page as a form of entertainment.
I’d have every fast fashion retailer on my phone in a folder and be subscribed to every email newsletter.
This resulted in the clothes I wore wearing me, instead of me wearing the clothes.
I feel this a lot now, with the ‘how to dress like an THAT girl’ tutorials. Somehow it feels like we are wearing a costume.
The worst part is, I don’t own any of those clothes now. They were either sold or donated.
Sure, I am grateful for that experimental phase, everyone needs one. But to me there are so many lessons which in hindsight seem obvious.
In this issue:
Why natural fibres used to be the standard, not the luxury
How care labels reveal whether you’re paying for quality or marketing
Why decluttering is one of the most underrated financial habits
The danger of saving your best things for an imaginary future
How to build a wardrobe based on your real life, not your fantasy self
Care label > brand label
A lot of people are going to roll their eyes at this.
So let me be clear: I am not demonising polyester, and I am not demonising anyone who buys synthetic clothing out of necessity.
I am also not telling you to go out and buy a £500 cashmere jumper.
But I do think we need to talk about how disconnected we have become from what our clothes are actually made of.
Because for most of human history, clothing was made from natural fibres.
Cotton.
Wool.
Linen.
Silk.
Leather.
That was the standard.
Then synthetic fibres came along.
Nylon was introduced in the late 1930s and became famous through stockings. Polyester followed in the 1940s and became mainstream in the decades after because it was cheaper, durable, wrinkle-resistant and easier to mass produce.
And to be fair, this was revolutionary.
Synthetic fibres made clothing more affordable. They made certain garments more practical. They democratised access to fashion.
But somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing synthetics as the alternative and started treating them as the default.
Now you can walk into a shop, pick up a jumper, see that it costs £80, check the label and realise it is mostly polyester or acrylic.
And this is exactly why care labels matter.
The Frugal Chic rule: never let the brand tell you something is quality. Let the label prove it.
Decluttering is a financial audit
Decluttering is arguably an underrated financial hack.
You are forced to confront previous purchases and reflect on them, quite literally left at the end thinking, “This all used to be money.”
This doesn’t mean decluttering just to fill the space again, or getting rid of things you genuinely value.
There is a plethora of research to suggest that minimalism can have a positive impact on wellbeing in the home, and this likely affects other areas of life too.1
In a similar vein, clutter can often have negative effects.2
While there’s no evidence to suggest a direct correlation between decluttering and future purchases, in my own life, I’ve noticed it has made me want to shop less because I find pieces I’d forgotten about.
Quite often, we have that craving for something new because we aren’t showing enough gratitude for what we already have.
Wear your sunday best
We often have this idea that our best, smartest clothes are for Sundays, because traditionally, “Sunday best” was a phrase used to describe your church outfit.
Obviously, society has largely evolved, and I by no means mean to make this a religious comment. I mean it more symbolically.
We often leave our nice things for a rainy day. We don’t want to burn the Diptyque candle, use the nice mug, or wear that cashmere jumper.
My advice? Life is too short not to use the things you have.
This could be a scarcity mindset, and it could result in you often wearing outfits you don’t love because, in an ideal world, you’d wear the crisp white shirt you’ve been saving for “best.”
Use cost per wear, not just cost
A cheap item is not always good value, and an expensive item is not automatically an investment.
This is where cost per wear matters.
A £20 top worn once has cost you £20 per wear.
A £120 coat worn 100 times has cost you £1.20 per wear.
Obviously, this does not mean you need to justify every expensive purchase with girl maths.
But it does mean price alone tells you very little.
Value comes from use.
The clothes that pay dividends in your wardrobe are usually the ones you reach for repeatedly. The jeans that always work. The jumper that goes with everything. The coat you wear every winter. The boots that survive actual weather.
These are the assets in your wardrobe.
The liabilities are the pieces that take up space, require constant styling, only work for one hypothetical occasion, or make you feel slightly uncomfortable every time you put them on.
Build for your real life, not your fantasy self
A wardrobe you actually wear has to be built around your actual life.
Your commute. Your climate. Your job. Your laundry habits. Your budget. Your body. Your willingness to steam, dry clean, hand wash or maintain things properly.
I’ve said this a few times and people get up in air, ‘I wfh but I like to dress up and wear tailored trousers’. But that’s literally the point. It’s for your lifestyle and preferences. That doesn’t mean you are resigned to joggers and an oversized t-shirt. It might mean you wear business casual that takes you through to an evening event.
This could even involve having to plan for changes in your body during and after pregnancy, or fluctating weight. That’s why this capsule wardrobe idea falls flat for most people. Rather than trying to fit all your clothing into 10 items, instead, work out what is genuinely going to be useful to you.
The easiest way I’ve found to do this is to take more mirror selfies. You’re not trying to be an influencer and it’s not vanity. You’re collecting evidence of what you reached for.
That way your future purchases are based on data, not impulse.
In summation:
Check the care label
Declutter your wardrobe
Wear your “Sunday best”
Calculate cost per wear
Dress for your real life
That’s all this week,
Mia xx
Jain, V.K., Gupta, A. and Verma, H. (2023) ‘Goodbye materialism: exploring antecedents of minimalism and its impact on millennials’ well-being’, Environment, Development and Sustainability. doi: 10.1007/s10668-023-03437-0.
Roster, C.A., Ferrari, J.R. and Jurkat, M.P. (2016) ‘The dark side of home: Assessing possession “clutter” on subjective well-being’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 46, pp. 32–41. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.03.003.