To buy or not to buy?
It’s personal & it’s political
If you read my last newsletter, you know why I’m waiting until March to discuss my 2025 goals, and what my creative goals are for the year. This is part 2, in which I’ll go over my 2025 clothing consumption goals.
What’s my goal?
I’ve decided for 2025 my aim is to buy a max of 12 new pieces for my wardrobe. “Pieces” here include clothes, accessories, and shoes, but not essentials like socks and underwear. By “new” I mean new-to-me: things that I pay money for. So that means that secondhand shopping counts, since I already shop ~95% second hand anyway. Clothing swapping or being gifted something by a friend doesn’t count towards the 12. This number may feel low to you (after all Americans buy an average of 53 new items of clothing per year), but it feels right for me. While I’ve been inspired by more people doing no buys, I have noticed some wardrobe gaps that I’d like to fill, and I love thrifting as an activity, so buying nothing is just not realistic for me.
Before I settled on the number 12, I started the year by making a wish-list of items to be on the lookout for or that I feel are missing from my closet. I also made sure to think about my upcoming travel for the year: I love to thrift when I travel to new places, so I want to make sure and “save” some pieces for when I’ll be abroad (very excited to go vintage shopping in Copenhagen, for example1 I find that bringing a piece home with me from a trip helps me feel connected to my clothes, because I associate them with special memories of the place.
How’s it going and what am I learning?
I wanted some way to track my purchases for the year to help me stay on track. I’ve been intrigued (but ultimately too intimidated) to catalog my whole wardrobe digitally, so instead I’ve created this little virtual whiteboard to keep track of my thoughts and notes about purchasing. And so far I’m liking it! It has three sections: one for what I want and some inspo pics, one for things I thought about buying but ultimately didn’t, and one for my purchases.
Having this dedicated place to put notes to look back on is helping me be more intentional with my purchasing, and also assisting me in continuing to get to know my personal style. I’ve decided to not set a dollar limit on myself for the year, but rather try to stick to my financial goals for how much money I want to be saving each month. What’s left for discretionary things like fashion will guide a more intuitive knowing of what’s “too much” throughout the year. I’ve never had a good budget system for tracking my spending on different categories until this year2 but my hunch is that if I stick to 12 items I will spend less than in years past, even with one or two splurges (I’m eyeing these jeans, for example).
The main thing I’ve noticed so far is the guideline of only 12 pieces has set an even higher bar for just how perfect a piece has to feel for me to walk away from the thrift store with it, and I know this is going to lead to building a closet that I’m going to love for a long time. The two items I’ve bought in so far have been on constant rotation, and I’ve received numerous compliments about each of them.
Let’s zoom out for a sec
I’ve seen more chatter online recently of people doing no buys or low buys this year with a variety of reasons ranging from political boycotting, to saving money, to being more creative with constraints. If you’re considering something like this for yourself I really enjoyed this piece from Harriet Hadfield on the 10 misconceptions of a No Buy Challenge.
Her point that a no buy does not make you morally superior landed with me, as someone that’s tried to shop in-line with my values for a long time. There is something I’m seeing in framing no-buys as political action that has been rubbing slightly the wrong way for me.
Why? Because changing consumption habits is dependent on broader political changes. How someone engages with consumption is going to be influenced by their location, job, etc. For example, I have disposable time and income and live in a place where I can walk to my local bookstore, hardware store, or art supply store when I need something. Whereas someone living in a more rural part of this country is probably limited to driving to a big corporate retailer or ordering on amazon if they need something in a pinch.
I worry that some of the talk around changing consumption habits in this Trump era could make us too caught up in thinking that our identities as consumers are more important than our identities as citizens. We should be advocating for more walkable cities, public transportation, and affordable housing. This is what will enable more people to have disposable income to spend at small businesses, and will allow local businesses to thrive3 I don’t want people to get trapped in a shame cycle that buying something from Amazon makes the downfall of our democracy their fault.
Of course that’s dramatic, but my point stands that we should be cognizant that our consumption habits cannot be where our political work stops. I think it’s a great thing to be intentional about where your money is going, and support your local community with your purchases instead of supporting billionaires. Changing your habits in this way will slow you down, help you get to know people around you, and I genuinely think you’ll like your life more. And engaging with the community around you can be a gateway to getting involved locally. (I’ve been taking Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s advice about local political action, and participating in my progressive city council-member’s campaign for our upcoming nyc primaries.)
And don’t hear this as me being anti-boycotting; I think targeted boycotts can and do work, and we should participate in them, especially if there are specific political goals attached to them. All in all, I think collectively trying to lower our consumption and redirect our money to folks who align with our values is great. I just don’t want our work to stop there.
I’d love to know how you are thinking about consumption this year. If you set any specific goals I’d love to hear about them and how it’s going for you!
If you’d be interested in a round-up of my favorite second-hand stores in places I travel or have traveled to in the past - let me know!
I’ve started using (just the free version) of rocket money. This isn’t an ad, but it’s really helping me stick to a loose budget because of how easy it is to use and see all my spending in one place.
While typing this I was reminded of this amazing tweet response from Derek Guy to someone telling him to stay away from politics
i really like what you said about identifying ourselves as citizens over consumers. When my friends talked about tips for doing no-buys, it felt like we were coming up with a lot of bandaid fixes to “improve ourselves” when the real question was.. why do we feel the need to buy so much anyways? your talk about community involvement & improvement is much more aligned with how I feel about it!
I am definitely in a low buy year; with clothing, it might be more of a no buy year. I am quite happy with my wardrobe at this point and don’t feel the need to add anything new. I dropped my Rent the Runway subscription. I use Thredup for “new” purchases but have not had any in a few months.