Shopping Update: Second Quarterly Report of 2023

What a shocker! I'm still buying too much.

June has passed, the year is half over (I know, what?!), and I’m taking a look at what I’ve bought in April, May and June, and how my wardrobe plan for 2023 is holding up.

(You can find this year’s first Quarterly Shopping Report here.)

Spring and early summer always complicate my shopping. I tend to buy weird stuff for my easy-going and, needless to say, completely imaginary summer self. At some point, typically during an uncomfortable heatwave, I convince myself that I need more summer clothes rather than fewer, even though summer only lasts about three months in Finland. During the seasonal analysis of my wardrobe early this year I had come to the conclusion that I couldn’t possibly justify buying any more summer clothes. That was more or less the starting point for the second quarter of 2023 as it was finally starting to look and feel like spring.

Since I had already bought a lot of clothes in the first quarter of 2023, I went on a No Buy in April and was doing quite well for a while. Rare opportunities presented themselves in the form of a beautiful Pleats Please bouncy skirt and a black traditionally woven poppana overcoat, and I ended up buying these things that I didn’t exactly need but really badly wanted. I also bought a really cool Rundholz skirt that was completely unnecessary, but I fell in love with it and I didn’t have anything else like it. I went back on the No Buy and managed to not buy anything in May.

2023: the year of Pleats Please.

In mid-June I came across another stunning Pleats Please skirt at work and I wasn’t able to resist it. Soon after I acquired three really interesting designer pieces that I’m considering keeping but might end up selling in my shop. They are all blazers (Missoni, Valentino and Armani) and the fact that I’m only considering keeping them probably means that I should sell them. I am still a novice at recognizing a potential sleeper hit so I want to wait a little while to see if some of these pieces might make sense to have in my own closet before I decide what to do with them. Right now I’m thinking that I will most likely end up keeping the Armani silk velvet blazer and selling the other two, but we’ll see. 

Silk velvet Armani blazer on the left, 1990s Miss Valentino wool blazer on the right.

I had realized in May that I really needed to buy a wide-brimmed summer hat this year. In June I ended up buying a paper and polyester mix straw hat that wasn’t perfect but I desperately needed to cover my head with something that day. The hat is very wearable, it fits, and it’s fine, but it might be what Irene Kim would call a placeholder. A better hat might come along at some point, but at least for now I don’t have to be fearful of sunstroke. It serves a purpose in my wardrobe right now, and it’s good enough, and I’ve worn it every day since I bought it. (Maybe it’s not a placeholder after all..)

I had gone to my niece’s confirmation one day in June, and afterward my sister and I decided to spend the rest of the day thrifting in town. The shoes I had picked to wear for the event were not suitable for walking all day (a packet of band-aids didn’t help), so we went to a bulk thrift store and I found a pair of cute shoes that were affordable and very nice quality. I probably wouldn’t have bought the shoes if my feet weren’t in agony, but I can actually see myself having a relationship with them anyway. No regrets, then.

On the left, barely worn Memery boots. On the right, the cute lace-ups that I bought because my feet were hurting.

I found two insanely affordable pieces while thrifting at the end of June: a Dries Van Noten modal top for 1 euro, and a pair of brown Memery boots modeled after a 1920s-1930s style for 7,50. Did I need either – no, I did not. I try to not let cheap prices affect my decision-making at the thrift store, but I have to admit that I bought these things because they were not only quite lovely but also dirt cheap.

From left: traditionally woven poppana coat, paper mix hat, Missoni blazer, Dries Van Noten modal top and Rundholz parachute skirt.

Considering that I was doing a No Buy for most of April, May and June, I sure ended up buying more than I thought. The day I spent with my sister in town was basically an impromptu shopping spree that extended until the end of the month. I bought four pieces in one day (I try to get out of the haul mentality entirely, but old habits die hard), and I kept shopping for the following two weeks. The good news is that I’ve still only bought second hand items this year, and I haven’t caved in on anything completely bonkers or out of my personal style radar. Everything I’ve bought is highly wearable.

Here are the numbers for the second quarter:

Pieces purchased: 11

Planned purchases: 1
Impulse purchases: 10
Pieces I regret buying: 0

Pieces bought new: 0
Pieces bought second hand: 11

Tops: 1
Bottoms: 3
Dresses: 0
Coats/jackets/blazers: 4 
Accessories: 1
Shoes: 2

Money spent in this quarter: 448,90 EUR

Items purchased in total in 2023: 26*
Money spent in total in 2023: 861,00 EUR

I don’t regret buying any of the items that I’ve acquired in the last three months, but it’s a little worrying that I haven’t managed to buy the things that I have on my shopping list. My budget is looking a little rough, too. This quarter’s spending was higher than the first quarter’s. The two Pleats Please pieces that cost 90 and 120 EUR respectively make up almost half of my spending.  

The problem is that I’ve spent money on things that I love but don’t need, and now I might not have enough money to spend on the things that I do actually need. I’ve made money selling some of my old pieces that I no longer wear, and in this quarter I’ve made 1,084 EUR, but I try to not touch that money. My goal is still to stick to my annual budget, which is 1,200 EUR for the year. Needless to say, what remains of my budget (339,00 EUR) and what my shopping list looks like, one side has to give, unless I come across some amazing deals while thrifting. 

My wardrobe gap / shopping list is almost the same as last time, and it’s still all shoes:

• Tall winter boots for snowy, cold conditions

• Black derbies 

• Sleek, comfortable flat sandals for summer (...except summer is half over, so I might push this until next year unless I come across the perfect pair)

• New entry: lace-up winter ankle boots for snowy, cold conditions (my old ones are in dreadful state, but if need be, I can squeeze one more year out of them)

The hankering list looked like this last time:

• a linen suit for summer 

• a long, warm wool coat with a belt

• new sneakers, Adidas Gazelles? 

The updated hankering list looks like this:

• a long, warm wool coat with a belt

I realized that I don’t need a linen suit. (*I also decided to sell the light gray textured suit I considered keeping last time — hence there’s a discrepancy in the total tally of accumulated pieces from this report and the last.) When I’m hot, I’m just not going to wear a suit, no matter its fabric. I don’t really need new sneakers either. I had seen too many street style pictures of cool people wearing Adidas Gazelles, and I don’t actually think they align with my style. It’s strange how sometimes you just need a short waiting period to recognize the difference between what you think you like and need and what you actually like and need. 

One of my goals this year was to buy fewer pieces than last year. My 2022 tally came to 42 pieces. I’m already up to 26 pieces this year, so I really need to slow down again. I’ve sold 22 pieces from my wardrobe this year, so I’m walking a tightrope here, trying to keep some kind of balance. The weird thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve bought a lot this year, but the numbers don’t lie. It’s just so easy to have this stuff accumulate. I’ve basically bought one thing every week — yikes! If I want to seriously curb my shopping, I have to stop going to the thrift stores and flea markets as often as I have in the last couple of weeks. There are simply too many temptations!

Overall I am happy with what I’ve bought in the second quarter of 2023, but I’m also a little disappointed in myself. The end of June shopping spree feels somewhat reckless in hindsight. I am beginning to doubt whether I will ever get to a place where my wardrobe doesn’t exist in a constant state of flux. I’d like to think that the pieces I’ve bought this year, just like last year’s purchases, would be here for the long haul, that they provide the core of my personal style that I’ve never really had before. These are clothes that I feel I can commit to. In theory that should mean that at some point I am less likely to keep buying things at this pace, that I will feel more settled in my clothes and the shopping should subside. But I don’t know if I’m just fooling myself here. My Instagram friend Jessie recently told me that the three words that describe her style are ‘I love clothes’. I can relate.