Shopping Update: Third Quarterly Report of 2023

Emotional buying is strong in this one.

Like I always say, spring and summer get me in trouble with shopping. This year was no exception. I wrote in my previous shopping update that I had already spent more of my budget than I thought I had, and on top of that, I was buying things on impulse rather than focusing on what I needed. June felt like a shopping spree. Going forward into July, August and September I was trying to be smart and careful. But I went to too many thrift stores, I fell in love with things that I could have lived without, and then, after a particularly stressful two weeks of insomnia and some difficulties at work, I splurged on clothes that I definitely didn’t need and blew the rest of my annual shopping budget in the process. Yikes. I’m not proud of myself. 

Here’s what I have bought in the last three months:

The Good: These purchases above made sense: I finally found a pair of black derbies! They are by Finsbury and I found them at a thrift store. I also bought a thicker wool dickie for the winter at the army store. It’s the only thing I’ve bought new this year.

The Bad: I bought this really beautiful sequin jacket at a vintage shop. It’s very pretty, but I know that it wasn’t a great purchase. The sleeves are a little short, and I don’t get that magical feeling when I put it on. I wish I hadn’t bought it.

The Ugly: Welcome to the unpleasant confessional for the things that I bought because I wanted to feel something.

From top left: I bought a curious Pleats Please circle top that I have a world of trouble styling. 
I obviously needed this beaded 1980s Maryandre Couture jacket.
The houndstooth lace-ups screamed my name. I’ve gotten a lot of wear out of them.

From middle left: I found a Carven jacket at the thrift store. It’s very cute.
The black Wolford top was a flea market find. I couldn’t pass it up, it was only 8 euros.
The white Wunderkind top with long silk strips is borderline too experimental for me.

From bottom left: The dark navy Yohji shirt has cool vibes and it was cheap as heck.
I saw a weird black blob on Vestiaire Collective, I knew that it was an amazing sweater from Dries Van Noten’s fall 2014 collection, and I had to have it.
The seller dropped the price of this Yohji jacket when I was feeling particularly vulnerable.

This is what happened after I had slept poorly for a couple of weeks and had work concerns. I kind of went off the rails and shopped impulsively. Some of these clothes are really great and I like them a lot, but the reason why I bought them is unfortunate. I shouldn’t buy things to make myself feel better, but what’s done is done, and that’s life. At least these purchases tick the boxes for my preferred aesthetics, and they are, for the most part, very wearable. I don’t actively regret buying any of them, which is making me question whether emotional buying is really all that bad — more on that later.

Here are the numbers for the third quarter:

Pieces purchased: 12

Planned purchases: 1 (finally, the black derbies!)
Impulse purchases: 11
Pieces I regret buying: 1 (the sequined jacket)

Pieces bought new: 1
Pieces bought second hand: 11

Tops: 5
Bottoms: 0
Dresses: 0
Coats/jackets/blazers: 4
Accessories: 1
Shoes: 2

Money spent in this quarter: 561,49 EUR

Items purchased in total in 2023: 38
Money spent in total in 2023: 1422,49 EUR

This quarter’s spending was 561,49 EUR, which means that I’ve exceeded my shopping budget of 1,200 EUR for the year – my total for the year is 1,422,49 EUR. The beige Yohji jacket was the last item I bought, and I had already pushed myself over the limit with previous purchases. Luckily I’ve also managed to sell more of my old clothes, and this year so far I’ve made 2,478 EUR in the process. That’s a huge positive and I don’t feel as bad about breaking the budget because of it. However, I’ve bought more items (38) than I have sold (26), so there’s a volume problem I will need to tackle at some point.

I’m reminded again that if I could restrain my shopping impulses and plan smarter, I could have bought one thing that is truly amazing and perhaps more expensive rather than hoarding all of these 12 pieces within a short time span of three months. I’m painfully aware of preaching to others to buy one great thing over several nice ones, but not practicing the method myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there!

My sister asked me the other day if staying out of Instagram has curbed my desire to buy new things. The answer is an obvious ‘no’ — look at the way I shop — but also a resounding ‘yes’. My IG hiatus has certainly allowed me to consume fashion-related media very differently. It’s becoming clearer to me that IG definitely feeds an imagined need in me to revamp my style and a sense of having to keep up with others. Without IG I lean more onto what naturally appeals to me. Obviously I’m still influenced by the things I see around me and I don’t exist in a bubble, but there’s definitely a difference, some kind of a lack of urgency, perhaps. I feel that I am guarded from outfit envy (seeing cool stuff on others and feeling that I want to buy what others have), but something else, a different beast, has taken its place: I now obsess over things I see elsewhere, like in old magazines and fashion books. I slip into rabbit holes of watching fashion shows from the 1990s and the 2000s, which results in me googling old brands and vintage clothes. Temptations abound on eBay, Etsy and Vestiaire Collective’s vintage section. Luckily I’m more drawn to buying clothes in person these days – otherwise I could be in real trouble!

So what now? October is here, the unusually warm temperatures we’ve been having throughout September are soon but a memory. As I’m packing away my summer clothes and pulling out my fall and winter clothes from storage, I am noticing that I have a lot of great clothes that I truly love. More importantly, I’m starting to feel that my wardrobe tells a story. Things go together like they haven’t before. Even though I shop impulsively and emotionally at times, I feel that I am in tune with what I like, perhaps for the first time in my life. I used to get the “what the heck was I thinking” or “which version of myself did I buy this for” -vibe after shopping all the time, but I rarely do anymore. I’m noticing that often my best purchases come after experiencing intense emotions, and like my therapist always says, there are no negative emotions. All emotions are equally valuable, and this is something I want to investigate further in relation to my shopping habits.

Like I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, I’m done shopping for the year. I feel almost a bit sick of going to thrift stores, and if that doesn’t keep me away from them, I don’t know what will. I figured that since I was able to do a three-month-long No Buy late last year, I can repeat the process this year. I have some items on my shopping list (on top of the list: tall winter boots for snowy conditions), and if I happen to come across something truly perfect, I guess I will have to recalibrate my No Buy position at that time. We’ll see what happens. 

Onward, onward, we go!