013. My High-Low Wardrobe: Summer Edition
How I split my shopping budget across my summer wardrobe. How many pieces I own. How often I buy new ones.
In this newsletter, I tell you about the parts of my wardrobe on which I spend the most money, and the areas where I spend less. For every category of products in my summer wardrobe, I share how many pieces I own that actually gets worn, and how many new pieces I buy each year for the summer. Along the way, I have included tips such as the tell-tale signs to look out for when shopping that indicate quality, the very few fast fashion brands I occasionally shop from, and my foolproof process for avoiding impulse buys.
As you know, the relationship between quality and price in the fashion industry as we know it today, is absolutely not linear. There are thousands of polyester dresses being sold for upwards of $1,000 on every retailer’s website. Meanwhile, some fast fashion brands will occasionally produce pieces that have a standard of quality on par with some high-end brands. If you want to understand how these discrepancies come to be, I provide a brief explanation about what determines the cost of your clothes at the end of this newsletter. Additionally, there’s the matter of vintage and secondhand shopping, where the relationship between price and quality is arbitrary based on being at the right place at the right time, and discriminatory if you are not straight-sized. Therefore, don’t simply read this as High = expensive and Low = cheap, but rather:
High = I consider that value for money within this product category varies greatly. My personal preference therefore, is to invest money and/or time towards quality and longevity. Sometimes that means spending a lot. Sometimes it means browsing secondhand sites, reading reviews at length, trying things on, going to sample sales, or asking family members for hand-me-downs.
Low = I consider that value for money does not vary greatly between the bottom and top ends of the market. I will therefore spend less for each piece by shopping small (Etsy), local (at my holiday destination) and, as little as I can, fast fashion brands.
Daywear Separates
High vs. Low: A 50/50 mix
How many I have that I actually wear: 7-8 pieces that I mix and match
How often and how much I buy something new: 6-7 new pieces per summer
I recently realised that buying separates is much more efficient and timeless than buying dresses, especially for your summer wardrobe. Firstly, it’s efficient because this is the wardrobe that ends up living out of a suitcase, figuratively and sometimes literally. Buying four dresses is more or less the same price as buying four tops and four bottoms. But with the former, you can only make four outfits, whereas with the latter, you can make sixteen outfits. Secondly, separates are timeless because they can be styled in a hundred different ways, and any top or bottom can be refreshed and revamped to suit the vibe of the season. In contrast, there are only so many ways you can style a dress. Once it goes out of style or you get bored of it, it’s likely to be relegated to the back of your closet. I know that a lot of you won’t like me dissing dresses like that.
As a result, when it comes to daywear, I spend more on separates than I do on dresses. And because my personal style most of the time consists of a basic piece paired with a statement one, such as a plain cotton tank top with a pair of printed trousers, I tend to spend less on my basics and a lot more on my statement pieces. This is by far the section of my wardrobe that sees the most turnover (I buy the most for every year in terms of quantity, not value). What I end up wearing is often something new. Every other category, I have worn more or less the same pieces every summer for a good five years now.
The only fast fashion brand that I have shopped from this year, where I bought a few cotton tank tops I wear every day and a more dressed up linen top, is