de facto redhead

My mom forwarded me an article from the Toronto Star the other day. It was about two best friends, Perdita and Alison, who are in their early 30s and decided to put a halt to their frivolous spending for exactly one year, starting last May 15. No shoes, dresses, shirts, pants, purses, socks, accessories – nothing. Both, it seems, have overloaded closets of non-designer and designer goods, and Perdita mused in the article that she might have enough for a down payment on a house in Toronto if she hadn’t bought so many clothes, etc. If you’re interested, the friends are blogging about their experiences as shoppers in lock-down at www.365fashionrehab.com.

Perdita’s comment about a down payment brings to mind the Sex and the City episode in which Carrie receives her “eviction” notice from Aiden and has to either find a new apartment or buy hers. While shoe shopping with Miranda, Carrie comes to the terrible realization that she would have enough money to buy her apartment if only she hadn’t purchased so many pairs of shoes at approximately $400 a pair. She quips that she will be the old woman who literally lives in her shoes, and while this is an extreme example of over-shopping and overspending (especially on a newspaper columnist’s salary!), the reality is in there somewhere and can be found in the closets of women all over Canada who buy, buy, buy and then wonder where their money went.

I admit I, too, love to buy, buy, buy, but you will not catch me purchasing anything with a designer label, or paying more than $25 for shoes, if I can help it. I’m all about buy, buy, buying the sales, sales, sales, and it seems to have become a running joke among my friends that I am cheap. Case in point: a few weeks ago, a friend of mine equated my clothes to costing “bargain basement” prices, and on a birthday card back in August, another friend, who gave me a $10 Urban Outfitters gift card, wrote that I could probably find multiple things to buy without going over said amount.

OK, yes, it’s true – I am bargain shopper who never looks at anything hanging on the regular-price racks. I go straight to the sale racks, and if there’s nothing there that catches my fancy, I leave the store. I can’t justify paying regular price when things are either going to go on sale in a few weeks, or I can find something else just as good for a lot less. I do, however, buy a lot of things at these low prices, so after reading about the Fashion Rehab ladies, I have decided to keep a running tally of every clothing-related item I buy in 2010. This includes all undergarments, coats, socks, tights, belts, hats, shoes, jewelry, gloves – everything. I couldn’t even guess how much money I spend on these things in a year, so why not find out and let you follow along?

So far in 2010, I have bought three things, all in the U.S. during my Christmas vacation. Those items and their prices are:

Tank top with flowery blue, turquoise, and white design, American Eagle Outfitters – $4.47

Black shoe-booties, Payless – $11.03

Red plaid shirt-dress, Target – $6.31

TOTAL: $21.81

I will let you know whenever I buy something new, and when I wear my items from 2010 I will flag them in my Fashion and Me posts so you know what’s what and how much I paid. It’s difficult to showcase clothes without actually having them on as complete outfits, but I will take pictures of easier items when I can, like my Payless shoe-booties, seen above. Ah, I *heart* clearance!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Tally It Up Experiment of 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.