11 golden rules of shopping

Save money and time, and get happier with the contents of your closet, by learning from my mistakes

Photo by Becca McHaffie on Unsplash

I’m about to do a closet purge, which I never don’t dread because it forces me to confront the shopping mishaps I’ve had in the past—and sometimes, the very recent past. I try not to feel too bad about it, though; I don’t know a woman, no matter how stylish and on point, who doesn’t have one or two real whoppers in her closet. What follows here are guidelines I’ve figured out—and learned the hard way to set—over years and years and years of trial and error.

Have you got rules to shop by that aren’t included here? If so, please share in the comments.

Always try on clothes with shoes I’m starting with what seems like an obvious tip, but I’m frequently surprised by how many people don’t know or do this. Some stores—usually fancier ones—have heels in the dressing room for just this purpose, usually for trying on with dressier items. But even if you’re just shopping for jeans, you want them to look how they will out on the street, and you’re going to look better with shoes on 99% of the time.

Consider your lifestyle In my twenties, I used to buy loads of party dresses, and even though I definitely attended more parties then than I do now, those were mostly grungy affairs in dark, pre-gentrification Brooklyn railroad apartments, which didn’t really call for a fancy frock. In those days, I used to be like a cartoon character whose eyes would pop out of their head and become heart-shaped whenever I happened upon something deeply desirable: all ration, all reason, would go out the window and I’d lay down my card. Then there would be some degree of hell to pay: once, in the early 90s, after buying a very cute but deeply impractical Anna Sui micro-miniskirt suit for the equivalent of what was then a month’s salary, I actually broke into a cold sweat and had a mild anxiety attack. At a certain point, I learned to not attach my less-than-glam lifestyle to my decidedly more glam wardrobe, and saved a whole lot of cash.