Off The Rail

‘Buyer’s remorse’ is a term often associated with feelings of guilt after a person has spent a large sum of money on something, more often than not clothes or accessories. An easily developed Louboutin addiction can trigger this type of spending, followed by a feeling of regret, but something that’s relevant to even more of us is the way in which we spend frivolously on high street fast fashion, leaving tons of items unworn or ready to be eliminated from the closet only several months down the line.

During a clear out of my own, I got ruthless. This meant the bags and boxes of things that were building up ready to be thrown away grew larger and larger, and this is where the remorse set in. Seeing the number of items from stores like Primark, New Look and H&M that were in these piles – knowing I would never be able to sell them on for the fact they were so cheap in the first place, and knowing that most of them were bought on impulse and mostly unworn – gave me an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. Ever had that feeling of gazing into your wardrobe and not being able to find anything appropriate to wear, despite the fact it is jammed full of clothes? With cheap fast fashion and compulsive shopping habits joining forces, it is likely you’re not the only one. Whether you spent a fiver on a handbag or splurged a good five thousand down Bond Street, if the purchase was one of impulse and has been neglected ever since, your bank balance is losing out.

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Most of us are guilty of holding onto things that are useless for a variety of reasons, and a lot of us also have a collection of certain items, be it handbags, nails polish or stamps. I use the word guilty, because holding a vast collection of particular items seems to something that is commonly shunned. Not all collections are motivated by materialism, however. Take my family’s collection: A freezer door covered in magnets from the souvenir stores of every place we’ve visited. I’m not even sure when or how this started, but now we can’t go anywhere without finding a fridge magnet to take back with us. They go way back to some of our first family holidays, and looking at them all fills me with both nostalgia and gratefulness that we’ve been able to visit some of these amazing and unusual places.

My personal collections have never stuck around for long – they tend to be more like phases than anything else, spurred on by other people. TY Beanie Babies and Uni Ball gel pens stick out in my mind, and a little friendly competition and admiration amongst my school friends is what kept me pestering my parents for more. Seeming as you’re on a website dedicated to wardrobes however, I will focus on the kinds of collections that grow in there.

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Investment is definitely the ‘Off the Rail’ buzz word. That is, investment of both time and money. Here I have compiled two very contrasting examples of how using the previously posted ‘Wardrobe Essentials’ list can go if you don’t pick the right fits, brands and shades, and how effortlessly perfect and put together you can look if you take a little time and spend a little more money investing in something which will look amazing from day one. One key thing to remember is that when you have good shoes and a good bag, everything else should fall into place. However, spending thousands of pounds on a handbag doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the fast track to chic city. In fact, in my example of ‘Bad Basics’, the bags are by Alexander McQueen and Martin Margiela. Two highly respected labels, but who cares who designed your handbag if you’re the personification of a car crash?

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These days, if you ask someone the one item they couldn’t live without, they would most likely struggle to reel off less than five. We’re all aware of how consumerism has taken over modern society in the western world. Some people live for it, others live against it. Minimalism is a lifestyle that has become a trend. However, minimalism isn’t about having a closet rammed full of ‘classics.’ Owning twenty Little black dresses or wearing Calvin Klein’s clean silhouettes does not mean you’re minimalist. Minimalism is paring everything down to the essentials. It’s about quality over quantity. Longevity over trends. Buying things because you love them and you can’t live without them and will squeeze every inch of life out of them until they’re beyond repair. As Leo Babauta of mnmlist.com puts it, the goal is to ‘Clear away the distractions so we can create something incredible.’ It’s not hitting the high street on pay day with the masses to fritter away your hard earned money on disposable fashion, yet more scatter cushions, or over priced coffee.

Those mastering a minimalist wardrobe – whilst still investing in their appreciation for fashion and keeping up appearances – are the cliché but internationally envied French women. The ‘Four-Five Piece French Wardrobe’ seems to be a phenomenon that women in the know are trying to adopt into their lifestyle, shunning materialism and aiming for a beautiful carefully chosen collection of clothes. The idea is that you build a wardrobe of pieces that all fit together like a perfectly curated puzzle. The four to five pieces lies on the principal that you invest in only four or five pieces per season, to keep your wardrobe up to date, to fill any gaps, and to replace items that are either worn out or just don’t suit anymore.

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Slimming, chic, versatile? Check. Boring, Gothic, ageing? Ah, check.

Black is the staple of many women’s wardrobes, sometimes intentionally, sometimes because it’s simply unavoidable. But why would you avoid it? It has a universal reputation for being figure flattering, which in itself is enough of a selling point. The little black dress is a timeless classic, fail-safe and invented by the ultimate preacher of style – Coco Chanel. Dressing head to toe in black is rarely considered unusual in the fashion industry, as US Vogue’s Creative Director – infamous for her single shade wardrobe – Grace Coddington puts it “I want a clean palate. I don’t want to think about what I’m wearing in the morning; I want to put all of my focus on the clothes I’m shooting.”  There are many jobs, such as retail and hospitality, that demand an all black uniform. So why is it that there is still an uneasy association with Goths and funerals?

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