i'm a terrible person

Well, maybe not, but I'm certainly a terrible blogger.

I recently got a new job and have been too caught up in the business of moving to remember to blog.

I'm ashamed to admit I've also fallen off the wagon quite severely, so perhaps there's a latent guilt driving me away from Make Do.

Anyway, I plan to throw myself back into it with, if not the same frequency, at least a damned good improvement on the pitiable effort of the last couple of months.

Apologies to my three loyal readers who are probably my Mum and fake accounts she set up for our cats.

I came across something both inspiring and intimidating in my regular internet trawl today.

It's a site called The Uniform Project. Here's a better description than any clumsy attempt I could come up with:

Starting May 2009, I have pledged to wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. Here’s how it works: There are 7 identical dresses, one for each day of the week. Every day I will reinvent the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which will be vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies. Think of it as wearing a daily uniform with enough creative license to make it look like I just crawled out of the Marquis de Sade's boudoir.

The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India. At the end of the year, all contributions will go toward Akanksha’s School Project to fund uniforms and other educational expenses for children living in Indian slums.

It's pretty amazing to see what you can do with the one basic foundation to build on, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to do, but really doubt I have the fashion savvy to pull off. Sigh.

I have a feeling I'm not alone in this, either, which is why sites like this are particularly helpful to enlighten similar frightened souls to the possibilities of mixing things up a bit. It's something I'd like to see more of in magazines - articles on how to really make the most from a few decent pieces - but it's somewhat counter-intuitive to the magazine advertising ethos to sell as much shit as possible.

(Yes, I know occasionally you do see it, but it's usually crap, showing how a black blazer can go with seven different dresses. Astonishing. Making seven different looks out of the same dress would be much more impressive.)

Anyway, check out the Uniform Project Lookbook and see the same dress, 365 different ways.

Uniform Project Picture Book from The Uniform Project on Vimeo.

lay-by is your friend

Oh lay-by. You're an under-hyped marvel of life.

I put this bag on lay-by when I was at the height of my Christmas-ridiculous-hours-induced-wealth, but was unable to justify the purchase of a $500 handbag when I'd bought another in the same price range a day ago on eBay (another friend, although a more demanding one.)

Arguably I should not have put it on lay-by at all, since it might seem somewhat excessive to buy two expensive black handbags in a single week. As usual, however, I'm able to justify this excess: I'd just had to retire two equally pricey bags purchased several years earlier that were now showing the signs of daily use and lack of leather treatment cream. Rather than wear them to death, I prefer to retire accessories I love so they don't get destroyed and can still be brought out for special occasions. The retirement necessitated a new round of recruits - and fortunately MimCo was happy to oblige.

I love the zip top styles they make - not the button range though, I won't even get started on that one except for that one snide comment - because they're big and tough and have lovely leather and lovely lining. Previously I'd only seen this style in the rose gold finish, which doesn't really do it for me. So I walked past this at David Jones and had a minor moment of ecstacy, then panic when I realised I had no money due to the other bag-shaped purchase of a few days earlier.

The solution? Lay-by! It makes expensive investment pieces affordable even if you're as awful with your money as I am. It also helps shopping crushes turn into shopping love - I swear when you have to wait you appreciate it a whole lot more.

It's gone out of fashion lately - I suspect because the major department stores now have their own credit cards so they want you to rack up interest repayments and fees instead of slowly putting in the money in your unprofitable savings account. Both David Jones and Myer both charge fairly exorbitant fees for lay-by - I think about $10 - which seems like a poor justification for "service fee" when none of the floor staff know how to put a payment through, and it takes them about 20 minutes to retrieve your parcel.

Anyway, I've decided it will experience a rebirth in my life as one way towards fiscally-responsible fashion.

op shop experiment number one

This dress is a panoramic-camera-required kind of long. I could probably make another one out of the fabric when I take the hem up to the hussy-like length I generally prefer.

Mmm.... Polyester

Well. That wasn't quite as bad as I thought.

My first op-shopping expedition was small in scale - I just visited the two local shops while I was waiting to get my hair cut. I think it's more manageable in small doses as the idea of schlepping all over the city is probably a big factor in why I find it so distasteful.

I went to two op shops and came out with two purchases which doesn't seem like terrible odds until you remember how many clothes you had to flick through to find those two purchases. And those two purchases are hardly 10/10 perfect buys.

The positives: The best aspect is obviously price. The shirt cost $4 and the dress cost $8 which is less than I'd spend going out for coffee with a friend. I've also been looking for a pink blouse for awhile, which probably made me happy to settle for anything that was the right colour and not tent-like in nature. I'm quite enamoured with the pattern of the dress, and the ties around the waist mean although it's several sizes too large it will actually fit me.

The bad points: I have to say sizing - things fit only in the extremely general "my body goes into it and it doesn't fall off or bust out" sense. Both the shirt and the dress are slightly too big in the shoulders which makes me feel like I'm verging towards Bag Lady territory. There's a bit of sewing required, most obviously on the dress which will certainly not stay a maxi for long, which is bad news as I am lazy. But to sneak a positive into the negative paragraph, it's better to have something too long than to buy a dress of eBay that's been cropped already before sale and realise half your bum is hanging out the bottom and the hem is already fraying because it's been done so badly. (This has happened more than once. I get a bit worked up.)

To conclude, that wasn't so awful I'll never do it again, but it doesn't have the same thrilling appeal of shopping in store and getting things that are on trend and fit well, or the satisfaction of setting out to get something and finding it. (It's modern day hunting, for girls.)

I'm going to try to do a longer binge next time to see if more stops equals more loot.

learning to like op shopping

I know op shopping is ridiculously trendy, but I'm not a convert.

I don't have anything against wearing second-hand clothes and I'm certainly not opposed to the prices, but there's an awful lot of legwork involved in being a dedicated op shopper - finding, driving, foraging through racks and racks of mothball-scented clothes. Rinse and repeat, and hope that eventually something decent turns up.

I've also noticed an alarming trend of girls in Melbourne getting a little too into op shop style and ending up looking like this:


Dressing head to toe in op shop clothes will generally create a messy look. Also, because it's become so popular, people tend to be less discriminating when buying their clothes and assume that anything will do just because it's the "op shop look". Yuck.

Aside from the effort involved - and the risk of getting carried away to the point that you look like a bag lady or an extra from Oliver Twist - I'm just not that keen on op shop clothes. They're picked over so often and so meticulously that it's more likely you're going to unearth prized items from the Millers Fashion Club summer collection than a vintage Chanel treasure.

I like my clothes to fit well, which poses another problem, and I like delicate fabrics which don't generally wear well enough to live through more than one owner. I'd be happier hitting up vintage shops than op shops, because there's a bit more choice and more of what I like.

However, in this economy... well, more in my self-induced financial woes... it's probably time to give op shopping a second chance.

sales are not your friend

I'm very happy that the sale season is drawing to an end, and not solely because I work in retail. Yes, I'm aware that I've embarked on a savings project and should be embracing everything involving discounting and cost-cutting. But I hate sale time. Hate it.

Maybe it's a psychological thing, or an element of my suspicious nature, but I automatically assume if something has been discounted there's something wrong with it. Even if it's not a physical fault - tears, make up stains - there's a reason it's suddenly dropped in value by 20-50%.

It's on its way out. At the end of the season, the collections are being cleared to make way for the new, up-to-the minute styles, which are obviously better. The only reason it's been discounted is because nobody wanted it, so why should I?

Of course there are exceptions, (shoe-shaped ones), but the most heavily discounted items tend to be those which embodied key, designer-knock-off'd trends and certainly don't have a long and wearable life ahead of them.

Adding to my distaste is the fact that a lot of clearance sales aren't genuine. You won't often walk into the shop one day and see an item at full price reduced by 50% the next. More likely, it's been taken off the shelves or shunted off into a specially-marked "Non Sale Items" section for the duration of the clearance. In its place you'll find hangers and hangers of crap from the season before last, which the retailer still hasn't been able to move. I've worked in fashion retail and was horrified to see the cartons and cartons of old stock coming in the day before a sale starts.
Occasionally, you'll find a rare gem in this lot, but more often than not it's just piles and piles of no-longer-trendy crap that's been dug out of the warehouse and pretending to belong to the current collection. Yuck.

If, in an astonishing feat of good fortune, you do manage to stumble across a genuine clearance, you should still prepare to be disappointed. Fingering through the racks, you see that dress you always wanted but told yourself you could never afford. You find the price tag and gasp at the savings, feeling your heart get all a-flutter in excitement and anticipation.

Then you look at the sizes. They have 14s. Or 4s. What seems to be a buffet of exciting and colourful choices is really just the leftovers, and if you fall somewhere in the middle of the sizing scale, you're probably going to miss out. This is a particularly common problem towards the end of sale time, when the racks have been picked over and over by every enterprising young lass in the land.

If, by some miracle, you can actually find something that fits and isn't made from velour, you've entered a danger zone. Sales can induce a kind of hysteria that makes you spend a lot more than you normally would (again, the shoes). Things can be so cheap you can't justify not buying them, even though you don't really need them, and will regret it later when you get your credit card bill and want to cry.

Shopping during sale time is just not a pleasant experience. It means waiting patiently for the person next to you to move along the rack, tapping your foot somewhat impatiently while lining up for a changeroom behind a person with 25 different garments draped across every appendage, and fuming silently while waiting to pay behind someone (probably the same one from the changerooms) who wants to pay on seven different credit cards and start a lay-by.

Sale time means the shops will be disgusting with clothes strewn carelessly about and the most unhelpful and harried sales assistants you'll ever meet. (Not that you can blame them, when they've had to deal with customers like the one in front all day, every day.)

Sadly, sale time seems to last forever. Why the fuck do people brave the crowds on Boxing Day, when there are about four weeks of further reductions and newly shipped-in stock? You get sick of seeing the tables and tables of cheap junk cluttering the entrance of Myer or David Jones and you start to resent how much shop space last season's lines are taking up in your favourite boutiques.

It's a relief when the signs come down, the mess is cleaned up, and the uppity sales assistants return to their normal state of barely-disguised disdain when you ask for help.

Really, I'd just rather pay full price.
Which is maybe why I'm broke.

oh the seductive appeal of the new

In order to make the most of what you've got, it's pretty damn important to make a thorough assessment of your existing assets. What have I found so far? I have too many clothes. Too many clothes I never wear.

My wardrobe is extremely cramped, so that it's fairly impossible to extricate one clothes hanger without dragging out two or three others, or knocking assorted garments off onto the floor where they may never be seen again (they're buried under all my shoes, remember.)

I read the other day that most people wear 80% of their wardrobe 20% of the time. This was actually being used as a line to convince gullible consumers like myself to invest in the bare essentials. But clever marketing aside, there's definitely some truth to the fact that everyone has a lot of shit they just never wear.

Maybe it doesn't fit right. A bit too short. Too low cut. Too uncomfortable. Too last season. My main reason for constantly acquiring things I wear once is the desperate need to just wear something new: there'll be a night out coming up, and I so strongly detest the sight of everything I own that I have to rush out and buy something new. Something. Anything. As long as it's something I've never worn before.

... And will never wear again. There are five or six dresses which fall into this category, which is a fairly epic waste of money. There's a concept among the fashion-savvy about value per wear. Example: a $200 dress you wear 20 times costs $10 per wear, and is thus a sensible purchase. A $200/$100/$50 dress that you only wear once... well, you see the point.

It's probably the product of a very clever marketing campaign that something we don't yet have in our overly-stocked wardrobes always looks a lot better than what's already in there. Or a basic psychological need to nest and acquire things and show our status - I'll leave that one up to you to decide.

You might disagree with me and think it's perfectly acceptable to wear the same thing over and over again. Good on you - you've already achieved what I'm trying to do and are getting the most out of the stuff you already have. (You uppity bitch.) But here's a scenario for your consideration: if you had one good formal dress, would you wear it to a string of weddings in the same circle of friends? Most women I know would balk at the thought. For a friend to remark "Oh you've worn your green Lisa Ho cocktail dress again" would likely cause embarrassment.

But far from being universal, I can think of at least one culture where this would be considered a compliment. French fashionistas - known throughout the world for their elegance and style - are known to value quality investment pieces that can be worn again and again over cheaper, less classic designs. According to A Guide to Elegance - a handbook on developing that saucy French style - if a Frenchwoman's friend remarks on her familiar, oft-worn garb it's taken as a compliment and recognition of her enduring sense of style.

It's a lesson I, at least, could stand to learn, as I flick through a pile of expensive and regrettable purchases that I'm loathe to give up but never really wear. Not one of these, I can't help but notice, is a piece I ever fell in love with, but a fickle, adrenaline-fueled crush I just had to have at the time, then quickly lost interest in. What a floozy I am.

Hopefully seeing these mistakes spread out in front of me - and mentally calculating the cost of these whims - will be enough to make me change my ways and embrace a shopping mentality which is a little more Parisian.

oops

Oh shit.

I bought eight pairs of shoes today.

But wait - I am going to try to justify this obviously ridiculous move.

Reasons why it's okay to buy eight pairs of shoes in one day:

- They were on sale.

Usually that's a fairly lame defense but Wittner had an 80% off sale today. My eight pairs of shoes came to a total of $1,219.60. I paid $243.80, meaning I saved $975.80 off retail price. I also didn't break rule number two - although this is exactly the kind of mad sale-spending I thought it would inspire.

- They're all classic, practical styles.

The style gurus at Who What Wear.com are continually stressing the importance of investment vs. seasonal pieces. Most of my shoes were black, of good quality and relatively classic design. (The chunky buckled heels - which will probably cause me to break my ankle the first time I get drunk while wearing them - are actually a seasonal piece. But hey, 7/8 isn't bad.)
Most of the shoes are suitable for the workplace, and will be needed for that miraculous day that I actually get a job. They were all practical purchases (again, I'm ignoring the buckles.) So there.

- I nearly bought at least two of them at full price.

There's fashion-lust and there's fashion-love. Lust is all in the heat of the moment. You see something in a shop and involuntarily reach for your credit card (or try to rattle off the numbers from memory, in my case.) Love, on the other hand, grows over time. You see it, you want it, but you don't take the plunge. It's fashion foreplay and the same kind of situation that happens when you lay-by: you want it all the more for having to wait for it, or thinking that it might have slipped away.
And they say romance is dead.

On the other, more logical side of the argument:

- It is ridiculous to buy eight pairs of shoes in one day.

Moderation is hardly my middle name, but it's profoundly excessive.

- I broke one of my rules.

I didn't spend a third of my pay this week. I spent everything I had left until Tuesday and then chipped into my savings.

Yuck. I am not good at this.

Anyway, I'll write that off as the last hurrah. At least I'll be elegantly shod when I'm trampling about as an op-shop bag-lady.