Fashion for life: A sign of the timeless

by Mimi Spencer

Here we are, our toes just dipped in 2010, and it’s already clear that our relationship with fashion has changed hugely. Where once it was all spend, spend, spend; where once we basked in the great throwaway bonanza of budget fashion, now we seem to have come to our senses.

There are many reasons for this. Crammed cupboards. A sense of shop-weary ennui. The recognition that a new handbag will not make us a better/more fascinating person. An awareness that cheap clothes come from cheap factories. A recession which cut into our fun money.

All of this adds up to a newly calibrated relationship with shopping: it’s still a love affair, but it’s not as lusty and abandoned as before. Like a contented married couple, we’re no longer doing it everywhere, every day, every which way. We’re more circumspect.

Like smoking, driving SUVs and drinking bottled water, there has been a weaning off our shopping addiction. Shopping to excess now looks old hat, embarrassing even – and the brownie points are going to women who have found ways not to shop. Customising, swishing, swapping, knitting, sewing. Wearing vintage, or design classics, or cherished investment pieces that have developed a patina of age and interest.

My friend Constance wears only the Greats. She buys original YSL jackets, and Alaïa in his first phase, Jil Sander pre-Uniqlo, 80s Yohji. She looks timeless, like a Picasso.

Shopping to excess is old hat. Instead, wear classics or cherished investment pieces

Even government watchdogs are getting in on shop shame. The Waste & Resources Action Programme claims that overcoming our obsession with owning goods could be a ‘secret weapon’ in meeting climate change targets. It has called for a fifth of household spending – £148 billion out of an annual total of £732 billion – to be converted to renting by 2020. And high-end clothing is one of its main targets.

But will we buy into it? Would you rent a party frock? Well, you recycle your papers now, don’t you? And you order tap in restaurants. A recent YouGov survey reveals that 77 per cent of women are willing to make lifestyle changes now in the knowledge that climate change will affect their children. If that means one great handbag, one fabulous dress, one less pointless splurge, I’m in.

Fashion for Life

---
No one can never go wrong with the classics when it comes to fashion.