Once you’ve worked out where you go wrong, your life will be transformed. Avoid any of the following:
1. FADS:
Don’t enlist in the military look, the milkmaid look, heroin chic, the sequin bonanza or any of the rest. Buy only what suits you. If you have to succumb, only buy an accessory or two and be prepared to throw them out next season.
2. OCCASION SHOPPING:
People go haywire when they shop for clothes to wear to a big event. The danger is that you think more about the occasion than about what suits you. Far better to know what’s already in your wardrobe that makes you look like a star.
3. SLUMP SHOPPING:
You’re out-of-sorts, you think that buying something will make you feel better, you find yourself in the hair salon…You end up with a pair of shoes you can’t walk in, hair that makes you feel like a prize merino and six bottles of styling gunk to maintain it.
4. IMPULSE SHOPPING:
You’ve just had an unexpected windfall or a tax refund, or you’ve got some free time up your sleeve. Result: disaster. You end up with six bags full of things you’ll never use.
5. HOLIDAY SHOPPING:
Holidays can be a fantastic way to get the beautiful and unusal, but it’s easy to go wrong-footed in a city that isn’t your own. There’s always the risk that you’ll come back from Las Vegas looking like a rhinestone cowboy, from london like a fringed relic from old Carnaby Street, or from Italy encased in leather. At home, you’ll look out of place at best, ridiculous at worst. Don’t get carried away by a short-lived enthusiasm. Absorb the ideas, but ever buy more than one piece in the same look.
6. BEING GREEDY:
Don’t buy more than you need.
7. BARGAIN FEVER:
No matter how cheap, if you don’t like it and won’t use it, it’s no bargain. Even when you buy things in sale, you are still spending money.
8. GUERILLA SHOPPING:
Giving yourself an hour to fill a wardrobe or furnish a house is asking for trouble.
9. SHOPPING WITH SOMEONE ELSE:
It pollutes your taste and you can’t concentrate. Don’t even think about shopping with children. Hunt alone.
10. AGENDA SHOPPING:
Having a list of things to get closes your eyes to other great buys.
11. BUYING DOUBLE:
Buying one for now and one for later: good in theory, bad in practice. It’s false economy. Fashions change.
12. BUYING TOO FEW SAMPLES
This is the exception to the above rule. You can never have too many drinking glasses, knives and forks, knickers, white t-shirts and other basics you use all the time. You need to own at least three sheet sets and two towels for every person in the house. Recognise that some things come in the wrong quantities: six dinner plates are not enough, even for a bachelor pad. Get twelve. Ditto wine goblets, water tumblers, kitchen knives and teaspoons.
13. MINDLESS GIFT-SHOPPING IN ADVANCE
Have a present drawer, but buy gifts with a specific recipient in mind. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself at five o’clock on Christmas Eve with masses of gifts for girls and nothing for boys in your life (or visa versa). You’ll be wrapping pet rocks from the garden as an emergency gifts, hating everybody and looking like the Christmas witch as you hand them out to unimpressed recipients.
14. BUYING ON PRICE ALONE
Don’t buy things only because they’re really cheap or really expensive. A good shopper shops everywhere, in every price bracket.
15. CAPPING YOUR PURCHASES
Prepare to splash out on a few hero pieces that will take an outfit or a room from whatever to wow.
