The Case for Buying Less Clothing
The Case for Buying Less Clothing
IF ANY MAN reading this wants a down jacket, email me: I have four. I discovered this when I found a forgotten L.L. Bean puffer smushed in the nether regions of my closet. Why, you might ask, did I buy a jacket I didn’t need? The eternal reason: because it was on sale. Last February, I’d wandered into an L.L. Bean in suburban Maryland to kill some time before dinner with zero intention to buy anything. Then I stumbled on a deal that felt too good to pass up and, just like that, I was down $75 and pointlessly up a down coat.
Thanks to other similarly discounted missteps, along with my enthusiasm for buying secondhand, my closet is impossibly bloated with stuff. More white shirts than I could wear in a week. More suits than I need for the handful of formal events I attend each year. So, please, help me out: Take this puffer off my hands so I can relieve my closet of at least one coat.
Your closet, however, is likely as overstuffed as mine. “There seems to be more clothing for men than before,” said Ayako Homma, a senior consultant at market research provider Euromonitor International. According to Euromonitor, the global men’s fashion market has grown 38% between 2008 and 2017, ballooning to a $419.4 billion dollar industry, up from $303.5 billion in 2008. We’re collectively buying more, yet are continually confronted with the dilemma of what to wear, because these teeming closets often lack organization. The solution: Winnow down our existing wardrobes and then buy less, and with more clarity.
BIG BAG THEORY The first step toward a more intentional wardrobe is trashing inessentials.
Photo:
David Chow for The Wall Street Journal
Though challenging, the winnowing part of this strategy is hardly a radical move these days. As clothing consumption has ramped up, so has an equal and opposite movement toward austerity, or at least moderation. John Peabody, a 37-year-old Brooklyn creative strategist, used to leaf through his hangers and marvel at how much he spent on clothes he didn’t wear. He eventually came to his senses and pared his closet down to a mostly-blue uniform. As Mr. Peabody found, life with less clothing and greater strategy can be liberating.
This widespread urge to edit can be traced in part to Japanese author Marie Kondo's best-seller, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” which popularized a less-is-more mentality when it arrived in the U.S. in 2014. “We have collectively realized that more does not equal better,” Ms. Kondo, whose new Netflix show, “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo,” debuts this week, wrote over email. With the internet shopping boom and discount stores that sell cheap goods, Ms. Kondo believes many people have just “finally grown weary of it all.” Her fellow evangelists, internet broadcasters Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known as the Minimalists, have since 2010 preached a shed-it-all message to millions through YouTube videos and podcasts. Tap #MinimalWardrobe into Instagram and you’ll find over 10,000 posts, many showing a single steel rack with a week’s work of clothes, an aesthetically pleasing if strict way to plan one’s wardrobe.
“An over-full closet makes me feel mentally cluttered whereas being pared-down gives me clarity,” said Chris Dolan, 42, the director of data platforms at a software company in Newton, Mass. Chris Dam, 33, an account executive at an education startup in Cincinnati, took an extreme approach last year by purging half his clothing. He did so by eliminating the things that “didn’t match cohesively with my wardrobe as a whole.” Gone, for example, were the cream jeans which he bought on sale, intending to wear them rakishly with a navy blazer in the summer, yet ultimately never wore.
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‘An over-full closet can make me feel mentally cluttered.’
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“The closet should reflect the person’s current lifestyle,” recommended Barbara Reich, owner of Resourceful Consultants, a life- and home-organizing service in New York. Eliminate what she calls “aspirational clutter” in both office-wear (don’t hoard 16 suits if you work at a casual office) and hobby attire (if your cycling days are behind you, give up the spandex).
Nostalgic items can be hardest to shed. Edwin Zee, 32, a marketing analytics manager for Zendesk in Berkeley, Calif., was hoarding clothes he’d inherited from his father but never wore and concert T-shirts for bands he didn’t listen to anymore. With a cramped two-bedroom apartment and a newborn due, he finally summoned the will to purge these items, but others lack motivation. Linda Rothschild, who runs a moving-management and organizing business in New York, recommends a rip-off-the-Band-Aid approach for cherished clutter: “Take a picture of it if you need to remember it for some reason, but if you don’t have the room for it, don’t waste the space.”
Illustration:
James Gulliver Hancock
When we say “throw it out” we don’t mean it literally. According to the EPA, 10.5 million tons of textiles wound up in landfills in 2015, so it’s best to donate or recycle instead of adding to that mound. Ms. Rothschild noted that mass-market retailer
H&M
will take any clothing item and recycle it, and
Nike
will recycle its old sneakers. Madewell takes old jeans back in exchange for a discount on new ones. Designer resale sites like the Real Real and Grailed, which launched in 2011 and 2014 respectively, have made it easier to get a return on the high-ticket items that you splurged on. In the past couple of years I’ve used Grailed to sell Junya Watanabe jeans that were too big and decades-old Jil Sander suits given to me by a friend.
However, buying less in the first place is even more sustainable. Once you’ve ruthlessly culled your closet, don’t race to fill it again—easier said than done in a world in which round-the-clock shopping has become near-inescapable. The click-and-ship ease of e-commerce has contributed to our clothing overload. Without ever getting into your car or dealing with a salesperson, you can have shirts, sneakers and even bespoke suits spirited to your doorstep. Meanwhile, cookies and algorithms weaponize your online queries and badger you into buying. “I do a search for [pants] and now I’m seeing them everywhere,” said the platforms director Mr. Dolan. The clothes we Google or the ads we click on Facebook can trail us around the internet until finally we snap and click “Buy now!”
To buy less impulsively, closet organizer Ms. Reich suggests grouping items in your existing wardrobe by category and color, so you easily spot a hole or imbalance—say, you own two gray trousers but 11 navy. She also advises a “one-in-one-out” mentality: Buy a new black sweater to replace an old one.
Keep a shopping list on hand, as Mr. Zee does, to ensure you buy only clothing you need during sale season. Thanks to this approach he is satisfied with his pared-down closet, though yields to the occasional splurge. “It’s [like] when you’re dieting,” he said. Just as you feel entitled to indulge in a few bites of cake after you’ve reached your goal weight, buy those reissued Nikes you’ve been eyeing once your closet is sufficiently airy again.
To keep those splurges from spiraling out of control, Mr. Peabody ponders clothing in the context of his larger goals. “I think of things [in terms of] surfboards or plane tickets,” he said. “Like, I could take a trip to Italy for a week or I could have this jacket.” Good advice for the next time I’m staring down that sales sign in L.L. Bean.
THE UNTOUCHABLES / THREE MEN ON THE THREE KEEPSAKES THEY WOULD NEVER PURGE FROM THEIR CLOSETS
Illustration:
James Gulliver Hancock
Ransom Riggs
Author, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” series
Berluti Suede Field Jacket (pictured) When I heard that [designer Haider Ackermann] was leaving [Berluti] I decided to go for this blue suede field jacket that I’d been thinking about for a while. It’s beautiful and sort of rugged. I wore that thing every day for three weeks straight in about 25 cities, and it’s still somehow in great shape.
Saint Laurent Jodphur Boots These boots are a saddle-leather tan and liven up any outfit. They also have a lot of give. They have completely molded to the shape of my feet and become the most comfortable shoes I own.
By Robert James Suit Robert James has a little shop on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and he custom-made me the suit I got married in. It’s a dark wool jacket with matching pants and a darkish Japanese denim vest. There’s nothing like clothes that have been tailored for you.
Illustration:
James Gulliver Hancock
Aurel Bacs
Senior Consultant, Phillips Watches in association with Bacs & Russo
Loro Piana Red Tie (pictured) I wore this tie in November when buying, on behalf of a client, the world’s most expensive watch [sold] at auction—$24 million for a Patek Philippe. We didn’t publicly make a statement, so for about a week, I was the mysterious “man in the red tie” on watch blogs. I wear it now when I need good luck.
Et Al Design Sneakers My daughter, when she was maybe 10, said “Daddy, I never see you in sneakers,” so she went on her own without checking with anyone and bought me a pair of sneakers. It was an amazing surprise to receive shoes from a 10-year-old.
Cesare Attolini Suit In 2001, I bought a pinstripe suit from Attolini in Naples. It cost back then nearly the equivalent of a month’s salary. Not only in terms of the quality—it has survived 18 years—but in terms of style, it looks exactly as timeless as it did 18 years ago.
Illustration:
James Gulliver Hancock
Kevin Kwan
Author, “Crazy Rich Asians”
Edward Green Banbury Chukka Boots (pictured) When I bought these boots three years ago I thought they were insanely expensive, but I wear them probably five days a week. They’re so well-made, and the golden suede color—I swear the older it gets, the nicer it gets. I’ve never had to have them resoled. They were an amazing investment.
Crombie Herringbone Blazer I bought this blazer from Crombie, one of the oldest [brands] on Savile Row, 20 years ago. I can wear it with jeans and it looks like I’m going for a ride in the country in my vintage Jag, or I can put it on with corduroys to dress things up. It’s never going to go away.
Sergio Nesci Cashmere Sweater Sergio Nesci has this beautiful boutique on Via Margutta [in Rome], and he does the most amazing things with cashmere. This basic black long-sleeve polo-neck sweater is made of pure cashmere and feels like butter on your skin. I could just live in it.
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