In the new book, The Wardrobe Project (Wiley $34.95), financial behaviour specialist Emma Edwards, founder of The Broke Generation, shares her radical experiment: a whole year without buying a single item of clothing. No new outfits, no second-hand finds, not even rentals. What began as a no-buy challenge soon became a powerful lesson in self-worth, resilience, and the surprising freedom of living with less. In this exclusive extract, Emma shares three buying patterns we get trapped into thinking we need.
The impact of our consumption habits creates an environment where we’re cornered from every angle.
We have a collection of clothes that don’t work together, don’t make us feel good and don’t allow us to
express ourselves the way we want to, which leaves us looking externally for what we’re not getting.
The problem is, when we look externally, we buy more and more of the same.
Unravelling that idea of what can happen when we’re in a ‘yes’ state, a state of openness to consumption even
though our intentions might suggest otherwise, got me curious about some of the unhelpful buying cycles I’d been stuck in.
I really leaned into understanding how I ended up with the wardrobe I currently had, and what I could learn
from the mistakes I made over and over again.
I realised that if I could establish the mistakes I was making and the ways I was buying the wrong things,
I’d stop feeling compelled to buy more and more over time.
Here are some of the patterns I uncovered in my wardrobe, and that I’ve seen in others’ too.
Buying something in every colour
Once I liked something in one colour (often black), I’d giddily run out and buy it in another colour, thinking
I was making some kind of ultra-smart decision and capitalising on what I loved.
I’m going to give you a piece of advice now that I hope you’ll remember for many years.
If you ever utter the words ‘I’m going to go and get this in another colour’ – run. It’s a trap.
You probably won’t like the other colour, and it’ll just sit in your wardrobe and collect dust.
Assuming things work together without checking
Isn’t the whole point of neutrals that they’re, well, neutral?
They go with everything?
Yeah, no.
I learned the hard way that just because you have a wardrobe full of neutrals does not mean you have
a wardrobe full of outfits.
Who knew that not all blacks are the same.
Not all whites are the same.
And don’t even get me started on creams, stones and beiges.
Keeping something that wasn’t perfect
Why I ever did this is so beyond me.
There are certain items in my wardrobe that haven’t ever been right for me.
How do I know that?
Because I bought them that way.
I’ve made this mistake time and time again – either I’ll try something on or order it online, and it won’t
be quite how I hope or expect it to be, but I’ll keep it anyway because I like the idea of it so much.
Or I try to convince myself I can somehow make it work, or it’ll look different when my hair and make-up are done.
Trying to get yourself to wear things you don’t love or aren’t quite right is always going to keep you wanting to buy more.
While we might get the dopamine hit at the time of buying, the loop doesn’t ever really close.
Emma Edwards
The Wardrobe Project