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Savings Tips
Female wardrobe wastage – averages $8000
August 18, 2008
Lynelle Johnson, FatCat.com.au
 Do you have a bursting closet but ‘nothing to wear’? That is usually the trigger for a little shopping spree but FatCat has a shocking fact for you; the average wardrobe holds around $8,000 worth of unused or underused clothes. How do you stop this wardrobe wastage?
Eight thousand wasted dollars is no laughing matter, especially if it was racked up as credit card debt. However that’s the calculation of image consultant Janette Saab managing director of Image Consultants who says we repeat this wastage every 6- 8 years! Here are her calculations:
Nobody in their right mind would knowingly be this financially imprudent (and notice she only allowed $100 per item of clothing so hands up the people with more designer tastes?). Having said that I still have nothing to wear and shopping is fun, so what to do?
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Average cost per article of clothing |
$100 |
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Nearly all women own 100 significant items of clothing |
$10,000 |
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But they only wear 20% of their clothes 80% of the time |
$2,000 |
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This is repeated every 6-8years.(minimum) |
$8000 Wasted |
The image consultant’s view
Amongst Janette's services is a ‘wardrobe workout’. Janette comes to your home and literally does a Trinny and Susannah by rifling through your closet. She says for some reason most unused clothes are on the left hand side of the wardrobe (could it be most people are right handed? If so, lefties – look right!).
The first items of wastage are those which no longer fit or have the wrong shape for the current fashion. Janette says these items are often expensive and most of us can’t bear to throw them out. If they are in good condition, with quality fabric and suit your colouring - and can be altered or reshaped by a tailor - that’s what Janette suggests.
The next culprits are the bought on sale items. They were cheap and seemed like a good idea at the time. Get rid of them and resolve never to buy on impulse again. It’s not that Janette doesn’t enjoy a bargain but she assures us that when your wardrobe is in peak fitness – you should have incredible difficulty buying clothes. In fact you shoul aspire to have incredible difficulty finding clothes which meet your lifestyle needs, have perfect fit and quality and which are not already represented in your wardrobe.
Part of Janette’s wardrobe workout is to do a needs analysis. What do you actually spend your time doing? That’s because she advocates to spend in proportion to usage. So if you spend five days a week in a corporate environment, two at weekend activities and go out three times a month to parties or dinners, then you should spend your per annum clothes budget around those percentages.
The scenario above works out to around 65 - 70% on corporate gear, 15% on weekend wear and 5% on going out clothes. This is because the golden rule is all about ‘cost per wear’. That does not mean you go out and buy cheap evening wear – just buy less in more classic styles and ‘work it’ with different accessories over a longer period of time.
The other trick is to get more out of the clothes you have by working out how to wear a winter item in summer or a summer item in winter. Janette offers a ‘look book’ of your clothes so you can recreate the looks later. This entire wardrobe workout costs $150 per hour plus GST with a minimum of 2 hours.
Janette also offers colour and style consultations. The colour consultation will cost between $180 and $280 and take around two hours. The purpose is to find which colours suit your complexion best (and also go well together). This should also eliminate clothes in colours which go with nothing else, again resulting in wardrobe wastage.
If you have had a colour consultation more than 10 years ago (as I have) then you should consider going again as skin and hair changes as you age. Janette suggests four colour consultations in a lifetime around post puberty, motherhood, menopause and old age. The style consultation costs around the same and concentrates on shapes and proportions which suit you best. Armed with this information Janette does offer a personal shopping service which costs $180 per hour plus GST.
The fashionista/personal shopper
Fiona Milne (known in the media as Fifi) has the opposite approach to Janette. She thinks that to aspire to not to shop would be tragic! Fifi, who has been the Fashion Director at Elle and has styled Cate Blanchet, Natalie Portman and Elle Macpherson, now is a personal shopper operating through the Westfield Shopping Centres.
Fifi is comfortable with a ‘cost per wear’ approach but not colour consultations or style guides because “I don’t believe in any of it. Fashion should be fun and make you feel fabulous”.
Fifi’s big tip to avoid wastage if you are going the fashionista route is to buy at the beginning of a trend, not the end. According to Fifi, major trends last around three years – from catwalk to completely over. So if you buy well you should get good wear.
Trends to buy now are shoulder pads (but rounded shoulder pads not the 80’s glamazon ones) structured even sculptural suits and stilettos with pointed toes or kitten heels, as opposed to the chunky wedges and platforms which have been de rigour for the past three seasons. Sleeveless jackets are going to be big for spring 08, apparently.
She also says only movies stars can afford myriad outfits with lots of colours and the rest of us should stick to a palette of three colours. Black, grey, chocolate cream and touches of red are the usual suspects.
Buy the best ‘classics’ you can afford she says. Usually this list includes a trench coat, a jacket, a little black dress, a pencil skirt, a great bag, great shoes... it often includes a white shirt and a pair or two of jeans but Fifi thinks the latter two should be used and trashed in the wash and wear department and don’t qualify for star treatment. “I’m forever in Kmart and Target,” she says.
If you want to go shopping with Fifi it will cost you $150 for the first hour and $125 per hour thereafter. She will meet you discuss your needs and pre shop – then go with you while you try things on and then to keep costs down leave you to consider your purchases on your own.
Are these professional style consultants the answer to wardrobe wastage? At a cost of a good suit ($300 -$500) you could definitely justify the spend if your wardrobe worked and you avoided impulse purchases for the rest of the year. But then again Fifi sounded so much fun, I feared she may unleash the fashionista within and I might want to go shopping with her again, and again.
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Savings tips: Female wardrobe wastage – averages $8000
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