Last fall, Sally Bjornsen founded the Great American Apparel Diet, in which she and dozens of women from around the world decided to not buy clothing for an entire year. Now that she’s entering the home stretch of the fashion fast, Bjornsen has learned enough from the experiment to establish eight essential shopping rules—steps, considerations, and minimum requirements that’ll help ward off wasteful spending.
Here are the rules from Bjornsen, who in an earlier post answered a bunch of other questions about the Apparel Diet with fellow dieters:
1. Don’t ever buy something because it’s on sale. Don’t buy it if you wouldn’t pay full price for it.
2. Don’t buy anything you don’t try on first.
3. Don’t buy anything that doesn’t fit you at that moment.
4. Don’t buy anything on impulse–it’s usually all wrong.
5. Don’t buy it unless you have two things in your closet that will pair nicely with it.
6. Don’t buy it if you aren’t comfortable in it right now.
7. Don’t buy it because it’s “in,” instead buy it because it’s magical!
8. Buy local if you can.