Can I get by on hardly any clothes?

[Toastedtoacrisp]

For years now I don't like what's on the market, not even much vintage or used. Most styles don't appeal to me and I don't even have a fixed view of what my 'style' even is.

During the pandemic I wore just a few things, shorts and a tee when hot, jeans or cords with a jumper when cold. I don't care for trends but my wardrobe is relatively current. I am slim, average height, so ought to be able to find stuff, but as much as I love clothes, I am also somewhat tired of them.

Is it possible, do you believe, to only own a small scattering of clothes and remain appropriate? I wfh, like to walk outdoors, and do creative stuff, so don't need to dress up much, or only on rare occasions. I am not trying to get minimal, this is just who I am, and would love to go forward not buying much apart from, say, circling 4 outfits through a year.
Anyone else like this?

I love accessories and that's fine, I am passionate about them and try to buy quality over quantity (not hard really, for me, lol) but it seems most people have a good amount of stuff, and I would love to just rely on a few trusted things and get by. Right now, for the coming summer, I have two pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans and one dress. I have a few tees and vests and that's it. I could afford to buy more but nothing interests me. Maybe I just don't like contemporary styles? I am neither in the skinny nor baggy jeans camp, but do prefer pared down outfits. I don't much like skirts or dresses either (too many flounces and tiers).

Does anyone else have a really small bunch of clothes, decent quality, but stupidly minimal? Or does anyone else dislike current styles so feels out of place?

Ah - that reminds me of a very recent thread where someone was planning to buy a single Dolce & Gabbana dress (c. £2.7k) for a busy season of Summer events - weddings, etc. She anticipated little overlap in people across these events - and in any case wasn’t bothered by being seen in the same thing countless times.

Now, I recall I was all for this strategy. It was an astonishingly lovely dress - and I liked imagining how, in decades to come, any partner, children, friends would be able to look back and say “That was the wonderful Summer when you wore that glorious pink dress …” No idea if she actually bought the dress.

I do myself grow to love treasured garments more, the longer I own them. And some things, like a brightly coloured fair isle jumper, so clearly improve with age that I buy them in anticipation of the slightly falling apart stage when I might wear them for gardening. Keeping and rewearing are part of the joy of getting dressed, certainly.

But it would be hard to live for long without the joy of falling into the future. My endless browsing of clothing websites demonstrates a belief - that I’ll have a life worth getting dressed for tomorrow, and the days after that.

But even if you have a job where you need to be 'very presentable' you still don't need lots of clothes.

Five dresses or tops and a couple of pairs of trousers/skirts and possibly a couple of jackets/jumpers or cardigans is enough.

I also wore the same dress to about 10 weddings. I just wasn't interested in having to go out and find something new each time and certainly don't care about anyone remembering if I'd worn it before.

Marcia "My endless browsing of clothing websites demonstrates a belief - that I’ll have a life worth getting dressed for tomorrow, and the days after that."

funny isn't it...I was so relieved to put my last ."goimg out out" outfit into storage at mum's.

I wouldn't want to fork out the cash again, but I would be happy to never wear it again. I now have a wardrobe of casual only.

I remember seeing a show when a lady moved from London to rural and after a year, realised she only went to the local pub and donated all her posh clothes.

I was so jealous and now I've got to that place too, yay!

I said “getting dressed for” not “getting dressed up for”. There’s a difference. I wasn’t necessarily talking about going out clothes. Some of my very favourite things were bought from farm shops when I lived a rural life!

I’m thinking about getting rid of most of my clothes, I have a wardrobe full of things I never wear.

I wear black jeans and tops for work and pjs at home. On the rare occasions we go out I usually go straight from work and other than a couple of occasion dresses I really never wear anything else.

I have a lovely vision of a half empty wardrobe with room to store other things.

The Dolce and Gabanna dress was beautiful. It went beyond fashion and was a dress that you could wear for years.

There's an assumption by some on this thread that if you have a lot of clothes they must be cheap, fast fashion and disposable after only a few wears. I have loads of dresses, many from Samantha Sung or Palava - they both have their own basic styles which will get tweaks each year to colours and patterns but little more. They absolutely do not get thrown out after one season.

I've got maybe around 20 coats- the oldest is from 1997.

I've got loads of basic ballet pumps from Pretty Ballerina - again they tweak minor details - not the whole style. They're expensive shoes made in Spain. The oldest pair is from around 2010.

Yes of course you can get by.
I guess I could get by without coffee or chocolate too if I had to.
I guess I could get by if I only had 4 books, but I choose not to and, oddly enough, nobody ever lectures me about them, even though they take up almost as much room as my clothes do and, in some cases, haven't lasted nearly as well.

My oldest coat is a 1996 Jil Sander …

(Older inherited or ‘acquired’ things linger in corners, though.)

I think when people get joy from clothing it's hard to imagine that others don't in the same way and that choosing your outfit/shopping for clothes isn't enjoyable for plenty of women people. It's a chore that has to be done every day, so in that light, I think OP is being quite sensible trying to find an easier way to deal with it.

I've thought about this a lot as I have too many clothes but default to just wearing a handful of outfits I feel comfortable in, and choosing/thinking of outfits doesn't bring me any pleasure. I really don't enjoy it!

I did of course mean either women or people, not 'women people'

You probably can, depends on your life style if your life is very invariable, it is possible. I had a small amount of clothes end of uni / after. I was wearing suit to work and had 2 shirts to go with it, jeans, few t shirts and a sweater for outside work, one party dress and one smart casual dress. Money was tight plus I was always been tricky to buy for because of my proportions. Washing and drying was my only worry, I was drying my work shirt with a hairdryer regularly for this reason. Obviously both work shirts were completely done in one year.
My DH was actually the same. When we’ve got together he had 2 pairs trousers, a few shirts and a few tshirts and it stayed like this for years. It was purely for financial reasons, our rent was very high.

But if say you just have five tops and a few jumpers - surely they will wear our/need replacing quicker than if you’d a few more. The person with five tops probably spends as much in the same time frame as the person with ten tops iykwim.

For me, it’s about having enough clothes for the life I lead. Clothes for work, for hanging around the house and gardening, for meeting friends for lunch/dinner/whatever, for exercising, for ‘special’ occasions. Some are interchangeable but it’s about ensuring that when I open my wardrobe, I can put an outfit together quickly for whatever it is I am doing that day. I don’t need lots and lots but I do need ‘enough’ for each segment.

When I go out, I don’t want to be wearing the same outfit that I’d wear to hang around the house on a Sunday afternoon. Or wearing work clothes out to lunch on a Saturday. Or wearing the clothes I exercise in to meet a friend.

I think when people get joy from clothing it's hard to imagine that others don't in the same way and that choosing your outfit/shopping for clothes isn't enjoyable for plenty of women people.
Don't worry, we get it. And even if we didn't, people are forever dropping into Style and Beauty just to remind us. Apologies for my tetchiness but it really does get tiresome.

Did the op ever come back?

It's completely up to you how many clothes you have (obviously!)

I wouldn't be happy with as few clothes as you describe though, partly due to keeping up with the laundry/ keeping them clean, it would drive me nuts not to have more spares to wear whilst things were being washed.

Lots of people do have an excess of clothes though, to the point where it's quite wasteful. There must be a happy medium.

Sorry, I totally misread that. Apologies.

Easily done, @EmmaEmerald ! (I’m often guilty of not expressing myself clearly here, so make myself incomprehensible.)

I worked in Australia for a year in a professional job when I was 27 and I had a black skirt and navy trousers and 5 tops. I washed them on the weekend and wore again the following week. I also had a few things for the weekend and for travelling etc, but it can be done.

with a smaller wardrobe things do wear out faster, but so what - you just replace them when they start showing un-mendable signs of wear. I'm by no means minimalist now, but I do only have a few pairs of trousers because I hate buying them and can get by and look nice with about 4 decent pairs (other items are a totally different story!)

I think your life sounds idyllic!

What's "wasteful" about it? I don't understand this.

You don't understand why buying more clothes than you need is wasteful?

Honestly I could list the reasons but just google it and educate yourself.

What is wasteful about having coats , shoes and dresses which last for years and which aren't worn out by constant wear?

At Christmas I gave my son's girlfriend a black velvet coat I'd owned since the mid 90s , a Paddy Campbell jacket which I'd owned since 1990 and several Paddy Campbell classic "little black dresses" from early 2000s I gave them away because they no longer fit.

I take it you own absolutely no more clothes than you need for the essentials to keep you warm and protect modesty.

Do you buy books? If you do- what is the acceptable number and type of books one should own?

Do you have cushions or rugs or throws or vases or ornaments in your house? Nobody needs any of them.

Jeez. Chill out. All I said was "Lots of people do have an excess of clothes though, to the point where it's quite wasteful."

If you have more clothes than you need then it's wasteful. It's not a personal attack on your lifestyle, it's just a fact. Google it and do with it what you will. FFS.

"If you have more clothes than you need is wasteful" is not a fact. It's your arbitrary subjective opinion. It completely ignores the provenance of where clothes came from and the longevity of clothes not being worn out by constant wearing.

There were 669 million physical books sold in the UK last year. How many books does a person "need"?

Plus, books (unlike clothing) do not need to be owned in their physical form. Surely even owning one single book is ‘wasteful’ since they are easily borrowed from libraries/accessed online or kindle.

To me, wasteful is using something carelessly or thoughtlessly so it isn’t being properly utilised to its potential, such as ordering lots of food then not eating all of it. If you have rooms and rooms full of clothing which lies in boxes unworn then that’s wasteful. If you have a normal amount of clothing appropriate for different occasions which is carefully upkept and used then that’s not really wasteful. And I certainly think it’s healthier than owning one single pair of trousers and staying in pyjamas all day.

I'm sorry I didn't get back soon, stuff came up and I forgot the thread!

A lot of philosophical questions seem to have arisen from this, although I didn't intend that. For me personally this is far more an issue of not liking anything out there than any kind of minimalist or ethical reason, although I do try to be mindful about waste, etc.

I just don't like stuff.
I observed my behaviour last summer, and found that I reached for the same few things all through, cycling them about, perhaps having duplicates of something I really liked.

I do not aspire to have a tiny wardrobe!

I browse dress - don't like any.
I browse jeans and trousers, both baggy and slim - not keen.
I browse shirts, blouses and tops - nothing special.
It is as though I have just gone off everything, and don't have a leaning towards anything in particular. Usually I like un-patterned stuff, simple and sleek styles, but everything is either cropped, boxy, chunky or wacky. I have been trying to find a simple longish fine knit cardi/jumper for 4 years, and nothing!