Being stylish on a budget.

[henlake7]

Anybody else feel like they are living life in a different tax bracket when it comes to some of the suggestions on here?
Not that I begrudge people having money to spend, I'd love to be able to shop in some of the places mentioned but my budget is more Primark and supermarkets in general. My maximum spend for an item is around £60 and that would be rarely and something I really wanted. Although it has made me very good at shopping sales and Vinted!😄
I think you can find good stuff at lower prices though and I don't think most people can tell much difference if it's styled well.

YANBU!

It’s true you don’t have to spend a fortune. To me the key is good quality fabrics, choosing the right size, making sure clothes are ironed or steamed if needed and how you style items. You can find great pieces on Vinted but also good value in Uniqlo, choosing carefully on H&M, or by trawling the clearance at John Lewis etc.

@fiorentinahas it right. Also learning to mend and tailor things you already have/cheap charity shop stuff gives you something unique and personalised without the cost.

If you are stylish you are stylish whatever your budget. Some people who have money and spend a lot on clothes can look like a dog’s dinner. I truly believe you can find something you can work with in most places whatever your price point.

Oh I thought I was going to get some tips when I clicked on the thread!

I’m very stylish, everything is 2nd hand. Find your style, buy good quality 2nd hand and a fantastic handbag

I think I am stylish. I pretty much shop at H&M, M&S, Tesco, a bit of Zara and Uniqlo. I’m careful about cut, fabric and colour - almost all plain and neutrals. Cheaper clothes are fine but I find they do generally need a good iron to make sure collars and hems in particular hang properly.
I invest in good bags, jewellery, Botox and hair!

My usual budget for whole new outfit would be £50. So that’s top and trousers for example. I buy a few bits full price then secondhand when I come across it.

I’m between sizes so getting things that fit is very hard.

I don’t think I am stylish (in terms of following the latest fashion trends) but I know what I like and I have my personal style.
I pay a lot of attention to the quality of fabric and workmanship, I can spot badly made stuff from far, far away. I buy a lot second hand and I am good at recognizing good quality, things like finishing touches, seams, quality of fabric and so on.

I have some clothes that could be considered expensive, I think it’s impossible to buy new and very cheap without indirectly causing harm, someone or something in the value chain has to pay for the low price tag. I prefer to buy one thing instead of a couple poorly made ones.

Some of my favourite clothes were bought for very little on vinted, some things that nearly broke my budget 20 years ago are still in regular use and don’t look dated or worn so I think of them as good investments. I consider myself too poor to buy bad quality and single use stuff.

These days high price is not a guarantee of quality anymore. I reckon people pay the money because they like a particular look/shop rather than motivated by quality.

I will pay a reasonably high price for quality, I am having to be much picker these days (which actually saves me money!) it’s also made me realise I’m not too fussed by not having loads in my wardrobe so win win!

Glad you started this thread. I have posted a few threads on here over the past year or so, asking for advice, only to be given links to items that are way out of my budget, on websites I would never buy from 😬. My maximum spend would probably be £20 for a top and £40 for trousers, maybe £35 for a summer dress and £60 for shoes. I buy a lot on vinted and in sales. Occasionally buy from Shein and primark (though primark less so these days). I thought I was more middle range but there seems to be manny on here who will spend £100+ for one item 😬

I never spend a fortune but like to think I look stylish (my husband says so, anyway - bless him!). I have always been interested in clothes and when I was working, spent considerably on very good quality fashion. So I've got a good basic wardrobe. I'm retired now and on a much more limited income, but still know what I like. Natural fabrics, silk, cashmere, cotton, wool and linen - most of my jeans are from M and S, and I find them ok actually. I'm lucky with my jewellery and have inherited great stuff from my mum and aunt.

Lots of my recent best buys have come from Vinted - I've sourced several pairs of great silk trousers and a casual silk jacket - can't wait for the summer weather to start wearing them. I tend to go for Italian and French brands, often vintage.

You absolutely don't have to spend a fortune to look stylish. I keep an eye on Italian Vogue and what's new on Net-a-Porter to see what's current and what might suit me, certainly only some things - but it's a good guide to what's 'now' and easily replicated from Vinted without being a fashion victim. Fashion is one of my hobbies.

@DaphneduM thank you for sharing. Please could you share some of the Italian and French brands you love?

I think it's true that most of the time you really can't tell wether something is from a high end brand or a supermarket. One pair of silky wide legged trousers looks the same as another!
I think you can really elevate any outfit with accessories and the right choice of colours and cut. It's true that more expensive brands tend to be better made in general but you can find some really nice stuff in cheaper stores.

Also I don't think it's unethical to shop in cheaper stores as long as you aren't just throwing things away after a few wears. Most of my favourite t shirts are £2.50 or £3 ones from Primark and Poundland but I wash them carefully and plan on keeping them as long as possible!

@Moonlightfrog surely if you’ve stated on a thread that you prefer to shop from Vinted, people suggesting relatively expensive brands assume you will seek them out on Vinted if the current styles on a website appeal to you?

All too often however, an OP sets out a list of criteria, which helpful posters do their best to meet with a range of suggestions (using their own time and judgement) only for the OP to respond scornfully, with the revelation that she would never spend more than £30 on any garment. That is honestly quite annoying.

As to being stylish on a budget: I once, for about a year, possessed seven items of clothing in total, almost all gleaned from charity / vintage shops. I don’t think I’ve ever been better dressed.

But spending time on other continents, where the detritus from UK charity shops ends up, has given me a distaste for the whole business.

And I have far too much admiration and respect for talented designers to want to see the profession grind to a halt prematurely while we all swap our used clothes in a perpetual merry go round. AI will bring the design industry to a halt pretty soon, anyway.

I'm developing a capsule wardrobe for the transition into spring.

Neutrals, french and scandi styling, with pops of colour and pattern. Mixing and matching items within my wardrobe with those themes as far as possible.

I buy from charity shops, mainly. I look for 100% natural fibres in fabric and know my colours. Shoes are usually branded and the most expensive wardrobe item.

So far I have at least 3 outfits I love to wear. I can see where the gaps are now and feel less overwhelmed with choice. Still working on it and want to find at least 5 go to outfits for daily wear and 2 for occasion wear. Seasonal weather changes do make this difficult though.

I look online at places like Brand Alley, Secret Label etc. Sometimes there’s a good bargain.

Some of the things people post on here cost £100s but are certainly NOT stylish. 🤣

I live in black leggings (£5 a time!) With either a longer jumper or above the knee dress- usually from New look for between £10&£20.
It is incredibly hard to find clothes which suit me, so tend to avoid vinted as can't send them back if they don't.
Tried various trousers many a time but they just look awful including jeans.

The issue is fabric, it's hard to find natural fabrics that feel nice without paying quite a lot of money.
I just feel horrible wearing acrylic jumpers and synthetic materials.
I do buy some secondhand clothes, but don't often find much in charity shops, I think there may be more choice for smaller sizes. I do buy wool jumpers in the sales, and keep my clothes for a long time. I re-dye clothes to keep the colour looking fresh, and have regular trawls of shops like Primark for cotton t-shirts - I have few Primark ones that I use as underwear that are more than 10 years old.
It does take a lot of time and effort to search out stylish clothes in decent fabrics at budget prices.

The problem is that the price of everything has gone up and it’s still going up, but the price of fast fashion has stayed more or less at the same level for a long time, with Shein, Temu and the European fast fashion giants pushing their contractors more and more. How do people think this is even possible when the price of crude oil (=polyester) and raw materials such as phosphorus (=fertilisers) have been rising because of the pandemic and ongoing wars?

I have a pair of simple corduroy trousers bought in H&M 11 years ago. It is 100% cotton, has decent seam allowance, quality finishing details and looks new. I’ve worn these trousers more or less regularly since 2015. I remember paying around 150 crowns on sale, nowadays a pair of H&M trousers costs about the same on sale, whereas the cost of, say, organic meat is at least 10 times higher. Do people honestly think the textile value chains are somehow magic and when the price of raw materials go up all around the world textiles are somehow excluded?

I love my clothes, I take good care of them and I also believe people in other parts of the world deserve fair wages, safe working conditions and clean environment. Especially the latter as we share the same planet so plastic clothes washed up on African shores will end up as microplastic particles in my food anyway.

I do have limited budget so a lot of my clothes are second hand or have been in use for many years, my oldest garments are at least 20 years older than me.

I am a Preloved reseller and source all my stock on whatnot, eBay and charity shops. I therefore wear a lot of thre3 myself before selling. I am often stopped and asked where items are from and am told I am very stylish. I rarely pay more than £5, it's closer to£2 an item plus postage and I can't remember apart from underwear when I bought something new.

I’m totally with you and have been complimented on my style a lot over the years. I reckon the majority of clothes I wear most now are from supermarkets. I love Vinted but haven’t bought alot for myself on it and this thread is inspiring me to do that or charity shop more, which I used to love doing

I have a bigger budget now, but when I was in my 20s I used to shop a lot in eBay (long before it was even fashionable to buy pre-loved!). If you have a limited budget, I honestly think it’s better to buy quality pre-loved clothes than to buy fast fashion. The fabrics and cuts are so much better.

It was very fashionable to wear preloved in the late 60s/70s. My friends used to go to every jumble sale they could. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on loads of my granny’s clothes.