by Jess Atkins, Stylebook Co-Founder

Are you looking to reduce your fashion carbon footprint? According to writer Tiffanie Darke, reducing your clothing purchases to just five new items in 2024 is the ideal way to do it. It may sound impossible, but trust me: you can at least significantly reduce your clothes shopping. Here are 5 tips to help you buy way less but love your wardrobe more.

But first, let's start with a timeline. On the left, you can see typical overshopping habits over a year, versus living by the five-item rule.

1. Learn To Be Anti-Trend

If you're on fashion TikTok, you've probably seen videos telling you that certain clothes are embarrassingly out of style. While there are long term trends that can make someone look up-to-date, it’s the overall vibe of an outfit that counts, not individual pieces. Remember, it’s still possible to have fun and look up-to-date even without shopping:

• Play with your clothes in Stylebook and try new outfit proportions or color combinations
• Vary your inspirations and look beyond social media to get more choices
• Save styling tutorials in Stylebook on the latest ways to tie, tuck, or zhuzh your clothes
• When everyone is wearing the same thing, stand out by sticking to what makes you happy and makes you glow with confidence

2. Get To Know Your Closet

The only way to add high-impact pieces is to know exactly what clothes you already own. You’ll be able to choose new things that fit in with what you have, which will maximize your new outfit choices. Creating a closet inventory is the best way to get to know your current wardrobe. Recording your wardrobe is a bit of upfront work, but it's worth the effort because:

I use Stylebook to inventory my wardrobe. I add photos from online stores, or I quickly take pictures of my secondhand or home-sewn clothes. I like using Copy Subject to cut them out.

3. Flourish Within Boundaries

You become more creative when you limit yourself to clothes already in your wardrobe. This is a great exercise because it also forces you to stop using shopping as a crutch. Record what you actually wear on an outfit calendar and you’ll get a sense of your true style.

4. Try Fashion As Self-care

If you feel amazing in an outfit today, why not get that joy again in the future? Save your best outfits in Stylebook and rewear them. Stop depending on newness to feel special. Sometimes, I wear a great outfit, and it makes me feel so happy. Saving it in Stylebook makes it easy to reuse it again; otherwise, I'd forget! This is especially great when I feel like it was wasted because no one saw me.

5. Learn To Deal With Shopping Triggers:

Finally, you need to learn how to avoid impulse shopping and remember personal style is the antidote for overconsumption. Here’s how I deal with common shopping triggers:

Vacation

This is my biggest shopping trigger because I often want to shop to fit my destination. My perspective changed when I heard a friend call her favorite clothes, "holiday clothes." The idea is that she she would only bring her best clothes on holiday and would be happy being limited to those choices. Now I think of my vacation wardrobe as an opportunity to wear my most loved pieces.

I save my packing lists in Stylebook, and the app automatically keeps track of my "most packed" items, which is always a good place to start since they have been proven to travel well. I even reuse entire packing lists occasionally, especially for family visits.

Events

When holidays, dates, parties, etc., come up, I turn to my going-out capsule. A capsule wardrobe does not need to be boring or neutrals. It only needs to be made-up of clothes YOU can easily restyle and re-wear. I start with a folder in Stylebook of all my going-out clothes, then remix them into outfits with Outfit Shuffle.

Promotions

I keep a clothing wishlist in Stylebook's shopping feature to slow down how often I shop. Waiting at least a few days can help determine whether it's an impulse or a genuine desire.

Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t stick to just 5 items. Sometimes you change size, clothes are unexpectedly ruined, and life happens. The important part to reduce unnecessary clothing purchases is to understand that keeping up with trends isn’t necessarily being stylish. Be yourself and know the difference between personal style and a personal aesthetic.

A personal aesthetic is an overall look inspired by a specific theme like a time period, place, or subculture. It encompasses accessories, beauty, and clothes that fit the theme. Aesthetics have their own trends and come in and out of fashion, for example, normcore, cottagecore, quiet luxury, etc. Personal style is more about collecting inspiration from many different sources that you’re naturally drawn to over time and then melding them into your own unique look that fits your life. It can incorporate vastly different styles that are combined to your taste, evolving with you over time, but it is not tied to trends.

In the long term, shift your mindset to appreciate some things from afar. It’s ok to skip some fashion moments. Even if you love a new trend, it’s ok not to participate. When you look back at past trends you were obsessed with two years ago, do you still care about them? If you had skipped them, nothing bad would have happened.

"Fashion you can buy, but style you possess. The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. There's no how-to road map to style. It's about self expression and, above all, attitude." – Iris Apfel