Today I’m hiding behind the camera lens and tackling an issue that’s centred in fashion and blogging – won’t you join me for a discussion?
Photo from 4nitsirk’s Flickr
Well – do you? I think I might. I’ve always loved clothes and since my first job as a pot washer at an Italian restaurant, most of my wages have been sartorially spent. I’m a functioning addict – I don’t have an out-of-control debt, and my fridge is as full as my wardrobe. I can still buy food and pay bills and have a life, but I have a reliance on new purchases that makes me uncomfortable.
I’m an emotional shopper – when I’m feeling sad, or stressed, or even just bored, I love wandering round the shops. New purchases are the perfect pick-me-up after a bad day – they may be small, high street items, but if you have an average of two bad days a week, they soon add up. And the high street is not solely to blame – second hand shopping is just as addictive, if not more so. With charity shops, you’re always chasing the next bargain… and the rush that comes with finding it.
For someone who has a predisposition for impulsive purchasing, fashion blogs can be a minefield of triggers. As fashion bloggers, we display our tendencies for consumerism with every post, often making it ridiculously easy for readers to join in by using direct purchase links to the items we’re wearing. So easy, in fact, that The Man Repeller made $10,000 in two months when she started using affiliate links. There’s such a stylish display of fabulousness on blogs that I find myself coveting every outfit, wanting every item (and the necessary accessories) and adding more and more to my wishlist.
New purchases make great blog content, too. The easiest, quickest blog post is one that shows off your ‘haul‘ – a virtual look inside your shopping bags. Only yesterday I found myself in TK Maxx, holding a pair of bright pink leather gloves and thinking ‘these would make a great blog post’. Surely my first concern about bright pink leather gloves should be ‘will these make me look like Barbie?’ or, even better, ‘will they keep my hands warm?’
For me, there comes a time when responsibility needs to be taken. Sometimes that’s when you hit your overdraft limit (and then some), or when your wardrobe collapses under the strain. The tagline for my blog is ‘fashion for the skint yet stylish’, yet the conveyor belt of clothing that appears here may make you think otherwise. And I didn’t start this blog as a way to display my vast assortment of chunky knits.
So I’m taking control, cutting down and clearing out. I want to recapture the sentiment that so attracted me to blogs in the first place – that notion that we don’t all have endless rails of beautiful clothes, but that we can work with what we do have and still be fashionably relevant. Will you join me?
Do you find yourself shopping too much? Do the blogs you read encourage you to shop more than you usually would? Do you feel the pressure to wear or feature new things on your blog?
