Shop Without Spending Any Money
Kooba bag, J.Crew heels and black blazer
Even if you didn’t spend almost 2 decades working in retail and most of your money on clothes, shoes, handbags and make-up (as I did), I’m sure you must have things sitting in your closet that you could be wearing but you're not.
In fact, you probably have some really neat stuff sitting there that you’ve forgotten all about.
What's the best part about forgetting about certain things you own? Rediscovering them. It's almost the same euphoria you (or I) get from shopping in a store or online.
And that’s exactly what happened to me last night.
I was meeting an old friend for a ‘let’s catch up in person’ dinner (Hey, even I get tired of texting sometimes.) and at the last minute, realized that an old grey t-shirt, flip flops and jeans were not going to cut it. It was that last minute panic that brought me back into my closet, where luckily, I ‘found’ a lot of amazing stuff, including:
• a pair of black and white striped heels bought on JCrew.com for next to nothing (I don’t recommend buying final sale anything online unless you’re prepared to lose money. I also don’t recommend storing J.Crew shoes in the black J.Crew shoe boxes they come in – That’s a sure fire way to lose track of them. #BeenThereDoneThat)
• green Kooba shoulder bag (I was on a Kooba kick a few years ago. Know what else? You can’t go wrong with a well made bag in a non-neutral color, especially if you tend to wear a lot of classic pieces and darker colors. It makes your look a whole lot less BORING and most people walk away thinking you're daring when it comes to style – even if, deep down, you’re really not.)
• black Ellen Tracy blazer (Add a blazer to an old t-shirt and a pair of Gap Real Straight Jeans and you go from sloppy to cool casual. Just like that! And that’s why even though I no longer work in a conventional setting, I will never part with any of my blazers.)
• a tube of Medieval lipstick from Lipstick Queen, a shade which I swear to Gosh looks fab on everyone (Wouldn’t you know that when I pulled out the Ellen T. blazer, there was a brand new tube of Medieval in one of the pockets. The same tube I’ve been whining about having lost for at least the past 6 months.)
So go forth and shop your closet. I bet you find at least one thing that you forgot all about and will wear again and again this season.