new year, new you, new clothes?

The concept of a fresh start at new years is not lost on me, despite being a stoic advocate for the old. Come Boxing Day, we are bombarded with advertisement after advertisement attempting to sell us a new, better version of ourselves and we eat it up like a green juice that promises us renewed vitality, and abs.

With this need for newness, comes the need for a new wardrobe. Yes, despite just spending more money than we have on gifts for loved ones, we are now expected to buy for ourselves too, and why wouldn’t we when the Boxing Day sales are just TOO GOOD to miss? Well, I beg to differ.

I’ll start by saying, as a teenager I was all for a clothing sale. I grew up in the hey day of Topshop, when even Kate Moss had her own line in store, and there was nothing better to me than heading to the overpacked sale rail and spending silly amounts on clothes that sometimes, I wouldn’t ever wear, the tags remaining on them for years to come, *shudders*. The thought makes me a bit ill now. It’s fair to say in the past 5 years, I have gone from one extreme to the other with my clothing spending habits, and now I buy almost completely second hand, and I’m proud to say pretty consciously too.

However, to say that I am not influenced by the countless endorsements of ‘change’ and therefore, becoming a better version of yourself come every new year, I would be a liar. A new year is the perfect excuse to shed our old skin, and therefore our old style. There is something about clearing away the Christmas decorations January 1st and unearthing the dust from last years (last weeks) antics that makes you feel, well a bit dirty. You start moving your new gifts into the bedroom from the obligatory ‘Christmas pile’ and suddenly everything else looks shit. I’m at serious risk of only owning two pairs of socks due to my brand new cashmere ones knocking all the others out of the park, off my shelves and into the bin (to be fair to the old faithful’s, they have lasted me a very decent amount of time, bought in my ‘lets pop to Primark’ days, but they are nearing the end now).

I suppose as an advocate for second hand, reusing and so on and so on, I should now be employing you all to put down the shopping channel remote (our phones) and be grateful for what you’ve got, or perhaps if you are going to shop, to come to mine *cough cough*. Instead, I will say this. If you’re going to buy something in the sales this year, let it be something that you are sure you’re going to treasure. Something that is going to take you into the new year with confidence, something that will compliment the rest of your wardrobe (it’s not all shit, and deserves some love too) and most importantly compliment you, both the 2025, as well as the 2024 version. She’s messy, but we love her.