Shopping Fast Fail (?) and New Instagram

Is my shopping fast going well? That depends entirely on the standard one uses to evaluate it. If the primary goal is to not buy anything new, things are still fine and dandy, as I haven't ordered anything. If the primary goal is to "detox" a bit from using online window shopping as entertainment, or not to make wish lists for after the shopping fast period ends, then it it's not so successful. I've had many of my sudden and powerful shopping impulses, many of which have not really gone away after a few days, so I've accumulated a list of things I'm sort of chomping at the bit to order and try on.

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For instance, I saw the Dagne Dover Simone laptop bag in steel grey leather and thought I desperately wanted to try it on. It's pretty and a bit unique in shape, as far as laptop bags go. Happily (or sadly) it's sold out in that color, so I don't run the risk of breaking my shopping fast there. I was intrigued by the J.Crew Ruffle Trim Dress after seeing it on someone in real life. They seem to have made it final sale though, so I should be safe. Also, I'll be doing a few firm interviews in the coming months. Because I don't currently own a pair of pumps that fits my personal ideal of what a pair of conservative interview shoes should look like (I have patent leather wedges at the moment, which I consider less conservative), I may actually end up breaking my shopping fast for something like the Sam Edelman Tristan or the Cole Haan Grace pumps, which I'd likely consider an off-budget purchase as it's for a specific and necessary professional purpose.

To be honest, I didn't have a concrete goal in mind for my shopping fast this month. Over time, I've been shopping less than I was before, and it wouldn't be that surprising to have a "no shopping" month here and there, even without a conscious effort. I suppose one main goal of the shopping fast was just to accumulate that month's budgeted dollars for future months, which isn't especially minimalist. I think I'd like to purchase some jewelry for myself this year, which likely requires "banking" budgeted dollars from multiple months. I've been looking at Opal rings from Catbird for a while (like this Wwake one or their teardrop ring), though I'm somewhat likely to pick one up from Polamai on Etsy (a Thai jeweler with a lot of good reviews). I've been tempted by the Monica Vinader Baja Bracelet in Green Onyx for a while, though that's probably way too pricey for me, for something that's gold-plated and more fashion jewelry than fine. In that light, if I haven't ordered anything new yet, then the shopping fast is going just fine. (Overall, this is probably not one of the better reasons to go on a shopping fast...) 

In other news, I recently opened a new Instagram account for blog purposes. My old account was set up through my personal Facebook account, though I ran it as the Instagram for my blog. That got too weird for me as I didn't really want random Facebook acquaintances to be able to find my blog and identify it as mine through Instagram. Independent from that, I'm starting to better understand how to explore new content on Instagram, and it's fun! As usual, I'm way behind the times when it comes to learning how to use new social media platforms.

A photo posted by Miyu☺︎ (@miyumo_21) on Jan 11, 2017 at 5:31am PST

One thing that I stumbled upon is a large set of Japanese daily outfit Instagrammers. I follow many, some with a more casual style and some that seem to primarily do office-type wear, but they all have a similar photography style and wear such well-executed, put-together outfits! I follow so many that there's no real way to pick out my favorites because they're all so cool, but in no particular order, here are a few that had really great outfits pop up in my feed most recently: ____cream.ice.____, akko3839, cestmignon_mau, and miyumo_21. After one starts following a few, Instagram starts putting more and more of them into one's "Explore" feed, so it doesn't take long to find others.

Are patent leather shoes, in your opinion, appropriate for ultra-conservative business-formal interview outfits? Do you have any favorite Instagram accounts to follow, or any specific type of account that you like? I also follow quite a few comic artists like adamtots.

Six-Month Progress Report: Shopping and Budgeting

personal photo, with VSCOcam filter

I began the year with some trepidation about my ability to stick to a budget, and I thought it'd be easier to go on a "shopping fast" where I could buy things I needed, replacements, and some well thought out "wants." That ended up being the wrong approach for me. I slip easily into making impulse purchases with as little as a few days of planning, and it'd be inaccurate to try to claim those as the well thought out "wants" that make sense during a shopping fast or for anyone committed to minimalist consumption. I also belatedly realized that it is problematic to fail to set some kind of upper limit for my shopping. Accordingly, my budget for clothes, shoes and accessories is now $250/month or $3000/year. I don't worry too much about the number each month as long as I'm relatively on track for the year.

Budget

From January to June, I came in under the roughly $1500/half year limit. I've spent $1318.85 on fashion items for the year so far. The numbers, which you can see in my monthly budget posts are as follows:

• $227.87 + $376.72 + $233.40 + $107.00 + $373.86 = $1318.85. 

A quick note on my budget setting might be in order, given that I spent the calendar year thus far as a graduate student with my living expenses largely financed by student loans. The $3000/year number likely seems a bit high without more context. In my case, one important detail is that it's a bit less than 5% of my after-tax pay when I start work this fall. In anticipation of the pay cut I will be taking because of my fellowship-ish in fall of 2016, I will likely adjust my budget downwards for at least the later months of 2016. 

Shopping Fast: Needs, Wants, etc.

Although I largely ditched my shopping fast rules when it came to clothes, I still think that it was a useful exercise. By starting to think in terms of shopping fasts and what constituted  actual "needs" or "wants" that I could reasonably indulge, I was making a commitment to be thoughtful about my spending and consumption. I think I've still made great strides towards the spirit of that goal.

My success is most obvious when it comes to my beauty and skincare shopping fast. I was about $150 away from being a Sephora VIB Rouge last year ($1000/year in spending) because of careless indulgences and the added temptation to put in an extra item to get free shipping. This year, I'm likely not on track to renew even my VIB status ($350/year). The vast majority of the beauty items I've bought this year are simply replacements for products I already used frequently. After taking the time to depot my powder cosmetics for organization, I'm finding that I don't particularly enjoy or need eyeshadow, blush, or bronzer, which cuts down on many potential future purchases. It also allows for some additional downsizing, but I'll probably wait on that step.

Shopping Fast: Clothing and Accessories

Although I had already decided to institute a shopping fast for cosmetics and skincare products this year, I had been dragging my feet on doing the same for fashion purchases. I originally thought that it would simply result in setting myself up for failure. While I have accumulated a decently-sized work wardrobe, I was not completely confident that I had everything I needed for work. I don't necessarily need to shop for office clothes until October, but I wanted to preserve the flexibility of being able to buy items when I saw them available for a good price. I also wanted to leave room for this or that perfect thing if I saw it at the store. 

My post-Christmas sale shopping has led me to reevaluate. With the spate of additional percentage off sale promotions, I ended up being tempted by a lot of pretty things that I wanted to try out, but that I don't strictly need and that don't fill an identified hole in my wardrobe. In particular I grabbed some items (the Baikal Dress and Shimmered Monarch Skirt) from Anthropologie's online 25% off of sale price promotion. Even on sale, their items tend to be a little bit outside of my price range, especially when I take into account highly probable issues with quality and fit from buying things sight unseen. Neither is final sale so I will be able to think about whether either item is worth keeping, but their shipping fees are steep. Even if I return both, I have definitely spent nearly $20 just for the privilege of trying on the items. That experience would at least be a lesson about not buying online when shipping is not free and I am not sure about what I'm getting.

While all this online shopping was going on, I was also looking at my finances for the semester and trying to draw up a budget for the months immediately before and after I start work. I have not historically been the most frugal person, and while a reasonable budget allows me to enjoy a lot of the things I like (some eating out, a gym membership, some room for shopping) while I do the things I must do (aggressively paying down student loan debt, paying my rent, etc.), I will have to cut costs in some areas quite a bit if I want to save money for more distant things like future vacations. In short, it will be good for me to reexamine my shopping habits and see if I can make some changes.

My shopping fast probably most resembles the one described here by Maja. I am planning to stick to the fast for about nine months (after work starts, my needs will probably change) and it extends to all my clothes, accessories, and beauty products. I will also try to extend the principles to other categories of shopping, but no complete guarantees in anything else. My ground rules are as follows:

• First, I can buy the things that I actually need. Of course, I need to be careful and thoughtful about what is an actual need. Before late February or early March, I plan to buy some socks. By late April or so I will probably buy another casual summer top or two at most. Sometime before September I am also considering buying a nice, but still rather modestly priced watch (perhaps a Skagen) because I don't currently own any. 
• Second, I can buy replacements for things that are truly worn-out or used up. This has a lot of overlap with things that fall under the first rule. Under this category, I am vaguely in the market for a pair of sweatpants to serve as lounge clothes. I recently purchased a pair of sandals in order to replace a current pair that is already on its last legs. At some point in the summer I will probably need another pair of flats as well, given the rapid rate at which I wear out the ones I have. 
• Third, I am still allowing myself room for a few "wants," provided that I have given it enough thought. I've been thinking for a while about getting a bracelet to round out my collection of jewelry (costume jewelry in the price range of pieces from Gorjana or J. Crew). I might also consider buying a ring (something like this, though potentially not at that price point) that would be suitable for everyday wear. I have not made a firm decision about either purchase, but I do plan to leave room for expenditures like that if I have given it a lot of thought. 

I will lay out my specific plans for cosmetics in another post. (Spoiler alert: I went a tiny bit crazy in that category last year because of stress-shopping and the like so I am cutting back significantly.) I feel some trepidation about whether I can fully stick to this plan, but I also feel that by having taken the time to think about my shopping and what I want versus what I need, I will be moving in the right direction. 

January Shopping Reflections

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So this ended up being an odd month shopping-wise. I started with good shopping-fast intentions, but had some of my usual sudden and powerful shopping impulses, some of which, thankfully, went away. (Dagne Dover Simone, you’re cute, but no. I don’t need a laptop bag that would be the most expensive bag in my collection.) Some of of the impulses did not leave and I, er, ended up giving in to a J.Crew sale when running another errand, resulting in the purchases below. Spoiler alert, it was a very J.Crew month and I continue to be unable to stick to a shopping fast. Oops. I could try again, but because of upcoming interviews (I still haven't ordered interview shoes), I'd be setting myself up for failure next month. I might revisit the idea of a shopping fast later this year, instead. 

Separately, disaster struck, if you’ll indulge my tendency towards melodrama when it comes to lost property. (In college, someone stole the Longchamp Le Pliage I bought for $80 when the British Pound was weak while I was studying abroad. I cried like a baby and mourned it for weeks. I get emotionally attached to my clothes and accessories.) K and I live in a nice building (the customary rent increase with each lease renewal could price us out next time) where more than half of the apartments have in-unit washers and dryers, so one usually has the communal laundry room entirely to themselves at any given time. It breeds a false sense of security. despite the common knowledge that leaving anything unaccompanied is strictly at your own risk. I’d set a timer, but left my things in the dryer for an extra forty minutes because we were eating. All my nice clothes get line-dried in the apartment, anyway, so it was only a few ratty tshirts, pillowcases, etc. that were in there.

Horror of horrors, someone took about a quarter of my items from the dryer before I got there. All of the underwear that was in there, a few tees, both of the black H&M camisoles that are essential to my slouchy sweater-wearing at work, and enough of my socks to throw off my two weeks between each laundry session equilibrium were all gone. 

Reader, I am bereft. (And also utterly convinced that we have an underwear-stealing pervert in the building.) I may or may not be excessively paranoid. I have been known to have my Gift of Fear instincts kick in when it proves entirely unwarranted. My, shall we say, post-November blues make me a bit more emotional than usual. Nonetheless, I humbly submit that how only a portion of my items were missing (but all the underwear) is suggestive, as is the fact that no one else was doing their laundry at the time, with nothing else in any of the other machines and the time gap being too brief for anyone to have finished their laundry entirely while I was away. Nobody had a legitimate reason to be there but me. This series of events resulted in a few traditionally off-budget purchases of socks and underthings.

Fashion - (TOTAL: $94.79) 

• J.Crew Ruffle-Trim Shift Dress - $76.80 - I couldn't shake my interest in this after seeing someone wear it, and the J.Crew store I stopped in while running the errand had my size. I tried both a 6R (too big all over and a little too long) and 8P, and the 8P was the way to go. This is the only photo I've seen online of this dress on a real person. It's a more A-line shift on me, given the disparity between my chest and hip measurement on their size chart. To get the fit it has on the model, or on other people, I probably should consider getting it taken in.
• J.Crew Ribbed Hat with Faux-Fur Pom-Pom (sold out, similar from Ann Taylor) - $17.99 - I wanted this hat way back, when I was thinking about the Cocoon Coat, but never pulled the trigger. I saw it again (the last one in store) and decided that now was the time, as I was still interested. The fur pom-pom is a bit exaggerated in size, making it a bit girlish compared to  my general style. (Extra-large pom-poms are trendy, judging by the number of similar hats I see people wearing in the city.) I think it's cute!

Beauty and Skincare - (TOTAL: $16.95) 

• CosRx Advanced Snail 96 Miucin Power Essence - $16.95 - This is a refill for something I've been using for a while now. It's a good product, moisturizing and soothing. It has an unusually sticky, gloopy texture that could take some getting used to. Amazon generally has the best price and it's often Prime-eligible from a US-based reseller. 

Linking up with Franish and the Budgeting Bloggers, as usual, this month! Please do go check out how everyone else did.

Have you been able to maintain a shopping fast of whatever length in the past? Any lost or stolen laundry horror stories to make me feel better? (I'll totally get over it, but, good golly, it's just so strange and makes me feel rather creeped out.) 

January Shopping Reflections

At present, I don't set a monthly, quarterly, or even a yearly shopping budget for myself. Although I can anticipate the funds that I will have access to throughout the year, it is difficult for me to predict some of the large travel and interview-related expenses that might or might not emerge and reduce the amount I can spend on shopping. While I do quite obsessively track my expenditures and overall budget, I am not quite ready to commit to specific amounts when it comes to my fashion expenditures. Instead, I think it is more useful to be thoughtful about my purchases and to do my best to buy only the things that I truly need or will use. Or at least, that is the goal. 

I did not do that well in January based on the rules of my shopping fast. I might be giving myself too much freedom to buy things that "I could wear to work in the fall." That accounts for the burgundy jacket, the waterfall cardigan, and the dress (though in practice, even after getting it hemmed, I must admit that the dress is probably too much even for my future office's fairly permissive business casual dress code). 

My purchases for January were as follows:

Fashion - (TOTAL: $227.87)

• Uniqlo Heattech Gloves in Navy - $7.90 - These were a definite "need" because I needed a pair of touchscreen-compatible gloves. 
• Uniqlo Heattech Gloves in Red - $7.90 - These were a "need" once I lost the navy pair on the first day that I wore them. Oops.
• Uniqlo Knit Beanie - $12.90 - These were a "need" because I had not previously owned a winter hat that covered my ears and my down jacket has a fussy hood that won't stay up. 
• Uniqlo Heattech Socks - $9.90 - These were a "need" because I didn't own any trouser-type socks. Sadly, these might not have been the best choice as they're a bit too thick and my boots are all on the edge of not being spacious enough to accommodate.
• Uniqlo Sweatpants - $9.90 - These were a replacement of my previous pair. 
• Lou and Grey Ombre Waterfall Cardigan - $15.88 - This was neither planned nor a "need" or replacement. It doesn't fit in the rules of my shopping fast, though I quite like the cardigan and it will be a useful (if slightly redundant) part of both my casual and work wardrobes going forward.
• Loft Twill Jacket - $42.50 - Similar situation as with the Lou and Grey cardigan... 
• Anthropologie Baikal Dress - $76.00 - I even mentioned this one as a likely mistake in my shopping fast post. The one I ordered ended up being too small and too long, but when I went to make the return, I tried the dress on in my size. It is quite lovely, and I have a serious weakness for pretty prints, bright colors, and dresses that fit. Strictly speaking, this dress will end up costing more when I include the shipping costs I paid on the one I returned in addition to the tailoring costs to hem it. 
• Sam Edelman Trina Sandals - $44.99 - This was a replacement for a pair of the same style in a different color. My other pair is on its last legs.

Skincare:

• Paula's Choice 2% BHA Liquid - I decided to take advantage of a sale. It is a "need," though it is perhaps a few months before I originally planned to replace it.
• Hada Labo Lotion - I was not supposed to replace this item so soon, but I made the mistake of buying another product that broke me out and needed to replace it.
• Hada Labo Emulsion - Same situation as above. 

The only clear lesson from this month is that I should definitely not buy things online from Anthropologie anymore, at least until the point in time where they decide to offer free shipping as a general practice. From trying out that dress and that skirt, I find their sizing very unpredictable. There are other lessons too, about how I approach shopping for my work wardrobe, if at all, but I will have to give that question some more thought. Finally, I should be a bit more careful about replacing skincare products in my routine and about not losing things like gloves and hats. 

I linked with Franish's Budgeting Bloggers here. Hopefully my approach (where my shopping is constrained by the ebb and flow of my overall budget for the semester, though I don't stick a firm number on it in advance) is alright!

Shopping Fast: Beauty and Skincare

via Pinterest

As I mentioned last week, the decision to go on a cosmetics and skincare shopping fast was an easy one. I have a general habit of using shopping as a way to alleviate stress and stress has been a fairly common feature of the last few years of school. Although beauty and skincare was an area in which my impulse shopping was a particularly pronounced problem, I believe that it will be fairly easy to draw up and comply with a realistic plan that allows for drastically reduced shopping for beauty products this year. I know my "trigger" (stress from school) and why I sometimes get on the slippery slope of adding extra items I didn't initially plan on (adding products to bring up the order price by a last $7-$10 to get to free shipping at Sephora). I also know my own beauty needs fairly well. The rules are essentially the same as for my clothing and accessories shopping fast: I can buy things I "need" to replace what runs out and I will allow myself room for "wants" that I have thought about carefully. 

For context, I was only about $150 off from Sephora VIB Rouge status last year, which is not reasonable for me given my actual makeup needs and my graduate student budget. This is particularly true when I take into account the fact that most of my skincare products are not from Sephora and that quite a few of those skincare products were not cheap. I don't necessarily regret most of my individual purchases, but as an aggregate whole, it was all too much. Beauty and skincare are categories of my spending and consumption that are possibly most desperately in need of an overhaul. 

I am particularly low-maintenance when it comes to makeup. Even when my skin was not in particularly good condition, I elected only to wear makeup on occasional weekends when going out. I will likely wear makeup more often for work, but on most work days I only use concealer, a little bit of tinted moisturizer if necessary, eyeliner, and setting powder. 

In terms of skincare, most of the problem came from stockpiling excessively to take advantage of sales or other promotions. I plan to continue with my fairly extensive routine (the cost of which I calculated and estimated here), but all that stockpiling last year allows me to get away with very few purchases in the next few months. 

Planned Purchases for 2015 (Makeup) *indicates products that replace items I will use up

• *1 concealer
• *1 tinted moisturizer
• *1 translucent setting powder
• 1 lipstick (a "my lips but better" type shade for work)
• 1 new eyeliner brush 
• 1 lip brush? 

Planned Purchases for first half of 2015 (Skincare) *indicates products that replace items I will use up

• *2-3 dozen sheet masks (already purchased about 2 dozen)
• *1 eye cream or anti-aging serum
• 1 sleeping pack/mask
• 1 bottle of the P50 Biologique Recherce to try? 

Things I Didn't Buy

In the last few weeks, I've been thinking less about shopping. It's something that some minimalist bloggers describe as a welcome and natural side effect of their approaches (The Nife en L'air alludes to it in this post and has described it in other posts), though I never imagined that anything resembling it could happen to me. Yes, I try to apply  minimalist principles, but my primary motivations are decidedly "un-minimalist": (1) managing my finances and (2) a desire to buy fewer but nicer things while still respecting my budget constraints. My motivations are, in short, still about acquiring stuff. 

Online window-shopping is one of my tried and true ways of whiling away free time or time spent in boring classes (not a good habit, I know). I like clothes and pretty things, so I derive enjoyment from browsing, even when I had no interest in buying. In the past few weeks, I've found myself window-shopping less and less. It's become a bit boring. Because I don't generally go shopping in person, despite being a New Yorker with easy public transit access to most shops, it means that I haven't been shopping much at all. 

Of course, I would be speaking too soon if I actually claimed to have fully entered a state of mind where I don't shop. So far this year, I've been less productive than I hoped with working out (I blame the harsh winter), cooking, and reading, which, when combined with my graduate student senioritis, results in a lot of underutilized time. In the past, I sometimes use dshopping (especially at Sephora online) to deal with stress or boredom. This time, after a two-week or so period of not window-shopping, I found myself getting antsy, which resulted in my filling shopping carts at both Uniqlo and Loft's online shops. 

Most of these items were things that I could enjoy and use, provided they fit well, but none of them complied with my shopping fast rules. You'll notice that I generally do some ex post facto rationalizing about my purchases, but that would have required more stretching than usual. The vast majority of the items didn't work, and the whole experience of shopping again just for the sake of browsing and buying wasn't much fun.

The Subscription Box Model

A MM. Lafleur bento via Crain's.

EDIT 11/22: Though not one of the subscription services discussed here, Adore Me, a lingerie startup with a subscription component, recently settled with the FTC for $1.3 million due to questionable practices surrounding their subscription service. As r/femalefashionadvice commenters noted, they are hardly the only ones with dubious cancellation practices, so buyer beware!

One quick initial note: I suspect that this topic is only of direct relevance to those based in the US. I'm not familiar with any international subscription box-based shopping or rental services (something like Rent the Runway ("RTR") Unlimited, Rocksbox, MM. Lafleur's Bentos, LeTote, or Stitch Fix). As far as I can tell, Americans' reliance on e-commerce and the liberal availability of free shipping is something that's rather unique to here, so subscription shopping services would be less likely to take off elsewhere.

Conceptually, it always seemed to me that subscription-based shopping or rental services, whether for clothes or beauty, must be rather... un-frugal and maybe inherently likely to lead to waste. The customer is essentially paying to accumulate unwanted and unnecessary items (particularly in the beauty box context such as with Birchbox or Ipsy, where samples can't be returned). Of course, it's possible to price it in a way that's "worth it" for some customers. Birchbox used to have a generous points system that allowed easy redemptions for full-size products. Back when I first started this blog, when I still wore costume jewelry frequently, I might have thought Rocksbox was worth it (currently ~$21/month to rent three pieces from the Gorjana or Kendra Scott price point, with $21 credit/month to apply to a purchase). Regardless of whether it's "worth it", however, it's still a monthly delivery of items one didn't specifically shop for or pick out, so by definition, nothing in the delivery is going to be a well planned and carefully thought out purchase, even if with most of the clothing services, one can return unwanted things or things that don't fit.  

Barely two days after I mentioned how much my fellow college alums and I were complaining about Ann Taylor, they released a new subscription/rental service called Infinite Style. It's more in the RTR Unlimited model than the Stitchfix model, though, well, if you weren't happy with Ann Taylor's offerings before, this service certainly doesn't address that. Infinite Style costs $95/month for three items at a time, with as many returns as you like, and they'll dry clean items you ship back, as well as provide a discount if you want to keep something. (RTR Unlimited is $159/month for four items at a time, switched for new things whenever, which isn't really that much more for a higher end "closet" to choose from, though I don't think you can "buy" from there.)

Honestly, and I've also thought this on the rare occasions where I've considered standard RTR to rent a gown for a formal occasion (which would have cost at least $140 per rental for anything I liked), clothing rentals are really expensive, especially when compared to how much I actually spend  on shopping for keeps. $95/month is $1140/year to keep one's closet awash in Ann Taylor which just seems... wacky. I'm really not sure what the target audience is, especially with the recent design and quality woes. Especially since it'd likely cost less than half the yearly price to build a sufficient Ann Taylor and Loft work wardrobe you can keep (without adding in suiting, at least).

As for shopping subscription services like the MM. Lafleur Bentos or Stitch Fix, I've always been weirded out by their marketing, the idea that one might pay a company to pick out items for you, and that's somehow helpful or meaningfully time-saving. MM. LaFleur's tagline of being for women with "Better Things to Do" than shop, for instance, doesn't resonate with me, even though I definitely work too much and have very little extra time or mental energy left for other things, including cleaning my apartment or regularly cooking my meals. I probably derive significantly more enjoyment from the act of shopping than the average person (it's part of why all previous shopping fast attempts failed spectacularly in incredibly short order). I probably also spend a lot more time thinking about my personal style and what items work for me than most consumers. So shopping isn't hard or stressful in the least for me, and, in fact, I probably rely on it overmuch as a form of stress relief.

I do get exasperated when my "safe bet" brands start deteriorating in quality and utility, and it does make shopping significantly more annoying, but, well, I don't think most of the subscription shopping services deliver excellent value for one's money either. (Stitchfix always struck me as sending along overpriced lower-end Nordstrom-reject type stuff and MM. LaFleur is just really expensive.)

Anyway, I recently went to a MM. LaFleur showroom and will have some separate thoughts about that in an upcoming post (spoiler alert, I made two purchases, but it was maybe a little "too much, too soon" in terms of moving to a higher price point than I'm used to for workwear, so I'm not confident I made the best shopping decisions). For now, I will say that, for my body shape and given what MM. LaFleur generally offers, a lot of unlined dresses and no petite sizing, particularly after taking into account the extremely substantial-for-me price point, I'd probably have an extremely low Bento box success rate.

How do you feel about subscription boxes or shopping services, or clothing rental services? Any past experiences with them*, either good or bad?

*My only actual subscription box experience was with Julep, back when I had a nail polish phase in law school. It was a total waste of money, and also a massive pain and a half to cancel. Back then, they required calling in to cancel, and often still charged for boxes after a Julep representative confirmed the cancellation by phone. In the end, I had to get a chargeback from the bank, though Julep also refunded the charge a week or two later. The whole thing was incredibly sloppy at best, actually shady at worst. It probably left me predisposed to being very anti-subscription service. 

2017 Shopping Budget Roundup

Presently feeling very uninspired about how I'd like to dress. I suppose what death by elocution posts, like these recent images, are usually the closest thing. My actual wardrobe on workdays is mostly dresses like in this post with whatever shoes, coat, and legwear are appropriate for the temperature.

Happy new year to all! I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and that better things will come in 2018. Today's post is a reflection on last year's fashion spending and my plans for this year's budget. (See my equivalent posts for 2016 here and 2015 here.) A separate "best buys" and "worst buys" post is also coming in the next week or two.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

Fashion Budget 2017 (and Earlier) 

Towards the end of the year, it became very clear that I wasn't going to come in under my planned maximum shopping budget of $1800 for 2017. Indeed, I sailed way past that number, coming in at $2883.12 for the year. I'd accumulated a backlog of things I felt I needed for work, and also indulged in some things that I thought were pretty. Note that, as with other years, I didn't track things like underthings and socks, though those are a negligible expense most years. Now that I've been blogging for three years, and closely tracking my shopping for most of that time, I have quite a bit of data on my own shopping to analyze. For the last few years I've spent:

• 2015: $2729
• In hindsight, this was a silly number for someone who was a student most of that year. When I started this blog, I was an often-foolishly extravagant student. Even if I had read minimalism blogs for a while, and used the combination of You Need a Budget and KonMari-style decluttering to great effect in cutting down other categories of unconscious, impulsive spending, getting my fashion spending and shopping under control has been a longer, ongoing process, one that can be charted through my history of monthly budget posts. Even by the middle of 2015, I thought there was progress, though it's not been completely linear. Also, to this day, I'm still far from immune to sudden unwise shopping impulses, that sometimes leave me rather befuddled later on, if I end up ordering and keeping the item.
• 2016: $1545.99 + $400 = $1945.99
• I did my budget a little differently in 2016, with a tighter limit than 2015, but no limit for an "off budget" pair of work shoes and a new suit. I wanted to leave myself open to buying, say, a Brooks Brothers suit or something more expensive. I ended up with J.Crew Factory suits and the Cole Haan Catalina Wedges instead, which were within the average range of what I could reasonably spend. By the end of the year, I generally felt like I had a good handle on my shopping, with no particularly noteworthy mistakes. Now, with the benefit of additional time, I see that a few more purchases proved to be less wise, my Everlane Modern Point shoes, for instance. They just won't break in, and are a little odd to walk in. As it turns out, the Ann Taylor and Loft sweaters from that year also held up very poorly. Mysterious holes abound, after very few washes. 
• 2017: $2883.12 
• I feel like I backslid a bit this year in terms of my progress with more conscious shopping. It may be understandable, as my lifestyle and work wardrobe needs went through major changes. My first biglaw firm was a permissive business casual environment, where I rarely saw anyone I worked with (we conferred by phone or email), and it was going to be a while before I actually needed business formal. As I got my new job quite late, I generally shopped as if I was going back. The new place is ostensibly similar in dress code, but because it's much smaller, I don't feel like pushing the envelope as much towards the casual end of the spectrum. I have business-formal occasions significantly more often. It was a big change, and I addressed it with a lot of shopping. 

Shopping-Related "Growing Pains" 

This past year, I also felt afflicted by some "growing pains" in terms of knowing which retailers or brands I could rely on. Out of the many fashion-interested, minimalism-leaning bloggers out there, I generally feel like one of the less discerning in terms of where I shop. I've gone on record saying that I thought many criticisms of "fast fashion" being so low quality as to actually be unwearable after a season or two were overblown. Only a year ago, I said I actually preferred fast fashion-y sweaters from Loft for work, because machine-washable unfussy-ness was really important to me. I should have issued a retraction sooner because, well, all the Loft and Ann Taylor sweaters I bought that year held up terribly, even as pieces from longer ago are still mostly fine, and continue to be in weekly rotation.

It left me feeling adrift, because those brands had been a mainstay of my work wardrobe since I started needing one. They were fine-ish as recently as 2014, but suddenly are not fine at all in terms of quality, value for money, and design. (It doesn't help that they have both leaned hard into cold shoulders, oddly placed ruffles, and strange sleeve details.) I don't know where to look to next for my work clothing needs.

I enjoy online window shopping for recreation. It's fun to browse pretty things, even items that don't fit into my lifestyle. For better or worse, because it sometimes leads to impulsive ordering (and tons of returns), it brings me joy, and I used to get a good amount of that joy from Loft, Ann Taylor, J.Crew, and the like. Other people generally got fed up with those brands and their quality issues much sooner than I, but by now, even I see it, how between the design choices and the quality problems, there's barely a single item per season that I could even bring myself to order and try on. Combine that with the sheer volume of sale emails, where that 40% off absolutely everything sale is no longer a rare thing, that I might need to wait a month or longer for in order to snag something particular, and I end up even more confused as a customer. It also makes their product feel even cheaper, knowing that they definitely plan to sell it all at 40% off or more.

Once my current set of work staples, all those Ann Taylor and Loft dresses, wears out (which should take far more than a year), I'm not sure what I'll do to refill it. I haven't gotten around to writing about my MM.LaFleur shopping experience, but spoiler alert, it's not that (mostly petite-unfriendly, generally overpriced). Talbots doesn't seem like the right direction, and I find Brooks Brothers stodgy, and difficult to shop from online to boot. Most people in my demographic who used to buy Theory haven't been impressed with their value for money proposition for a while, nor is their sizing likely to work for me anyway. In short, I'm at a loss.

Fashion Budget 2018

For 2018, I have two shopping-related goals, first to shop much less in terms of total number of items acquired, and second to, when finally choosing to buy something, have some of the "joy" back, to think that this item is beautiful, and that I am really enthusiastic about it. My closet is in a good place, with all of my actual needs, save for a pair of jeans, currently fulfilled by items that are in pretty good shape. Any new shopping I do will really just be for "fun", unless something unexpectedly gets worn out and needs replacing. I haven't felt that instant excitement and "wow" factor I'm hoping for with too many items in the last year, maybe just that Marc by Marc Jacobs hobo (similar) and the Ted Baker wrap coat.

It's still helpful to me to keep an absolute upper limit on my shopping in mind for the year, so it's tentatively $3000/year (approximately $250/month, though I never worry month to month as long as I stay under for the year). It's a luxurious, indulgent budget, even as a private sector attorney, but I'm secretly actually hoping to come in significantly under, while still finding a small number of things I really enjoy. I'm not due for, or particularly inclined to desiring, any big ticket items for now, no super-fancy handbags or coats, so significantly under the maximum should be possible.

Any ideas on where to look next for workwear staples? Anyone else feel like the number of sales and promotions have gotten entirely out of control, even compared to this time last year, when sales were already rampant? The reliance on discounting and the extent to which customers have been trained to wait for sales are hardly new phenomenon, though it still feels like a growing trend with some specific mall brands that didn't used to do it quite as often. 

2018: My Year of Somewhat Excessive "Joy" in Shopping

2018 has been quite a shopping year for me, to say the least! Although I track my fashion-related purchases and spending monthly, I'm not always good at keeping an eye on the big picture as I go along. It's only now, since November, that I've started looking back and feeling a bit sheepish, like I've probably shopped too much.

In total, I spent $4016.51 this year on 45 items (3 secondhand, all others new) for my wardrobe, as broken down further below. As a reminder, my total shopping expenditures for the past several years, since I started tracking, are roughly $2729 (2015), $1945.99 (2016), and $2883.13 (2017). I generally exclude activewear, sleepwear, underthings, and socks from this count, partially because I find them terribly boring, and mostly because I don't have a particular problem with overbuying them. Those are all negligible expenses most years.

Clothes (20 pieces) ·      10 cardigans ·      5 dresses ·      2 pairs jeans ·      1 jacket ·      1 shirt/blouse ·      1 sweater

Shoes (5 pairs) Jewelry (9 pieces) ·      4 necklaces ·      4 pairs earrings ·      1 bracelet

Accessories (11 pieces) ·      4 pairs tights ·      3 handbags ·      2 scarves ·      1 wallet ·      1 pair gloves

I probably should have anticipated that I could easily overindulge when I set myself up with so few rules and guidelines this year, especially when one of the three guidelines was the extremely open-ended suggestion that I rediscover "joy" in my shopping. The other two directives sounded strict on the surface, the first was a general budget of $250/month, or $3000/year (which I've sailed right past), and the other was the goal of buying fewer total items overall (which may have been a silly thing to set when that's not a metric I actually keep track of directly, though it's easy enough to go back through my records and calculate the number). Unfortunately, I've never been great about sticking to more quantifiable, concrete limits to my shopping if I feel that my finances are otherwise well-managed.*

Incidentally, and I'm fairly proud of this, I'm now up to making ~$3500/month in student loan payments (resulting in full repayment approximately 3.5 years from now if I maintain that rate). Sadly, I still owe ~$142,000 in student loans (refinanced for 2.6% interest), and have a net worth in the negative five figures, after approximately 15 months of repaying those loans in earnest while also adding to my savings and investments (after roughly two years where my efforts were a wash). Alas, law school is a heck of an expensive undertaking!

Seeking "Joy" in Shopping

It may sound absurd for someone with minimalist-ish aspirations to focus on getting "joy" from shopping as their main goal for an entire year, but that has always been the focus of my particular brand of wardrobe-related minimalism-ish. Ideally, I'd maintain a small and tightly-edited wardrobe of well-loved pieces that I'm thrilled to wear, and then I use them until they're so worn out that they're no longer presentable. Then I'd replace them with something I hopefully enjoy just as much, rinse and repeat. (Plus, when I buy things that aren't quite what I actually wanted or had in mind, I end up dissatisfied and wanting to shop again and again for something else that's closer to whatever ideal item I was thinking of in the first place, as I alluded to recently.)

Actually getting to that small and tightly edited wardrobe is much easier said than done, of course. All these years, I've felt that my work wardrobe needs are a major obstacle. I have a much harder time editing my work wardrobe, there are lots of things I hate wearing (almost all blazers, for instance), but I still need them sometimes, particularly for court. I'm also much more fickle about items I buy solely for work, buying many iterations of things (like all those sweater blazers) to try and find a happy medium of items I think are comfortable, that I enjoy wearing, and that fit in well and are proper for the more conservative business-casual dress codes that govern the NYC-area white collar workplaces I've experienced in my career thus far. I used to joke that law firm business casual dress codes here are "casual business casual", because a lot of women associates are fashionable and push the style envelope a bit at the office, but the general NYC law firm business casual dress code is still quite conservative, relative to business casual dress codes in many other cities or industries. At the end of the day, we still have a lot of rules, some of them quite restrictive.

The main reason I set that "rediscover joy in my shopping" goal for 2018 was that I felt terrible about several mistake purchases in 2017 that I was never going to wear before I resold them. I'd thought I was completely over making such mistakes, given that I hadn't made any in 2016. Knowing myself and my habits, it seemed like the easiest way to solve the problem (given that I expected to have a solid handle on my finances otherwise) was to give myself more freedom to buy things I truly loved, and that brought me joy because they're beautiful and make me feel awesome when I wear them.

And I do hope that people won't think unkindly of me for taking great joy in beautiful clothes or accessories, that people won't think me excessively materialistic in a way that casts doubt on my overall character, or something. Longtime readers can probably guess that I have a few insecurities about this general thing. I'm always self-conscious about how lots of people out there could, from either the minimalism or frugality perspectives, be critical of someone who gets as attached to or excited about material goods as I sometimes am, and who spends accordingly.

Please follow the link below for some thoughts on my best and worst purchases of 2018, and my tentative plans for next year's approach to shopping, which will hopefully be more restrained. Also, best wishes for the new year to all, and thank you again for reading along here at Invincible Summer!

June Shopping Reflections

Most of my time these days is spent on studying, which at least allows for some procrastination (and online shopping). I'll be done by this time next month, which is good, but there is also some trepidation about passing the exam.

The biggest "purchase" this month was that pair of L.L. Bean boots I ordered in March. With that factored in, I'm well over my $250 fashion budget for June. Once I put everything together, though, I'm also under the $1500 budget for the first six months of the year. In a few days, I'll post a separate "progress report" with the calculations and some thoughts about my larger approach to budgeting and shopping, which I'm excited about.

Because I don't intend to worry too much about the month to month budget as long as I'm under the numbers for the year, I'm pretty happy with the amount of shopping I'm doing. I cannot, in good faith, say that I have adhered to the "shopping fast" rules that I set for myself in January, which was probably foreshadowed by my budget post that very first month. Still, I am a much more thoughtful shopper now than I was this time last year, which is a good thing.

It seems that I like pretty things (mostly dresses) too much to be particularly minimalist in how I approach shopping for clothes. I promise that I haven't fully lost touch with the minimalist-ish notions that initially inspired me to start blogging here. I just have to retool my approach, and think a little bit more about "wants" versus "needs." More on that in a few days!

Fashion - (TOTAL: $373.86)

• Madewell Silk Overlay Cami Dress - $54.36* - It was final sale, which was a risk. The shape looks like something that wouldn't for a more busty figure because of the overlay detail at the chest, but I actually like this. Because the skirt also hangs fairly loose, my figure still looks balanced. It mimics a shift dress shape with surprisingly little of the awkward boob-tent effect that can happen with those. The lining is polyester though, which is not ideal for summer.
• Ann Taylor Floral Eyelet Dress - $56.55* - I posted about this dress a while ago and snagged it during a particularly good additional percent off sale promotion this month. The regular 6 ended up being the best size for me as the 4 was a bit snug and the fabric doesn't really stretch. 
• Panache Underwire Sports Bra - $73.95* - I ordered similar items from Wacoal and DKNY and liked this best. It is very expensive for activewear, I know, but I don't think it'd be possible to go that much cheaper and still get something that is both available in my size and prevents unwanted movement during high-impact type cardio. 
• L.L. Bean Boots with Thinsulate and Goretex - $189.00 - I've been waiting for these for a while, and I'm excited to finally have them even if winter is still months away. They don't run as large as expected, though that might just be my wide feet. 

Beauty - (TOTAL: $11.00)

• Biore Aqua Rich Sunscreen - $11.00* - Although I quite like the Elta MD one I reviewed recently,  I've also been interested in trying this one because of recommendations that I've seen online. 

*Indicates that price includes estimated California state sales tax. I normally do my shopping in New York, where I'm generally not charged a sales tax because many items are exempt. 

Linking up with Franish and the other budgeting bloggers again this month! I always have fun seeing how everyone else approached their shopping. 

Sunday Reading: On Shopping Bans, Fasts, and Freezes

via Racked

By now, almost everyone has likely read Ann Patchett's New York Times piece on her "Year of No Shopping". My reaction to the piece was initially more skeptical than I expected, given that it aligns perfectly with my interest in "minimalism-ish", as well as my fondness for lighter, more accessible (and not necessarily comprehensive) introductions to bigger, difficult topics. For instance, I love Marie Kondo's first book, even if, by most standards, it's a "baby steps only" introduction to only a portion of the ideas that fall under the minimalism umbrella. In the personal finance area, I'm fine with beginners' books, and I'm not sure most people, myself included, need much more than that. 

First things first, there's nothing wrong with the piece itself. It's well-written, not at all annoying or preachy, and by introducing a broad audience to the idea that less is more, and that we likely all need  far less than we currently consume, it's doing positive work. At the same time, I was taken aback by just how... easy she made it seem. It wasn't even just a fashion shopping ban! By late January, she had made it broader. As she says, "while I couldn’t buy clothing or speakers, I could buy anything in the grocery store, including flowers. I could buy shampoo and printer cartridges and batteries but only after I’d run out of what I had. I could buy plane tickets and eat out in restaurants. I could buy books." Sensible enough, not the most restrictive, but far more than just a fashion shopping ban. 

I suppose my main reason for skepticism is that I'm not sure a shopping ban or shopping fast, any set of what's likely to be somewhat arbitrary rules for an arbitrary period of time, is going to be the best way to get the benefits that she describes.

First, there were some lessons on "wants" versus "needs", how "If you want something, wait awhile. Chances are the feeling will pass" and "Once I got the hang of giving shopping up, it wasn’t much of a trick. The trickier part was living with the startling abundance that had become glaringly obvious when I stopped trying to get more. Once I could see what I already had, and what actually mattered, I was left with a feeling that was somewhere between sickened and humbled. When did I amass so many things, and did someone else need them?" This is where the enthusiastic KonMari fan in me comes in, I suppose, because by early 2015, having gone through a round of KonMari decluttering (which worked for everything but my closet, which I had decluttered many times before, and from which I still haven't let go of everything I don't actually wear, much of which I haven't in fact worn since 2015), I felt like I'd already learned that lesson, as to everything but the things in my closet.

Post-KonMari, I gave away the majority of my furniture and various other non-closet things when moving out after graduating law school. Since then, I've been careful and deliberate about new acquisitions of furniture, kitchen tools, all those sorts of things. Heck, I sometimes go too far. After our wooden cutting boards got permanently warped due to improper maintenance, I agonized over whether to buy replacements, and which replacements to buy, for more than a year and a half before I felt like I knew what the right choice was, and how I'd care for the next set.

Second, she derived a related personal finance lesson from the experience, how, "[t]he things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass: We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details. . . . I came to a better understanding of money as something we earn and spend and save for the things we want and need." That sounds like what I experienced when I started budgeting, and tracking every single transaction, around the time I started blogging, using You Need a Budget (software that is now subscription-only, but the approach is simple and could be replicated in Excel). I wasn't always using YNAB properly, but that "better understanding" of money was there.

By tracking every transaction I quickly learned that some of my money was disappearing into a void, being spent on things I didn't want or need, a combination of (a) Sephora purchases as stress relief, often rounded out with an extra add-on item to get to the free shipping threshold, (b) Amazon purchases every time I thought of a new vague thing to try, and (c) Amazon and/or Drugstore.com (they had reliably great prices compared to brick and mortar drugstores in NYC) purchases to stock up unnecessary and excessive quantities of cleaning products and other household items, some of which I gave away when I moved out and some of which, in the case of more compact items like dish soap, I only finished using nearly two years later. So I stopped those things almost immediately, and it was easy because the purchases weren't adding real value to my life.

I suppose the other main reason for my skepticism was, in the end, that it sounded too easy. Given how long I've been reading minimalism blogs, it's probably not surprising that I've read tons of posts about shopping bans, fasts, and freezes over the years. Many of them were "no shopping" for months at a time long before KonMari was cool. And actually, over time, it often proves extremely difficult to simply stop shopping for any extended period of time. I've tried no less than twice, just as to my closet, with no success, though I have an occasional month of no shopping, once in a long while, usually because I was busy with something else (at that time, final exams). The most common "success" scenario I've seen is when someone looks back and realizes, several months on, that without even trying, they hadn't shopped for a certain length of time because they hadn't seen anything they liked, or because they were otherwise occupied.

Maybe there are lessons there, though, in how "easy" Patchett's essay made it seem. The way she writes it, she was much more gentle on herself than many of us tend to be, when there are slip-ups or exceptions made, which she describes as happening a few times. She didn't dwell on it, just moved on and continued working on the larger goal for the rest of the year. That's a useful mindset. Also, for the USA-dwellers among us, American society may be more consumerist, at least when compared to the other societies I'm familiar with. We have more in the way of "big box stores" or places like Costco, where we buy in bulk to save and, in the suburbs at least, more in the way of space to store the excess. If one's starting point is an average American consumption habit, then of course it'll be easier to scale down the shopping, and work on the backlog of soap, paper towels, and dental floss that's already in one's pantry or bathroom cabinet.

What did you think about Patchett's piece? When I started this entry quite a few weeks ago, I thought I'd have more to say, but as I kept reworking this draft, I realized I wasn't able to add much that was new to the discussion. Oh well! 

December 2018 Shopping Reflections

I hope that everyone has had a wonderful holiday! I've been spending time with my family in California, which has been great and relaxing, though, er, all of us also needed to work, whether from home or in the office, on Christmas Eve and starting again on the 26th. Not a big deal (in truth, we're not big Christmas people, we only ever do low-key, small things to celebrate, and as long as we're able to be together and eat some tasty food, it's all good!), and I'm personally very grateful to have a fast-paced, intellectually stimulating job that I enjoy, in which I'm always learning new things. 

With this post, I've rounded out my fourth year of tracking my shopping with these "monthly budget" posts. It's been great fun, and I like being able to look back at the additions to my closet, to try and analyze whether there are any trends I can identify. I'm also looking forward to writing my year-end shopping reflections, and getting started with year five of these shopping posts next month. Spoiler alert, though it's probably already quite obvious: I've gone a bit overboard this year with the shopping and how I approached it, I might even be planning to describe it with something rather dour-sounding, like the "year of excessive 'joy' in shopping and indulgence", or something like that. Although I'm typically skeptical about the "shopping fast" or "shopping ban" idea, I may even sort of be considering one. More on those thoughts in the following weeks!

There's no denying that this month's purchases were on the impulsive side. It'd been a long time since I'd had such an intense period at work, and I guess I learned that, when the chips are really down at the office, I'm far more likely to, er, deal with that and the resulting stress by shopping. I've always known that I probably have this tendency, but I don't think I've ever before been driven to the point where it went beyond excessive online window-shopping and browsing, to the point where work-related stress started playing what was likely a sizable role in my decisions to actually start putting in orders and keeping them.

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For instance, in the first week of December, I'd run out of my Wolford or Falke tights because I'd skipped doing laundry the previous weekend due to Thanksgiving travel. Thus, I reached for a pair of my old Uniqlo Heattech tights instead, which are durable and used to be great until they changed something about the material that makes them much harder to stretch them and get them on (though the sizing feels the same as before once they're on). Just those extra few minutes of struggling with them in the morning actually, er, sort of made me feel sad, and had a slight diminishing effect on my mood. (When work stress gets bad, I can get a bit... weird about things.)

And it reminded me that I was, separately, also starting to really dislike my collection of cheap-y fleece-lined tights that I wear on the coldest days because the fabric can feel itchy; the waistbands roll down during the day; and some pairs prove far less durable than others, ripping or stretching out in a very short time, though they're all ostensibly the same product. (I've tried to shop for more expensive ones before, but couldn't find anything back then that was both well-reviewed and seemed to be a fully equivalent product.) It seemed to me, in the moment, that I worked too hard, for too many hours, to feel weighed down (even if only a little bit) by needing to wear tights that I hated, especially when they're an almost-daily work wardrobe staple for me for close to half the year.

The other purchases this month weren't driven as directly by moments of work-related stress, but I did feel like being so busy at the office made me more ready than usual to indulge my shopping-related impulses when they came up. I didn't have a lot of time or extra mental energy to really think through each of my other wants when they popped up suddenly, I was a lot more likely to just "go with my gut" and make a snap decision. That snap decision was usually to go ahead and make the order. And uh, it could have turned out "worse" in terms of buying excessively much. I had moved on from the disappointment of that forest green Halogen coat (now on sale) that was way too long for me by becoming intrigued with the idea of a cornflower blue coat instead (one could, perhaps, see this from my fall/winter fashion Pinterest board), and so I ordered one from Fleurette that was on sale at Nordstrom. Probably unsurprisingly, that regular sizing-only coat was also designed for a taller woman than myself. The sleeve and body length weren't quite as egregious as on the Halogen coat, but the lapels and single button both looked comically large on someone of my height and build. Plus the color did not suit my skin tone. That coat went straight back, leaving me with the below purchases for December:

Fashion - (TOTAL: $458.66)

• Falke Matte 50 Tights - $28.50 - During that stressful week, I decided to get new Falke tights because they, unlike Wolford, were included in a Bloomingdales sale. I bought a pair last year, and I wash and wear them (and the Wolford Pure 50s from around that time) once a week throughout fall and winter. They're all trustworthy old favorites at this point. I consider both kinds to be, for all practical purposes, largely identical, including for comfort (the waistband doesn't roll down or shift during the day) and durability (because I'm clumsy, I almost snag them on boot zippers or the edges of furniture rather frequently, and outside of one freak accident with a pair of my Wolford Neon 40s, which I consider my fault, all my Falke and Wolford tights have held up well). Do be careful of the size chart, I'm a size S for all the Wolfords I've tried, and generally am a size S or S/M in almost all other tights, but I'm a size M for these Falkes. 
• Falke Warm Deluxe Tights - $44.25 - While shopping for tights as a direct result of that stressful week, I decided it was also time to try and find a better quality and more expensive replacement for my fleece-lined tights. Out of all the Falke tights at Bloomingdales, these sounded like the closest thing. They're 80 denier, and are actually quite thick and warm, they're very close to fleece-lined tights. Alas, either because of how stretchy the material is or differences in the actual sizing, a size M in these (following their size chart again) is definitely too big. And because they're too big, I have issues with them shifting during the day. So these have turned out to not be a great purchase, but I'll still use them because, well, on balance, they're not worse than those fleece-lined tights that also have issues, and I don't generally think it reasonable to try and return used tights.
• Lo & Sons Saffiano Leather Pearl, pacific blue - $173.60 - Like many of my peers and blog-friends,  I'm quite familiar with Lo & Sons, and immediately understood the appeal of their focus on practical travel and/or commute-friendly bags when I first learned about them. Previously, though, none of their items fit my particular preferences and needs. When traveling, I'm content with my Longchamp Neo tote as a handbag and carry-on item (in combination with my old North Face backpack from law school as my other carry-on). If I'm going to switch to another travel handbag, it'll probably be to a small backpack. For commuting, I simply don't carry enough (no gym clothes, change of shoes, lunchbox, reusable water battle, and not even a laptop) to want something like the OMG, though I've seen many women law students happily use them. I'd seen many rave reviews about the Pearl being a near-perfect medium-sized handbag, but had never liked the colors. Plus, I was perfectly happy with that already ancient and well-loved when I bought it Coach City I've had for nearly a decade. (That bag came with major signs of wear, including several noticeable discolored, worn-out spots, it's in no shape to be carried in anything but the most casual settings.) Recently, Michelle mentioned that the new colors for the Pearl were intriguing. That reminded me that I'd really liked the pacific blue color when I first saw it, it looked almost identical to the dark denim shade of that Coach Rogue (sold out, of the current colors, dark turquoise is the most similar) I love, despite it's weight and slight impracticality for work. The rest, as they say, is history. When I ordered this Pearl, I also tried the Coach Saddle 23 in dark denim, as it was the color I was so attracted to (both bags seemed to be a similar size), but I found that, with its adjustable straps and more easily accessible compartments, the Pearl is by far the more practical and functional bag for me. 
• MM. LaFleur Saint Ambroeus, charcoal - $212.31 - (available in black and navy) This purchase is the one I'm most sheepish about, because I've definitely written before about why I specifically shouldn't buy it, and more broadly, about how I found MM. LaFleur generally overpriced and not great for my body shape or height. Even if this "jardigan" is a "pretend blazer", a genre I clearly love beyond reason, given the excessive number of sweater blazers I've purchased in recent memory, I had already explained why this wasn't a great one for me. Part of why I changed my mind was that, with the J.Crew Sophie and Juliette sweater blazers (both worn here), I bought them knowing I likely didn't dare machine-wash or even hand-wash them (I have a bad history with J.Crew sweaters shrinking seemingly on contact with cold water, even if they never saw the inside of a dryer). Thus, it was clear that not being machine-washable was no longer a big criteria for me, and that removed one of the big obstacles with the Saint Ambroeus. Also, there was a bit of artificial scarcity-ish going on. In the years I've been following MM. LaFleur, I'd noticed they rarely bring back colors outside of black or navy, so when this previously sold out gray (more versatile and useful for me than black because most of my work dresses are black) popped back in stock in my size, one thing led to another. Like I said last year, this item doesn't look quite as good on me as on their models because I'm so busty, the lines of it get thrown off a bit, but er, I might have factored in that this fit issue could, perhaps, be improved in a few months (which isn't wise because it's probably just as likely for the fit to be made worse than before). Ack, that irrational "artificial scarcity-ish" fear of never having another chance to get a sought-after color or item can be a heck of a thing!

How was your holiday? Do you have anything you're particularly excited to search for in the post-Christmas sales? I myself should probably stay far away from any more sales, given how much I've indulged myself this year, and this month in particular. Is anyone else a Lo & Sons fan? As Michelle alluded to, when it comes to bags like those from Lo & Sons or Dagne Dover, ones designed with "women on the go" in mind, they do tend to be expensive. But for many women (including many entry-level professionals or graduate students), the price (including from secondhand options) may well be worth it because the bags are practical and professional-looking, and there's not very much in the way of affordable alternatives that check both those boxes. Oh, and does anyone know what I mean about "artificial scarcity"-type feelings throwing off their, er, shopping judgment?

Happy holidays to all, and best wishes for the forthcoming new year!