Fashion

Dressing to Impress: How Accessories Can Help Complete Your Outfit and Keep Your Spending Down

Want to know how to keep your clothes shopping budget down and still stay ahead of the fashion curve? Well, in short, the secret comes in the form of accessories. The choice of a good selection of accessories can do wonders; firstly, they can help breathe life into your current wardrobe and also serve as a valuable addition to the new ensembles you are considering. 

It can be very difficult to constantly keep yourself ahead of the latest fashion trends, with every season offering a new range of clothing that you absolutely must have (or so you’re told by fashionistas everywhere), and frankly attempting to do will see you accumulate more fashions than you’ll ever need as well as a bank balance that will no doubt result in a call from your bank manager.

With these issues in mind, we’ve come up with what we hope will be some helpful and potentially essential advice. You’re welcome. 

Adaptable Accessories

While buying an endless number of outfits to keep in line with the seasonal trends might prove next to impossible, it’s worth noting that a strong set of accessories could prove very effective.

Personalized Jewelry

When it comes to great accessories that are statement items, personalized jewelry is a great way to bring in new options to your wardrobe. A stylish letter necklace, which either spells out your name or that of your loved ones (and perhaps children), is very much a fashionable item that is very trendy right now.

2021 was very much the year for custom-made jewelry with the likes of Rihanna, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and the Duchess of Cambridge wearing these regularly at events and therefore leading to fashion stores (online or offline) selling these by the bucketload. 

Cashmere Scarves and Gloves

Sometimes accessories can be very high-end items, and while cashmere scarves and gloves are expensive, they are worth it as they last for a very long time. There is a growing appeal for pricey items as a reaction to fast fashion (more on that later), pieces that last for a long time, and therefore the costs are well worth considering.

Another added bonus of these items is that cashmere is one of those styles and materials that will always be fashionable. While clearly, they are more relevant for the winter months, cashmere can be adaptable, and there are items that suit warmer months also.

Keeping Costs Down

There are many ways to keep your overall shopping budget down, here are just a few options that could help in this endeavor.

Thrift Stores

Fashion trends are almost always cyclical, which means that the latest trend has already been around once or twice. So the next time you see an article that pushes a particular accessory or style, visit your local thrift store, and you can buy the real thing, in other words, a second-hand item that is from the very era that the fashion trend is attempting to recreate.

Shopping in thrift stores is far more fun than going to a lifeless mall, and you will always find a bargain and items you never even considered, and the apparent benefit is the price as well as the unique nature of having a classic item.

Wait for Online Sales

First of all, if you want to buy items for less, then you should shop online where you are more capable of shopping around to find the items you want at a price that suits your budget.

With this in mind, maybe you should look to make the bulk of your purchases during online sales days like Black Friday. This can help you reduce costs even further.

Keep it Classic

When it comes to staying in fashion AND on budget, consider shopping for classics. Skinny jeans and Little Black Dresses (LBD) are types of clothing choices that will always be in fashion and therefore are well worth your hard-earned dollars.

Take Care of your Clothes, Wash Them Less Often

Sadly we live in an age that sees most of our clothing purchases being of the lower quality kind as this is what is mass-produced and offered to us. That means you have to take better care of these items or you won’t get the wear you need out of them. 

Wash them less often as this certainly decreases the shelf-life of poor-quality clothing. You don’t need to wash them after every wear unless, of course, they have been hideously scarred by some form of stain.

Don’t Follow Fast Fashion

When it comes to keeping your spending on clothing and accessory items down and helping to save the planet, stay clear of fast fashion. The term fast fashion basically refers to mass-produced items that are sold for a ridiculously low price, usually in stores designed to make you buy more and more things you didn’t even think you needed when you entered the store. 

These items are mass-produced, usually in unethical conditions, and are usually not going to last very long. The idea is that you end up buying loads of clothes, which you won’t wear often, and you’ll then buy more.

This isn’t a sustainable approach to fashion and is pretty much taking the uniqueness and originality out of the fashion industry. Try to avoid being dragged into this market, if at all possible, look to buy less but buy better. 

Need and not Want

Here’s a good tip, before you shop for any item, consider whether it’s what you actually need or want. To some of us, that may be a tricky disconnect, but it’s easy when you start to adopt it more frequently. 

Clearly, on occasion, what you want will become a pressing matter, but on the whole, we don’t shop for what we need, and that should be a key motivator. With this in mind, you can start by selecting a number of items, either in an online cart or an actual basket in a store, and then once you’ve collected all of these, think dispassionately about the merits of each. 

You’d be surprised how at a second glance, you can make pretty quick judgments on items, which is pretty much a clear sign that you don’t need that item after all.

Have Fun

Remember that getting new items to put together a great new look is supposed to be fun and not something you do just for the sake of it or because a fashion guru tells you so. Alter your mindset when it comes to your approach to fashion, and you’ll be surprised how much more you enjoy the process and how you’ll get closer to finding the real you. 

Piyushi

Blogger By Passion, Programmer By Love and Marketing Beast By Birth.

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