Invest in your wardrobe....

We express our personalities through what we wear....

In fact, that's how the world's most stylish women have always shopped.




 To bring the harsh reality home, consider this: A closet crammed with cheap, disposable clothes is more expensive than a wardrobe of well-made, long-wearing classics.

It comes down to the cost-per-wear formula. Take the cost of your garment, divide it by the number of times you wear it and that's what its actual value is.

Fashion consious women don't buy a lot of fast fashion; instead, they are famous for having a few well-made basics that they update with well-chosen accessories. They look inside other women's closets and wonder how on earth they manage to dress themselves with so much junk. Men don't typically buy a lot of fast fashion either. Instead, they often expect to get a decade's wear out of a coat or suit, so it has to be top quality -- and that's why menswear stores offer expensive, beautifully made clothes and complimentary tailoring.

Meanwhile, we women have been dressing ourselves in nasty, flimsy, scratchy, badly made and ill-fitting clothes, all for the sake of being on top of a trend that lasts about two minutes.

Sure, we want to have fun with fashion, and fast fashion can definitely be fun. And it's great for teens, who are still trying on new styles to learn what suits them best and have small allowances to pay for it in any case. But for the rest of us, shouldn't we know better by now? Shouldn't fashion be a bit more luxurious than this? Shouldn't it make us feel good? Shouldn't it be, well, nicer?

And yes, it can be expensive, but maybe it's time to bring back another outmoded concept: the idea of actually saving up to buy something special instead of racking up more on a whim and spend our income wisely.

This is a great time to begin investing in your wardrobe again. It's a great season to invest in the building blocks of a timeless wardrobe, in luxurious fabrics, beautiful colours and flattering fits. It's a great season to invest in creating your own unique style, and not following the same trends everyone else is.

It is, in short, a great season to invest in you....