What if the key to finding your personal style was to stop shopping?
The No Buy Styling Course is finally here! Here's a sneak peak 👀
I’m officially three quarters of the way into my 365 no buy wardrobe challenge and i’m beyond excited (and equal parts nervous) to share that my No Buy Styling Course (aka the only styling course where you don’t have to buy anything for your wardrobe) is officially LIVE! (I’ve added a sneak peak video of the course at the bottom of this post)
I’m well aware that the premise of a no buy in of itself is a trend to some people, and there will no doubt be much discourse about why a no buy feels like a diet, in that it’s restrictive, but as I mentioned many times before, I went into my no buy as a fun experiment. I wanted to reconnect with my creativity. I was curious to see if feeling ‘satisfied’ with my wardrobe was even possible, better still, in awe of how hard it could work for me.
After 277 days of my no buy wardrobe challenge here’s what i’ve learned
Buying more stuff doesn’t make getting dressed any easier, in fact more times than not it’s the addition of more that leads to overwhelm and a discombobulated sense of personal style. The pieces you do love get forgotten about, while you inevitably buy more of the same. This was me before my no buy. I was forever in search of the item that would make me feel like I had cracked the perfect closet code and deep down a part of me believed shopping more would equate to being more stylish.
It’s easier to be creative when there are certain constraints. The truth is no amount of shopping can help you find your personal style and help you feel like the most stylish version of yourself if you haven’t yet explored what personal style means to you. Until you unlearn what you think being stylish is meant to look like (spoiler there isn’t a right way), it will feel empty and like you’re still trying to get a gold star from the it crowd. My no buy has solidified my sense of personal style, and helped me get clear on my own wardrobe values without that even being my main intention. I LOVE outfit repeating, I don’t save anything for best, and i’ve thoroughly enjoyed wearing the hell out of my clothes!
To find your personal style I believe you need to
Reconnect with your own creativity
Find what makes you feel cosy inside your own skin
Unlearn fashion rules you’ve held onto since opening your first fashion magazine
Shut off outside noise and opinions
Play in your wardrobe again
Notice how none of the above things list ‘shopping’?! It’s like the chicken before the egg situ, how can you shop for your wardrobe if you don’t even know what YOU like, outside of what you’ve been told you should? I would argue that when you prioritize doing the things above, shopping becomes the last part of the puzzle as opposed to the first. This way when you do shop, you make better shopping decisions while building a wardrobe that you love, one that works incredibly hard for you.
Maybe you already feel confident in your personal style? If that’s the case, doing a no buy is the perfect way to test drive your existing wardrobe to identify what (if any) gaps there are and utilize what you do have to its fullest potential, in a way that feels fun and creative to you. I promise you, you will surprise yourself in the best way! Rediscovering items I hadn’t been wearing and finding new ways to style them felt like winning the jackpot over and over again!
And look, i’m not anti shopping, I’ve just become more aware (note i’m a work in progress) how we’ve been set up to fail when it comes to building a wardrobe that we genuinely love, that works hard for us. I like nice things, but I also know that doing a weekly clothing haul won’t be what helps me find and solidify my understanding of personal style. It only adds to the confusion. It’s the menu with too many options that puts people in a constant state of decision paralysis, vs the menu with fewer, quality dishes.
I genuinely believe doing a no buy for any amount of time, whether that’s 30 days, 3 months or 365 days, can dramatically change the relationship to the pieces you do own, how you think about style, how you approach getting dressed and how you shop moving forward.
Why a no buy?
Doing a no buy challenge will help you reconnect with yourself and your wardrobe so you become the most stylish version of you without buying a single piece of clothing. My no buy challenge has changed my relationship to shopping. It’s reduced the impulsivity I used to feel to spend every time I saw someone share a haul. It was telling just how easily influenced I have been in the past. Increasing the time between seeing an item and adding it to cart, forced me to really think about an item and how it would contribute to what I already own. I’ve seen trends come and go that I can see with hindsight weren’t right for me or my wardrobe, knowing in the past I might have pulled the trigger on.
Not buying anything for my wardrobe for a certain period of time helped me confront some very painful truths, like the fact I had spent time in the past trying to ‘keep up with the Jones’ or have the latest ‘it’ bag in order to feel stylish or feel enough. I now have my own criteria to make better shopping decisions using my traffic light system and wishlist (both of which I share in the course), so I can hold myself accountable when it comes to my spending, what is entering my wardrobe and feel really good about anything I do add. My motto is ‘i’m not in a rush’. Building a wardrobe isn’t a race that you can or need to win.
Ultimately it comes back to creativity. Without a doubt my no buy challenge has made me infinitely more creative using what I have, vs obsessing over what I don’t have. I love being able to surprise myself with what I can come up with. No matter how many times I felt bored, or restless during my no buy, I was always to create something that felt new to me, using what I had. I could solve any problem because of the styling tools and philosophies I share in the course.
If creativity and enjoying what you do have in your wardrobe is your goal, then I wholeheartedly recommend trying a no buy challenge. The course i’ve created will walk you step by step how to prepare for your own no buy challenge, how to style your pieces and show you how to navigate those moments when temptation calls, as well as how to navigate the challenge once you finish.
My friends had been begging me to make a styling course for years, and I always had a feeling I would one day, when I knew how to do it my way. There have been times when i’ve questioned who am I to teach this, (hello imposter syndrome) and I could easily share how i’ve spent 16 years working in the fashion industry blah blah blah, trying to make my case, but at the end of the day, I just love getting dressed. It brings me a lot of joy, and I would love for others to reconnect to the joy on offer when you get dressed for you. For the most part I get my inspiration from everyday people, from people watching, not models and fashion magazines. The world doesn’t need another styling course with hard rules, or advice on what to wear in order to look thinner! And while you might not believe me yet, my hope is that after doing this course, you’ll also let go of the belief you need a brand new wardrobe in order to be the most stylish version of yourself.
You can find all the details on The No Buy Styling Course here. Enjoy a sneak peak around the course in the video below.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you love it as much as I have loved creating it. Thank you for reading.
Harry x
Congrats Harry! You’ve put so much work into this 🙌
Love this idea! Well done 👏🏼