This article is taken from the February 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Yo, bitches. As 2023 takes shape, might I recommend a radical fashion idea? Buy nothing, take a break, collect yourself, take stock, impose a palette cleanse, find out who you are, solve world peace etc. Just don’t acquire a single garment.

Instead, sort clothes, mend clothes, rid yourself of clothes. Think about clothes, but don’t purchase the fuckers. Automatically, you’re going to be a lot more fashionable. And the longer you keep this up, the more bracingly au courant you will be.

Why? Well, you know, the planet, financial apocalypse, and stuff

I say this because I’m going to be doing it, and, man, I am cool. So cool, in fact, that I’m going to be going clothes sober for the entire year in a breaking no-/ exceedingly low-buy style era. Why? Well, you know, the planet, financial apocalypse, and stuff. Also my whack-a-mole addictive tendencies that over eight years of sobriety have shifted from vino to Vestiaire Collective.

Records suggest that, last year, the majority of my clothes purchasing took place second-hand, via Felt (feltlondon.com), HEWI (hardlyeverwornit.com), Sign of the Times (wearesott.com), Arch Label Agency (archlabelagency.com), Vestiaire (vestiairecollective.com), Oxfam online (onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk), and eBay.

In doing this, I was able to acquire designs I could otherwise in no way afford: by Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Roger Vivier, Gucci, Moschino, Tod’s, Stella McCartney, Simone Rocha and Issey Miyake. And even brands that I invested in new — The Vampire’s Wife, Hayley Menzies, NRBY, Me & Em, Aspiga, Essential Antwerp, Jigsaw, And Other Stories, Zara and Mango — I first checked out, and frequently bought “new vintage” (translation: from some other bird).

In this, I am not atypical. Gen Z emit scorn at acquiring anything that hasn’t lain festering in someone else’s wardrobe. Interest in “deadstock” — unused fabric and/or unworn items rediscovered by vintage dealers — has never been more feverish. While, even what was previously that much-flogged, fast-fashion clothes horse, Love Island, recently enjoyed a recoupling with eBay, after first pairing off in summer ’22, when the online site rigged-out said island’s pulling posse in second-hand threads.

Gen Z emit scorn at acquiring anything that hasn’t lain festering in someone else’s wardrobe

And what a coup this was. For this pairing directly influenced buying habits. Research by ITV demonstrated that 53 percent of viewers who were aware of the partnership purchased “pre-loved” garments during the series’ three-month run. Merely in the wake of the announcement of the union, back in May 2022, eBay received 1,600 percent more searches for “pre-loved clothes” compared with 2021, while Google quests for the same phrase were up 170 percent. And this is precisely the nipperish audience that previously would have turned up its nose at cruddy cast-off s.

My pre-owned pash is obviously good, but not that good. I’m still an over-consuming, cloth-crazed maniac. My fixation is such that my consumption can even be ambient / subconscious: parcels arriving that I have no memory of purchasing.

And, then, there are those decidedly non-ambient periods of 4am online spiralling, in which a quest for the perfect silver shoes becomes a pit into which my insomnia can fall. I’m ashamed, exhausted, and pig sick of package processing.

As an alcoholic, I know what I must do: there are those of us who can’t moderate, and need to go cold turkey. And, so, this is me (largely) signing out of clothes shopping for 2023, imposing a no-, or rather, extremely low-buy on the coming year.

At 51, I have enough; hours spent on the thrill of the chase distracts me from availing myself of my sartorial cornucopia. I’ll endeavour to devote my time to styling rather than shopping, or “shopping my wardrobe,” as the fashion mavens have it.

As a rule-resistant psychopath, I’ll gamify things a bit: retaining the option of acquiring just a little via whatever funds I make from selling my outfits, thus reversing my eBay habit, and setting up my own circular sartorial economy. I’ll be (pathetically) gratefully accepting presents. Replacements will be permitted for genuinely worn-out