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Ferret out forgotten fashions

By SHARON FINK
Published December 31, 2005

It's worse than a New Year's Eve hangover. Worse than December weight gain. Worse than the family-gathering migraine.

It's holiday shopping burnout.

With visions of stampeding bargain hunters dancing in your head, you vow to buy only online for the rest of your life. Then when you look at your bank balance and credit card bills, you vow never to buy again. Period.

You'll get over it.

Until you do, there is a way to shop at home that doesn't involve spending money. It's shopping your closet: Take a ruthless look at the clothes, shoes and accessories you have, figure out what really works and what doesn't, expunge-clean-repair as needed, and end up with a more useful, more practical, more wearable wardrobe.

Easier said than done, yes. But guidance and support are available without having to leave your home. Check out these Web sites for tips on how to improve your style with what you've got. And save your energy and money for the spring shopping season.

www.dressingwell.com: Mary Lou Andre, who owns a wardrobe management and fashion consulting company in Massachusetts, is a longtime advocate of closet shopping. Her book Ready to Wear Perigee Books, 2004, $16.95 begins with 50-some pages dedicated to it.

"We wear 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time, with that 80 percent of clothing we don't wear taking up room and making you crazy," Andre said in an interview last year. "It's definitely all about . . . tapping into your own common sense. (Be) really clear about your lifestyle, your likes and dislikes, your comfort level."

On her Web site, go to the "Ask Mary Lou" section and click on the link to question archives. For closet shopping advice, click on "Help! I have too many clothes."

www.realsimple.com: Real Simple magazine has gained a following with its basic approach to dealing with almost anything life can throw at you.

Its Web site recommends closet shopping a little at a time, as you put away laundry: "Grab an armful of clothes that you haven't worn since you can't remember when and try them on in front of a full-length mirror. Put the ones that you would want to buy again back into circulation; donate the rest."

For its tips, at the home page, click on "Organizing"; under "Explore By Room," click on "Closets"; click on "Organize Your Closets," then "Clutter-Buster: Shop in Your Closet."

www.ehow.com: "Clear Instructions on How To Do just about Everything," the home page says. It is so dedicated to clarity, it presents four ways to closet shop, one for each season. For the Florida lifestyle, concentrate on the ones for spring and summer.

Some tips direct you to buy something ("Consider purchasing a knee length skirt in a bold, colorful print pattern"), but for closet shopping, use it to help you focus on what you have. Maybe a skirt like that is buried in your closet's netherworld, or you have one that doesn't fit but could with alterations. Or you have one you haven't worn in five years and finally realize it's too ugly to ever wear again.

From the home page, click on "Personal Care/Style," then "Fashion," then scroll down to "Looking Your Best."

www.simplestyleonline.com: This site recommends one approach that is for only the strong of heart, the truly desperate or a reality TV show: "If you need to, enlist the help of a friend or significant other who will tell you the truth about what should stay and what should go!"

On the home page at the left, click on "Click to view this month's issue of The Simple Style File."

-- Sharon Fink can be reached at 727 893-8525 or fink@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 2, 2006, 12:02:43]