People quite often ask me where I buy my clothes.
Sometimes friends ask where I found a particular coat or bag, or tell me that I always look fashionable and they wish they could find similar things.
The funny thing is, I don’t really have one place where I shop.
I buy a lot on Vinted. I buy things new too. I look at sales. Sometimes I spend weeks searching for one very specific thing, and sometimes I find something brilliant for €3 or €4.
I love clothes, and I genuinely enjoy shopping. I’m not trying to create a wardrobe where I never buy anything again 😀
But I have become much more interested in buying the right thing than simply buying more things.
I don’t want the cheapest wardrobe possible. I want a wardrobe I love without wasting money on things I don’t need.
And there is a difference.
1. I Usually Know What I’m Looking For Before I Start Shopping
One of the biggest changes I’ve made is trying to start with my wardrobe rather than with a shop.
Instead of opening Vinted or a retailer and thinking, What can I buy today?, I try to think about what would actually be useful.
My Levi’s jeans are a good example.
I really wanted a nice pair of Levi’s. I knew I wanted proper thick cotton denim, dark blue with orange stitching. The measurements were important too because I wanted a pair that would actually fit me properly.
It took quite a long time to find them.
Eventually I found exactly what I wanted on Vinted for €12.
And I love them.
This is why I’m quite happy to wait when I have something specific in mind. I would rather spend longer looking and eventually find something I really want than buy an almost-right version because it appeared first.
If you’re trying to make your wardrobe work better as a whole, I’ve also written about how to build a timeless capsule wardrobe in my Fashion section.
2. I Don’t Assume Second-Hand Is Always Better
I love Vinted. I buy and sell on it all the time.
But I don’t believe that everything has to be bought second-hand.
Sometimes buying new simply makes more sense.
I really like Sinsay for inexpensive basics, for example. Recently I bought three very simple cotton tops in different colours on sale for around €4–5 each.
The quality isn’t incredible, and I do think you have to look carefully because it can vary, but these particular tops are perfectly good for what I need. I’ll wear them plenty.
I also prefer buying things such as socks and underwear new.
The same applies to jewellery. I like wearing different earrings almost every day, so I’ll happily buy simple hoops and inexpensive costume jewellery from places such as Stradivarius if I like them and know I’ll wear them.
For me, intentional shopping doesn’t mean following a rule that says new = bad and second-hand = good.
It means thinking about what makes sense for the particular thing I’m buying.
Here I am wearing a cotton brown top I bought in Sinsay.
3. I Look at Quality Before I Look at the Bargain
When I’m shopping second-hand, I search for good-quality materials a lot: cotton, wool, mohair, alpaca, linen and similar fabrics.
This is partly why Vinted can be dangerous for me 😀
Once you start searching by material, you can enter a whole world of beautiful, unusual, high-quality things.
But something being beautiful and high quality doesn’t automatically mean I should buy it.
Recently I found the most beautiful mohair jumper. It had a lovely mixture of ornaments and you could immediately see that it looked handmade.
I was so close to buying it.
Then I stopped.
It was €60, which isn’t necessarily unreasonable for a beautiful mohair jumper. But I already had a jumper in a very similar colour.
Did I really need another one?
No.
Sadly, the beautiful mohair jumper had to stay on Vinted 😂.
That’s something I try to remind myself of: an item can be beautiful, good quality and even fairly priced—and still be the wrong purchase for me.
If you want to get better at judging clothes before spending your money, have a look through my Fashion guides on Simple Ways Living too. I’ve written specifically about spotting quality clothes before you buy.
4. I Try Not to Let Vinted Create False Urgency
This one can be difficult.
You find something you like.
It has lots of favourites.
It was only listed recently.
And suddenly your brain starts saying:
BUY IT NOW. SOMEONE ELSE IS GOING TO GET IT.
I had exactly this happen while searching for my Levi’s.
I found a pair that had recently been listed. They had lots of likes and I started feeling that pressure to buy them before somebody else did.
But they were also around twice the price I eventually paid.
I left them.
And the very next day, I found my perfect €12 pair.
I’m so glad I waited.
I’ve also found some fantastic things in listings that have been sitting there for a year. New doesn’t necessarily mean better, and an old listing doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the item.
One of my favourite things about shopping on Vinted is learning to search rather than simply scroll through whatever the platform puts in front of me. Your Fashion section also includes my guide to shopping Vinted and finding hidden gems.
5. Cheap Doesn’t Automatically Mean Good Value
This applies at both ends of the price scale.
I recently saw a necklace on Vinted for €3.
My first thought was basically:
€3? Sure, why not?
And that little phrase—“It’s only €3”—can be surprisingly dangerous 😀
When I looked at the photographs more carefully, the necklace already looked quite worn.
Realistically, I probably would have worn it once and then forgotten about it.
So actually, it wasn’t worth even €3 to me.
On the other hand, I’ve bought inexpensive new earrings that I wear constantly.
Price alone tells you very little about value.
A €3 purchase you never use is wasted money.
A more expensive purchase you love and wear for years can be far better value.
6. I Think About How Something Will Work With What I Already Own
One of my favourite recent Vinted purchases is my olive trench coat.
It cost me €11, and I LOVE it.
It’s quite oversized, which happens to be on trend at the moment, but that wasn’t the main reason I bought it.
What I really liked was that I could comfortably fit a jumper underneath it.
That matters in real life.
A beautiful coat that only works over a tiny top isn’t particularly useful to me when the weather gets colder.
This is something I think we often forget when shopping online.
We shop for individual pieces.
But we get dressed in outfits.
Before I buy something, I try to picture what I’ll actually wear it with.
Which trousers?
Which shoes?
Which coat?
Do I already have those things?
Because a €20 purchase that suddenly requires another €100 of purchases to make it work wasn’t really a €20 purchase.
My simple outfit formulas and other styling ideas are useful for exactly this reason—I like finding different ways to use the clothes already in my wardrobe rather than constantly starting again.
7. I Still Let Myself Buy Things Simply Because I Love Them
I don’t want intentional shopping to become another form of deprivation.
Sometimes I find something and just think:
Oh, that is BEAUTIFUL.
My Love Moschino bag is probably my favourite recent example.
I found it on Vinted and paid €37. It was basically completely new and I thought it was an absolute bargain.
I love it.
And apparently other people do too because I get so many compliments on it.
Did I need a Love Moschino bag to survive?
Obviously not 😀
But intentional living, at least for me, isn’t about stripping all the pleasure out of life.
It’s about making purchases more consciously so that I can enjoy the things I do choose to buy.
8. Sometimes the Best Thing I Find Is… Nothing
Ultimately, that is what I’m trying to build.
Not the biggest wardrobe.
Not the cheapest wardrobe.
And certainly not a wardrobe where I’m never allowed to buy something just because it makes me happy.
I want clothes I love, that work together and that I actually wear.
Sometimes that means waiting until I find a pair of Levi’s for €12.
Sometimes it means buying a €3 cotton top new.
Sometimes it means spending €37 on a beautiful bag.
And sometimes it means reluctantly closing Vinted and leaving that gorgeous mohair jumper for somebody else 😀
The smartest purchase isn’t necessarily the cheapest one. Sometimes it’s the thing you’ll love for years—and sometimes it’s deciding not to buy anything at all.
Can I Try Something With Your Wardrobe? 👀
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something strange about online shopping.
Shops and shopping platforms are very good at showing us what else we could own.
They’re not nearly as good at considering what we already have.
So I’m experimenting with a different idea.
You show me some of the clothes you already own and love, tell me what you’re looking for and your budget, and I’ll help you think about what would actually be useful in your wardrobe.
It might be something from Vinted. It might make more sense to buy new. And sometimes we might discover that you already own exactly what you need.
I’m looking for a small number of people to test this with me for free while I explore the idea.
Interested? Send me a message to anna@simplewaysliving.com and tell me what you’re trying to find, and I will help you find the best options out there. 🤍
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