The Great American Apparel Diet
no buying for one year

Anne

Anne Hurley, Seattle, WA, has been chasing fashion, high and low, since graduating from Catholic high school, after 12 years of uniforms. A longtime journalist (The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Seattle Times), she adapted her fashion sense to whatever city her gypsy roots touched down in. In New York, more black (and real winter coats!); in L.A., minis, form-fitting leather vests, ever-blonder hair and a few unfortunate run-ins with self-tanner. Now, at 54, she's ready to scale back. "I love shopping, and re-creating myself through my appearance," she says, "but I finally realized I have enough raw material in my closets to reinvent till the next millennium." Her last apparel purchase, in August: a gorgeous pinky-gray vintage tweed princess-line coat from an estate sale, $2 wadded in a box. "After a visit to the dry cleaners, it's a show-stopper; a guy in Starbucks told me I looked like Lauren Bacall." With that, she's armed for a year of belt-tightening.