The Great American Apparel Diet
no buying for one year

Chrystie

Chrystie is 33 years old. She is a lawyer and lives in Manhattan (and has done for the past six years, since graduating from law school). Before going to law school, Chrystie took a few years off, during which time she lived in England. England was transformational for Chrystie, not only because of the friendships she made there, but also because her addiction to online shopping incubated there: she would order from jcrew.com and bananarepublic.com in a desperate attempt to economize on clothes (which are, she thinks most would agree, ridiculously overpriced in the UK) and also to inject a degree of distinction into her wardrobe (Banana Republic, for example, did not have any stores in England at that time, so the pieces she wore from there were almost one-of-a-kind -- inconceivable as that seems). Chrystie was captivated by the relative simplicity of online shopping: no wandering from store to store looking for a particular article of clothing in a particular size; no hot-and-bothered wrangling to get clothes on in the dressing room; and no commission-hungry salespeople telling her that everything looked "amazing". It had the added advantage of being anonymous: the consumer culture in England does not have the tolerance for the buy-and-return mentality that prevails among shoppers in America. Chrystie once had to return a pair of jeans at Harvey Nichols in London and the experience was sufficiently shaming that she never dared try it again. Online shopping allowed her to send clothes back without accountability and outside the contemptuous glare of a store manager mentally calculating the decline in her sales number for the day as she processed Chrystie's return. Fast forward about ten years, and Chrystie has long since moved back to the United States, but online shopping still has her in its thrall. It was not until a few months ago, when someone very close to her remarked, quite matter-of-factly, that she was a "borderline hoarder [of clothes]" that Chrystie realized how out of control the situation had become. That was the moment she realized that the desire to shop was controlling her much more than she was controlling it. Chrystie is hoping that the cold turkey approach espoused by the Great American Apparel Diet will reduce her cravings for online retail therapy, and free up additional psychic (not to mention, financial) resources, allowing her to devote more time to staying fit, developing relationships and learning new things (other than how to wear the latest trends). Of course, she is completely terrified about the coming year, and whether she'll be able to withstand the "urge to splurge", but as Chrystie has thought about it over the past few months, she's realized that fear is sometimes the best signifier that a change is needed. She is excited to see what the year brings.