9 Ways to Make Fashion at its Economic Best

Economic FashionI confess I am a big shopaholic. Based on my experience here are a few tips to avoid expensive shopping mistakes and economic ways to keep your wardrobe up to date.

1) Replicate !

When you buy a branded outfit, your price includes logistics, cost of setting up a store etc etc. No can deny getting an outfit stitched works out be to cheaper than buying at a store at least 90% of the time. But many women are very apprehensive about getting clothes stitched. Some feel the finish will never be the same. Not true!

The first step in replicating is to find a good tailor. Again there is a misconception that only the expensive tailors are good. I confess I had this misconception till I found my HG tailor 🙂 .Finding a good and reasonable tailor can be a long process but once you have, believe me its totally worth it! The next step is to find a place to source materials from. The best place for this is whole sale dealers and street side material vendors. I normally shop at Cotton street and Nalli at Chennai and Chikpet at Bangalore. With a little patience you can find really nice prints at good prices.

So next the time you fall in love with that really fantastic and really expensive outfit take a good look at it. Are you really really sure you cant replicate it? With a good tailor and reasonable material store, you definitely can! And also make considerable savings in the process. What I personally like about replicating stuff is that I can get it done to fit me perfectly and I add sometimes add a little detail of my own. Like same fancy buttons or a little embroidery.

2) Stitch your own

This was a tactic I learned from a friend but am yet to start on. If you can take a quick crash course on stitching and start experimenting, there is nothing like it. Once you have gotten the hang of stitching an outfit, you can browse stores for patterns and create them on your own. Not only will you save money you can also have a lot of fun in the process.

3) Borrow from like sized

I had this “wedding season dilemma”. Suddenly there are a string of weddings and you cannot repeat any of your outfits as you are bound to meet the same people. And buying a new outfit for every wedding is not a feasible option. I managed to solve this issue with a “give and take policy” with two of my close friends. We are more or less the same size, so we swap outfits. Now people in my family think I have a super extensive wardrobe 😉

Fashion Jewllery4) Accessories

Sometimes I have to repeat an outfit to office within a time span of say three weeks. To avoid being tagged “boring” by my colleagues I play around with accessories. Accessories can totally make or break an outfit. Mixing and matching different accessories can totally change the look of an outfit.

For example a black kurta can be teamed with a bandhini duppata and salwar. If you have to repeat the outfit, you can team with a nice stole, jeans and funky bangles.

Explore street side shops for accessories. With a little patience and bargaining you can get good deals. These street side shops are also good places to pick up buttons, borders etc that you can add to clothes for a nice touch.

5) Basic neutral colors

Buying tops/kurtas/pants in neutral colors is a good way to build your wardrobe. But before picking it up see if you can match it with at least 2/3 things in your current wardrobe.

6) Keep your old salwars/churidars

I pick up a lot of my Indian outfits from places like FabIndia and Westside where you can mix and match. While I give away my kurtas once I have stopped fitting into or if it begins to fade, I hang on to my duppatas and churidars/salwars. These can always come in handy in the future. It can always be matched with kurtas you pick up later and works out as a saving.

Sale7) Wait for sales

When I fall in love with an outfit, I first check out if the store is going to have a sale soon. If it does, it makes sense to wait for a while and pick it up during the sale season.

8) Be careful at sales.

While sales are big savers, they can also end up burning a hole in your pocket. Offers such as “buy two t shirts of the similar type and get a third free” can actually cause you more damage. When going in for such an offer ask yourself if you really need three t-shirts of the same type. While such offers might seem exciting, if you really think about most often they just encourage you to buy something you don’t really need.

Another area to stay clear in sales is where they offer you stuff dirt cheap but say “No trial”. It may seem worthy to take the risk of the outfit not fitting, since you are not paying much. Take it from a seasoned shopoholic, this is not true. You might think by avoiding such mistakes you hardly make any savings. But doing this a few times can give you considerable savings that you can instead use to buy something you really like and can try.

9) Care for your clothing.

The care tags are put on our clothes for a reason. Take some time out and read them! A little extra time taken to take care of your clothes can go a long way. Adding rock salt when washing clothes that are vegetable dyed will reduce fading. While starching cotton and linen clothes helps maintain its “just out of the store” look.

I hope my little tips prove useful!

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28 thoughts on “9 Ways to Make Fashion at its Economic Best

  1. nice post.. i did fashion designing.. i even made custom tailored dresses for kids for some time..!! but tell me to stitch and i get cold feet.. im just too bad at it.. even my teachers got frustrated..lol

    I totally follow some of the tips given above..i wanted something very different for my mum and dads 25th anniversary.. so i went to quiet a few designer places but everything that i liked was like above 60,000. Then i just fell in love with this one white and blue dress from a designer but it was again 57,000. So what i did was i took my boutique lady along with me to show her that dress and she made me a much better version of the same dress for 20,000. My dress looked fab.

    But you know what.. some time back benetton had this awesome 70% sale going on.. but due to very huge crowds they had this policy of no trials. But i have already bought quiet a few things from there so i knew my bfs and my sizes in almost everything. So i didnt required trials.. i bought quiet a few things and they were awesome. My bf wanted a trouser but we were so not sure about the fitting but we still took the chance since the 2000 bucks trouser was costing just a mere 600. we were too tempted and bought it. it fitted well and we bought two more the next day. So, i guess if you already shop from some place and it has sales with no trial policy, you can get a very awesome deal.

    I so like the idea of borrowing but my mum has this rule of not borrowing clothes or makeup from anyone. Though she doesn’t has a problem with borrowing or sharing accessories, bags or shoes. So sometimes my friends and me do swap our accessories but clothes are a BIG no no..

    Also i really cant wait for sales.. yes im impatient and obsessed.. if i like something and dont buy it i wont be able to go home and sleep that night.. worrying that tomorrow someone else will buy it or i wont get my size in it afterwards.. So the rule of waiting for sales doesnt work for me at all. If i like it i have to get it ASAP. did i tell you im obsessed..??

    One more tip that i would like to add is.. You can go and shop at the factory outlets.. there are some nice factory outlets like benetton, reebok etc ( though some are just selling defected or pure crappy stuff there, stay away from those) at MG road gurgaon. You would be surprised at the deal you would get there. But its really difficult to keep self control there and i end up spending much more than i intended to and buying much much more than i want.. no wonder my cupboard is overflowing with clothes.. but i still never have anything to wear…hahahahah!!!!!

    And after writing this whole comment i was actually wondering how much words i wrote.. guess what.. i wrote 505 words ka comment.. wow that was one helluva rambling..!!

  2. Wanderlust..

    Thank you for the tips..I too love to get my dresses custom made..Of course, that doesn’t stop me form buying readymade..but still.
    And yeah, even if the kurti/top fades away, I keep the churidhar/dupatta..
    I love Bandhini dupattas, and do a lot of mix match with plain tops or pure white/black kurtis.
    I have 4 HG tailors too LOL..2 in Blr and 2 in Delhi..If I buy something from Delhi, I don’t have the patience to wait till I reach Blr to get it stitched.. 😉

    And Priyanka: 505 words..wooow.But I did not get bored reading your comment at all..love the way you explain things so innocently..sweet gal

      1. There is one in Hauz Khas..he sits in a gully there. Now if u ask me the address…I wouldn’t know how to explain..It is inside the Hauz Khas village-where those designer boutiques are.

        You need to cross those and go further down…and in one of those small by lanes, is his shop..
        His name is Salim.

  3. Poornima .. you have four HG tailors??? how lucky are u!!.. by the way.. by any chance is one of these tailors on a little gully off commerical street?

    1. Oh yeah…One of them is definitely from those Com St gullys LOL..

      There are so many of them na?? But not everyone stitches perfectly..This guy is good, but you need to really keep him on toes to get your work done…He has a very convenient tendency of forgetting things :devil:

  4. I also cannot share my clothes and it’s only my friends that I share my makeup with. It’s something that my has been taught by mom and now this is stuck with me. I also wait for sales and badly wait for them. He have great sales in Delhi every season. And the 70% one mentioned by Priyanka is one of my fav. 😛 I also keep my churidars and dupattas and mix and match with kurtas. 🙂

    Loved the article, Wanderlust. 🙂

  5. Very interesting article Wanderlust 🙂 My mother will be thrilled to bits with the money I plan to save by following your tips!

    @ Poornima,Wanderlust – please so share the contacts of your HG tailors in Blr…My current tailor makes me very :reallyangry: Help!!

  6. I love this article very much! I was LMAO at HG tailor 😀 . I love getting my clothes stitched too.

    The only thing I wouldn’t do is borrow…nothing snooty about it…I just don’t want others to borrow mine either coz I’m very possessive about all of my stuff hehe…I don’t even like lending stuff, like handbags, to my own mom lol. Omg I sound so weird n stingy!
    But I am pretty generous at times…I give away forever instead of lending 😀

    Btw, now I’ve learned to side step the ‘Buy 2 get 1 free’ trap 😀

    ♥xx♥

  7. Sharing is big non-n0 for me too…. I also like to get evrything custom made… Also i am quite handy myself with embroidery and similar stuff… So I even add my own touches to ready made stuff… So I am always different…. 😉

    Great post wanderlust… :yes: You really are one practical girl……. :highfive:

  8. Great Article Wanderlust, enjoyed reading it… have never ever found my HG tailor, and end up discarding the clothes stitched so now I just stick to readymades…

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