In this episode, Gabriella Arruda discusses the impact of shopping tendencies on personal style, emphasizing the need to break free from conformity and rely on individual fashion instincts. She delves into the psychology behind impulse purchases and offers strategies like personal style mapping, understanding triggers, and implementing ‘no buy’ or ‘low buy’ periods to cultivate a more mindful approach to fashion consumption.
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Transcript:
You are what you wear? Sure. But really…
You are what you buy.
Hi, I’m Gabrielle Arruda your host for the Style POV podcast and I’m here to help you learn to trust your fashion instincts, hone your authentic style POV, and find strength through style.
Today we are going to be diving into the different ways to consume, our shopping tendencies, and their impacts on our unique style POV.
We will also dig into how to rebuild those habits so they support our personal style journeys.
Now, I love a deep dive into topics, and understanding some of the baseline habits or mechanisms that seem to have a compounding effect that eventually leads to an individual behavior or perspective being shaped.
So for this exploration, we need to trace back our shopping habits first. And as always, all research will be linked in the show notes.
Shopping psychology actually has roots in the psychology of conformity. If your mother ever told you they didn’t want you hanging out with a bad crowd in high school, well she had her reasons.
It’s because who you surround yourself with has a direct correlation with your behavior style and consumption habits.
And with our online networks expanding our circles so vastly, our impulsivity around consumption no longer functions the same way.
And this conformity is amplified if “everyone” in the community has one already. You buy the Lululemon leggings because all the moms in the neighborhood wear them. You have the Stanley cup because every influencer has it strategically placed in their videos.
It creates a need in your brain, and our evolutionary desire to be part of the herd. Assimilation tends to happen, and peer effect or peer pressure, all start to creep in, even without our conscious awareness.
Now, from the standpoint of evolution and social beings, that is not a bad thing necessarily. But, from a visual and personal style expression point of view, we want to be mindful of this.
Because our conformity may be leading us to assimilate into the people we surround ourselves with but who don’t align with our truest selves and who have consumption habits we don’t want to continue.
So while I’m not going to tell you to stop hanging out with this crowd or that group, or to unfollow an influencer.
But I do want to say that it’s helpful to be aware of how this might be unconsciously seeping into your style choices and shopping habits.
This is why I recommend Personal Style Mapping and Ill link my video on this in the show notes. But part of evaluating your style expression is getting in touch with your own personal likes/dislikes/history and separating yourself out from “the herd”.
And it also means understanding the psychological effect of your consumption needs. Your purchases could be broken down into a demand/need purchase or a psychological purchase.
Demand does not mean it’s a boring pair of socks you bought because you’re old ones have holes, but it’s the intention behind that purchase and a need for the piece that fills out a wardrobe gap and your style toolbox parameters.
Furthermore, we need to be aware of our triggers. This is breaking a habit that is so deeply ingrained in us that it will take time.
I want you to think about your last several purchases for your style and under what conditions you purchased them under. Take note of the environment.
Was it online, were you scrolling, was it an email promising new sales, or was it shopping because you had a bad day?
Note these conditions and try to minimize their occurrence in your daily lives. We need to accurately identify the roots of where we let impulses and conformity guide us, and let our own personal style maps and toolbox guide our wardrobe.
So whether that means muting that influencer whom you tend to swipe up on, unsubscribing from that email list, or just tapping into your own style goals more often; you need to start rewiring your impulses around your personal style
Now, let’s dig into the avenues where we shop and how different environments might elicit different psychological triggers for each individual.
Online shopping: For some it’s a way to find their niche, unique, individual pieces that fit all of the style needs, the convenience of having no limits based on location or sizes or preferences, they view it as freedom. This is like your Uber eats, you want a burger and fries at 3 am, no problem, delivered to you in 15, i mean 30 minutes and it’s only slightly cold.
Department stores: to some, they get a lot of bang for their buck in terms of effort. Lots of selections and styles and suits people who want to know what’s in style but don’t want to scroll endlessly and prefer to try things on in person.
On the flip side, others are disenchanted with the department store as its overall collection exudes a lack of individualized personality. It’s like a buffet, it’s all pretty good, and there’s so much to choose from that you feel happy, but there are very few standouts among the choices and it can become easy to gorge yourself without thinking.
And then you have individualized style stores- something that is more conceptualized around a style personality. This would be your stores like Anthropologie, where you walk in and feel the immediate vibe. Most everything in the store connects to this style personality, and if that’s a match to YOUR style preferences… Well, it’s very, very easy to impulse-buy entire looks. It’s like they served you your favorite cuisine on a silver platter and you just say yes take my money.
And this leads to piecemeal fashion. Because we aren’t 100% sure what is our actual authentic style expression, we consume a bit here, a bit there, and maybe a lot there, and we end up with closets that are no longer sacred spaces, but money pits that overwhelm us and once again lead us to search for the next bit of advice, system, or professional to clear things up.
Now I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade. I love to shop, and I still fall victim to this behavior. But I want us to start recognizing it… to start being aware of our purchase habits, and our default conformity when our “herd” has grown so exponentially with social media and the internet in general.
We need to understand the context before we can solve it and/or adjust our habits.
Stress, a ticking clock, and FOMO all play into this need to buy. And it loops us into a hedonic shopping cycle that further confirms lower self-esteem or a mistrust of one’s own style instincts.
So if all of these shopping environments pressure us into impulse purchases or style conformity, why is it so much more fun to dopamine shop or swipe up and buy that Amazon dress??
Hedonic shopping experience versus the utilitarian goal. utilitarian goal just sounds boring, but as I mentioned a demand purchase helps you hone your own style. You did a closet audit (video in show notes for anyone who might need to complete this), and you’ve found what wardrobe gaps you need, you fill those with the perfect item that fits all of your style parameters and your aesthetic, but finding that one perfect sweater took 5 months… And, well, delayed gratification is ultimately worth it… But, it’s the Standford marshmallow test.
We are all falling victim to one marshmallow right now, instead of the perfect one tomorrow.
Hedonic shopping is everywhere these days, advertising, influencers, emails, and websites, all create a sensory stimulation to buy and excite our nervous systems with the newest trends.
Utilitarian shopping is less subjective- I need a soft autumn sweater that suits a soft natural body frame and that works with my Kitchener classic natural essence. And finding that could take time.
Markets are trying to both excite you- and stimulate your senses, so you click and check the item out. And then they are trying to stress you into purchasing. I mean those “ 48 people have this in their cart right now” would either hit your need to conform, and assuage any concerns about this being a good item, or it creates a FOMO effect, where you think if I don’t buy this now it’ll be gone.
So what do you do in this situation? You want to consume fashion and style content, but we want authentic personal styles as well..
At first, I suggest removing some of your triggers. Remember to think back on where/when/how you made your last couple of purchases- especially if they ended up being duds.
For a period of time, limit your interactions with that environment.
Next, we need to keep finding our own coping responses to help us return to a more normative state of judgment and remember our style goals. It’s great if that sweater you found browsing IS a perfect match for you, but we need to make those decisions with a balanced cognitive state that isn’t reacting impulsively.
In therapy, there is an acronym called “HALT” which basically means before you make any rash or impulsive decision, you need to HALT and ask yourself if your H- hungry, a-angry, l-lonely-, tired
And in hedonic shopping, the same can apply.
I’m not trying to take the joy out of shopping for you, but I’m hoping you begin to learn how to trust your own fashion instincts.
And if you keep buying pieces without Halting and comparing them to your actual wardrobe goals, you’ll end up with more confusion than ever.
And the next option is to consider trying a no-buy or low-buy strategy for a couple of months.
What is a no-buy or low-buy?
Generally, it’s a set period of time where you limit your consumption of a specific category.
There are different ways to set this up and different rules people can apply to their unique situations, but I’ll let you google that.
In this use case, you could set it up so that you don’t buy ANY new pieces of clothing unless a necessary item is unsalvageable. For instance, if it’s winter and your winter coat gets shredded in a wood chipper, then yes you can buy a winter coat. But, those cute winter boots that are on sale, sorry that’s still a no-go if you have functional boots already.
Or you could do low-buy, which essentially limits categories and more narrowly defines what you might be able to purchase. For instance, if you know you impulse buy shoes, you could set that as a no-buy category, but allow yourself to buy a clothing item if it suits all your style parameters and is on your wardrobe gap list.
Check out my closet audit video linked in the show notes if you want more info on wardrobe gaps and creating a sacred closet space.
Now, starting a low buy/no buy can be extremely hard. And you may need to step away from your herd and online stimuli a bit, in the beginning, to get the ball rolling.
But, it really allows you to disconnect from the hedonic consumption patterns we have all started to fall victim to, and it shines a bright light on “Did you really need to buy that?” Because after a few weeks of doing this, you’ll start to see… Wow, I spent so much money on clothes and this month I didn’t even miss it.
Losing that little burst of excitement when hitting purchase might be hard to let go of… But, mentally, I’ve found adding those items to my want list, or even adding them to the cart and not checking out, can give me that same little boost.
And spoiler: but when I review that want list later, I almost never feel the same need or excitement about the piece.
Your shopping habits are either setting up your personal style journey for greatness, or they are throwing up roadblocks left and right, making what should be a joyful, enlightening journey into a frustrating hole filled with confusion and wasted money.
Now, the things i mentioned today can be hard habits to break and even harder ones to build anew. So, if you try and fail at them…Don’t throw in the towel. Accept that purchase as a learning experience and reset your goals.
And it can help to have a supportive community who is on the same path as you are. You’re free to join my free Facebook group, or search for some sort of group that will help encourage you to stay on a less mindless consumer-driven path.
Thank you for joining me in this exploration of our style POVs, and learning how to trust our own fashion voice.
Until next time.
References:
Herd Mentality+ Behavior
Store Purchases and Behavior Study
The Psychology of Clothing Study
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