In the new book, The Wardrobe Project (Wiley $34.95, 26 Nov 2025), financial behaviour specialist Emma Edwards, founder of The Broke Generation, shares her radical experiment: a whole year without buying a single item of clothing. No new outfits, no second-hand finds, not even rentals. What began as a no-buy challenge soon became a powerful lesson in self-worth, resilience, and the surprising freedom of living with less. In the exclusive extract below, Emma reveals how to reclaim control over what we wear.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!I think we can all agree that the emergence of fast fashion has contributed to our fractured relationship with clothes over the last two decades. As so many parts of life have become unaffordable, cheap fashion has become more affordable than ever.
Thanks to the make-fast, make-cheap, sell-fast, sell-cheap model that fast fashion thrives on, quick-hit clothing purchases offer the perfect cocktail of emotional relief and illusion of control over our lives and our happiness.
When we talk about fast fashion, typically, we’re referring to a production and retail model. The part we often don’t look at is the behavioural component that that model has created.
Clothes aren’t only made fast, they’re consumed fast, worn fast, loved fast, hated fast and eventually discarded fast, too.
Behaviour and purpose
Arguably, fast fashion is now as much about human behaviour as it is about retail. The model itself turned us into fast consumers, to the point where it’s no longer clear whether supply or demand is the issue.
Don’t get me wrong, supply is absolutely a huge factor – after all, the supply came first. Experts have estimated that between 10 and 40 per cent of garments produced don’t get sold and end up in landfill, brand new and never worn.
But equally, fast fashion is now a $150.82 billion industry. It’s estimated to reach $291.1 billion by 2032, and it has maintained a compound annual growth rate of around 10 per cent for the last five years. The demand is absolutely there.
With slow fashion, on the other hand, clothes are made slower, with more care for materials and craftsmanship (craftspersonship?!) to extend the life of the clothes. Slow fashion is made to be worn; fast fashion is made to be discarded.
Outside of the fast and slow fashion production models lies our own human behaviour. Regardless of what we’re buying, whether it’s true fast fashion or the most sustainable piece ever made, hand-crafted by kittens in cotton spun from the dreams of a unicorn, if we’re buying it with a fast mindset, we’re still not going to get far.
Slow consumption is just as important as slow production – and what’s even better, it’s completely within our control. The slower we train ourselves to consume, the less demand we’re giving to fast-fashion models. Over time, this signals a collective move away from what big corporations want us to consume, and puts our purchase decisions back in our hands.
Slowness fosters creativity
When we consume from a place of urgency or impatience, it often creates a rapid dopamine run-off. When all the emotion and all the experience is stuck in the actual consumption and not the wearing of the item, we don’t really have the space to enjoy our clothes fully.
The Project slowed me down to the point I had no choice but to create the feelings I was used to getting when buying with the things I already had. Slowing down and exploring why I liked the things I liked, and what was lurking in my purchase mistakes, opened me up to a whole new idea of my style.
For so long, I’d tried to dress like an iced latte: Creamy, classic, beige, white, simple, smooth, laid back, light, considered. My fantasy self was polished and slick and effortless, just like that iced latte.
But my espresso with whipped cream – classic, but with a bit of extra sparkle, and a bit bolder and sharper than the iced latte – suddenly felt so much more me. I can be quite loud when I’m comfortable, but I’m also an introvert. I use humour in the way I communicate, I’m often goofy or silly, and I’ll happily swear. I’m curvy and jiggly and, on a good day, I was starting to be really proud of that.
Discovering my own style
I wanted to keep aspects of the neutrals in a way that worked for me, but I wanted to accentuate my curvy body, not try to hide it. I wanted to be able to be bolder, maybe even smarter, and with a little extra something, whether that be a bright shoe, a bold accessory, a sleeve shape or an element of colour or print. Sort of basics with ‘benefits’.
I was so familiar with yearning to be that fantasy self plucked straight out of Pinterest, that I didn’t know any other way. I knew I wasn’t the kind of person who wore bright prints and patterns – it just didn’t feel me. In the past, I’d also tried to embrace feminine, floaty, delicate styles too, but they didn’t feel like me either.
This conceptual idea of basics with benefits, with that visual anchor of my espresso with whipped cream and how I felt when drinking it, was the beginning of me realising how I could take styles I admired and make them more me. For the first time, I wasn’t trying to be anyone else; I was just trying to be more me.
Edited extract from The Wardrobe Project: A year of buying less and liking yourself more by Emma Edwards (Wiley, $34.95), available 26 November at all leading retailers
