Wardrobe Investments
Sometimes, you’ll have to make an investment. This means that you’ll have to pay more for certain items in your wardrobe. Now don’t think of this as unnecessary luxury. You’re not spending extra because you want to feel special. Instead, you’re spending a bit more money because you want this wardrobe staple to last for years. As mentioned repeatedly, you’re building your foundation. If your foundation is weak, nothing else you pile on it will work out make it work. Since you are working on something as important as your fashion foundation, you can’t afford to deal with disposable pieces that won’t last past more than one season.
So when buying an investment piece – the last thing you should care about are labels. Instead, you should learn to look at the fabric, the craftsmanship, and all the small details that contribute to the item’s longevity. There are two things you want in a wardrobe investment. One, the item has to remain in good shape for years to come. Two, the item should look classic and timeless – it should never go out of style. Your goal is to become an educated consumer,. where unnecessarily expensive items no longer sway you. You want to pick out items that are classic and well made. Quality and timelessness are all you need for your investment pieces.
One thing you’ll have to work on is the matter of identifying the difference between cheap and inexpensive. The two seem like synonyms, but they are not. There are a people who use these words interchangeably but that’s only because they don’t understand the difference. When using these words – as pertaining to fashion – you will realize that these are far from synonyms and in fact have very different implications.
Cheap does not always pertain to the price. When something is “cheap”, this can refer to the poor quality or shoddy material used. Some designer brands are guilty of creating “cheap” products even when charging very high prices. Something can look “cheap”, too, by being too risqué. Sometimes, it’s the material that makes the item look cheap. If, of example, you buy a clothing item that’s completely made of synthetic materials it can often look cheap.
Inexpensive items, on the other hand, are affordable but well-made items. They are high quality, and can even look expensive because of the materials used. While people look at “cheap” items and wonder which flea market they came from, inexpensive items can still to wow people. They may even ask you for advice to see if they can buy the same item for themselves.
Your goal is not to fool people into thinking you bought something designer-made or expensive. What you want is to find something relatively affordable but made from of good materials and with high quality craftsmanship. And for me, finding these timeless well made items is worth investing time in.
Happy Shopping!
Affluence in the face of the growing global economic troubles of the world seems cruel and unnecessary. This is why more and more people – even die-hard fashionistas, for example – are now recalibrating their sense of style. It’s no longer about the “it” bag or this season’s trendiest shoes. It’s about looking good without spending too much.
Being money-savvy is attractive. These days, it’s about recalibrating your priorities. It isn’t not cool to be selfish – at all. This latest economic downturn has led a lot of people to rethink their priorities. Now, it’s not enough that you provide for yourself. You have to think about how your actions and affect the people around you. That is is why you see the fashionable set becoming more socially conscious and aware of how their buying choices affect the world.
It’s no longer cool to be spending way too much. In fact, in-your-face opulence can be a turn- off. Instead, you get points for being very conscious of how the world works and how your actions can affect the planet’s ecological balance. You now know why the Prius is a much smarter choice over some gas guzzling muscle car. It’s cool to be aware, rather than to be blindly and mindlessly chasing after ever- changing fashion trends.
What are the most important questions you should ask yourself as go-getting leader at work in 2015?
Well, many years before the age of Blackberrys (2008 to be exact) a management guru called Peter Drucker wrote a little 100-pager book called The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization. The book has now been rewritten for 2015 with some pretty kickass #bossladies as the new co-writers. One of them is Millennial Expert, international speaker and leadership expert Joan Snyder Kuhl, the founder of Why Millennials Matter.
So What Are These 5 Most Important Questions?
What Is Our Mission?
Who Is Our Customer?
What Does The Customer Value?
What Are Our Results?
What Is Our Plan?
Sometimes, we tend to overlook the most important questions because they seem to obvious. And while the questions in the book do seem simple enough, the answers themselves are not. But this concise book does answer them all quite thoroughly.
“Never subordinate the mission in order to get money. If there are opportunities that threaten the integrity of the organization, you must say no.” – Peter Drucker, Author of The Five Most Important Questions
I love that the book discusses the process of self-assessment to transitioning towards leadership and explores answers from a diverse group of leaders representing a wide array of sectors.
5 Most Important Questions also features (very important to me) opinions of thoughts on leadership from many female leaders, and includes expanded observations from Drucker along with anecdotes from other management heavyweights such as commentary from six distinguished management gurus, including Jim Collins (of Good to Great book fame), Judith Rodin (Rockefeller Foundation president) and Frances Hesselbein (chairman of Leader to Leader Institute and former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA).
I suppose it’s true – great things do come in small 100-page packages (that’s hundreds of pages less than Vogue’s some fashion magazine’s September issues, FYI) so it would be a short but worthwhile read. 5 Questions is available easily on Amazon or Barnes & Nobles.
PS : Joan Kuhl will be speaking on June 4th in NYC about “Moving From Achieving To Leading At Work”.
Click Here For More Info.
