Low-Cost Ways to Upgrade to Your Wardrobe
11:03 Share

How businesses connect with customers defines their brand. Sierra is the AI platform for building better, more human customer experiences. Fast answers, no canned responses, no hold music, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. Here's your money briefing for Thursday, June 12th. I'm Oyin Adedoyin for The Wall Street Journal.

Overhauling your wardrobe can be expensive. And when prices on everything from groceries to gas stay stubbornly high, spending money on new clothes can fall to the very bottom of the priority list. The cost of things and our approach to money right now is making people just take a second and think, oh, perhaps I could update this thing I have. I actually still like this. I don't need to replace this. How can I make it work for me now?

We'll talk with Wall Street Journal contributor Esther Achara about how the financially savvy are reviving their wardrobe. That's after the break. Discover what's driving the fastest growing cities in the U.S. with Empowering American Cities, a collaboration between Fifth Third Bank and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Access advanced local economic data and insights for 150 metropolitan areas.

Explore the interactive dashboard and compare your city's growth characteristics with others. From GDP growth to industry productivity to labor supply, tap into local economic data at empoweringamericancities.com. Fifth Third Bank National Association member FDIC. People are taking a needle and thread to old jackets and sweaters and embroidering family heirlooms. They're saying it's cheaper than buying new.

Wall Street Journal contributor Esther Achara joins me to talk about it. So, Esther, I haven't dyed an article of clothing since I was in maybe middle school and acid wash jeans were the trend. It seems like people are getting into DIYing their clothes for a different reason today. Why are they doing it? Yes, I haven't either, to be honest. But people are saying that the reason is that

partly down to the threat of tariffs and an incoming recession and trying to prepare financially for that. And another part of it, I think, is just to do with personalization. A lot of trends have become quite homogenous now, and people are really looking for ways to personalize their clothes and make them feel different to everybody else.

What are some of the ways that people are doing that? The first thing you mentioned, dyeing. A lot of people aren't intimidated by and seems to be the first port of call for some, just changing the color to a more trend-led color like the pastel lemon that is out this summer and things like that. Many of them are just re-dyeing black items black so they feel fresh and new. A lot of people are talking about having found that elusive favorite pair of jeans that's irreplaceable and they've worn a hole in them somewhere.

And rather than try and search them again, they're using a process called visible mending, where it's an update on the old idea of darning, but purposefully keeping things visible. So

using different colored threads, perhaps using different types of stitches and having no shame about just leaving them out there and letting that decorative element be a part of their kind of personal style while also mending their clothes. Yeah, it's kind of like the imperfect, perfect personalization aspect of clothes. It's like you're making that item your own that you've had forever. Yeah.

I mean, another aspect of this that you wrote about in your story was that people are doing this to save money. Can you take me through a little bit of the math? All of these processes that you described in the story are under $100. And that can go up from there. But these are all an early entry point for people and costing under $100. So...

A lot of people have talked about luxury having a reckoning. The cost of designer fashion now is really for the 1%, unless you go the fast fashion route. And shoppers of all ages are so informed now on the sustainability issues surrounding the fashion industry that they're really just making these different choices.

I think a huge part of it for other people is that the quality of fabric has gone down. It used to be so much better. And that seems to be driving as well, the search for vintage pieces. I was curious if you could break down like the prices of these things, because I was shocked when I was reading to hear that some of the stuff that seemed like it would be really expensive actually wasn't. I was really surprised as well. One lady, an interior designer, had said,

changed a pair of inherited Chanel earrings from clip-ons to posts, and that only cost $80, which $80 is a lot of money, but...

I mean, how much would those Chanel earrings have retailed for, right? I mean, I've seen them. Exactly. I've seen them on first dibs for $5,000, on the RealReal for $2,000. So I think $80 is a drop in the ocean if you're considering replacing them as an alternative. And upgrading a bag, I was quite surprised about as well. I would be completely intimidated to punch a hole in a leather strap of a designer handbag. But

It doesn't have to be perfect is what all these people keep saying as well. And it's about wearing it so that it's comfortable for you rather than what it looks like to everyone else as well. That seems to be a big part of the mindset. So for someone like me, who, you know, I'm not very good with my hands at all. I care about saving money and I care about fashion, but I'm just not necessarily a skilled artisan. Where would you recommend I start based on what you've heard?

If you have a little time, I would suggest going to the New York Sewing Center with a friend and doing that instead of going to a bar. That's a really fun way to just learn a skill. You do it once and then you can do it forever. Whatever you learn, you can take away and do forever. And if you really don't want to do anything creative yourself, then that's what tailors and

I actually find it interesting how many people are actually doing it. They might not even be tapped into social media, but they have this trusted tailor that's like a friend that they will go to to either change the sleeve on a dress or change buttons on a jacket that a friend gave them because they just have a real connection to their clothes and want to keep them going. Whether there's a sentimental inherited value or whether it's just...

because they love it. Yeah. I mean, I recently found my neighborhood tailor. Actually, it's funny that you say that. I love thrifting, but I had this coat, this trench coat that I really like. And one of the buttons had fallen off. And so I noticed that it had one of those flaps on the inside with the extra buttons. And I just took it around the corner to my tailor and he was able to steam it and clean it and put that

button back on. And it was just like new, you know, I didn't have to go out and buy a whole new trench coat. Totally. The amount of times I've thrown something out when I could have just done that. It's painful to think about, but yeah, it's so easy. I know we talked earlier about these recession fears and indicators of recessions being possible motivators for why this trend is picking up steam. What

What do you think that says about just how people are feeling about their money in general right now? People are being really intentional about how they spend. Things like weddings and kids' birthday parties will probably always be something that you save up for when it comes to spending on yourself. The busyness of life has just had a lot of us going out and buying new, so we don't have to think about it again. The cost of things and our approach to money right now is making people just take a second and think,

oh, perhaps I could update this thing I have. I actually still like this. I don't need to replace this. How can I make it work for me now? And people sometimes change an item two or three times. It's not necessarily just a one and done. And I think the quality of fabric is something...

helps with that as well. If you've bought a vintage piece and it's a coat and it's 100% wool rather than 80% polyester, then it's obviously going to stand up to the rigors of a sewing machine and having this, that, and the other done and adjusted to it. So Esther, summer is just around the corner. I know I was recently looking at my closet, trying to figure out what should stay and what should go. And

part of me was super frustrated and just wanted to like throw the entire closet away. You know, what is a good starting point for someone like myself who is trying to figure out, okay, what are some of the things that I have in here that could maybe use refreshing or feel a little bit more new so that I don't go out and buy an entire new summer wardrobe? Start with the pieces that you wear the most and then

Do these need to be repaired or updated in some way for me to continue wearing them the most? There's also another category now, wardrobes of sentimental buys, whether they're things we've inherited or just...

hold a special memory, whether we've worn them ever or not for 10 years or whatever it is, and just think, what is it that is stopping me from wearing this? Is it that, oh, I just don't like the way the collar looks, or I don't like the type of buttons that are on it. It makes me feel old or young or whatever. And then just imagine updating it so that it fits your vision. That's WSJ contributor Esther Achara. And that's it for your Money Briefing.

This episode was produced by Ariana Osborough with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Oyin Anadoyan for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.

Uh-oh. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but prediabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop prediabetes before it leads to type 2 diabetes. To learn your risk, take the one-minute test today at doihaveprediabetes.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and its Prediabetes Awareness Partners.