Sometimes I feel like I have a love-hate relationship with fashion. The love part is easy to understand. After all, dressing up is so much fun. Some of us start young, dressing up our dolls and taking them to make-believe parties and picnics. Others grow into it later in their lives. 

The hate part is a little harder to fathom. Fashion is a part of our lives every single day. Every single piece of clothing, shoes, accessories we choose to include or exclude in our wardrobe is a fashion choice. 

There are so many rules though, and they keep changing all the time. The style you craved for in your teens makes you want to throw up today. Until a few cycles later you find everyone is wearing them all over again. 

Now that I am trying to live a more minimalist lifestyle, these rules have become more irksome than ever. I want to spend more time loving my fashion choices than hating them. I want fashion to be less stressful and more fun. So I thought of making a list of fashion rules we should all break right now. 

I am not denying that trends are fun. Dressing up becomes more interesting when there are new choices available for every new season. Throwback pictures find new meaning when you see the clothes everyone wore 3 years ago versus what they are wearing now. 

Being on-trend all the time is a different ball-game though. Designers and fashion houses create new styles or recycle old ones (sometimes with a twist) in a bid to catch our attention. This creates a vicious cycle of buying and discarding clothes in shorter and shorter time spans. 

Zara is famous for bringing new products to their stores twice a week. High-end fashion labels like Louis Vuitton and Prada have also broken off from the traditional two seasons a year and now design four to six collections each year. 

Faster fashion cycles mean that trends come and go in the span of a few weeks. They leave behind heaps of clothing in our closets that we don't want to wear. 

Break the rule. Stop following every fashion trend you see. You will save a lot more money than you even realise and live a more sustainable lifestyle.


Read about how to  decode your personal style to shop more effectively instead of impulsively here.

Don't be seen in the same clothes twice

I find this rule so strange. Clothes are not perishables that they cannot be used more than once. Yet we feel this intense pressure not to wear the same clothes again when we are meeting the same people. There's even the weirdly coined term "recycling" which refers to, of all things, wearing the same outfit more than once. 

There have been so many times my mother asked me to buy new clothes to attend other people's weddings. I really don't see why I should blow up a fortune buying or renting out expensive designer clothes to attend a function or party for a few hours. 

Break the rule. If Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, can repeat her dresses with the whole world watching then so can you. 

Beauty is pain

We grew up hearing this phrase repeated over and over again. It justifies every shoe that pinches our toes, bodysuits that don't let us breathe freely, jeans that are too tight and goal-sized clothes that we starve ourselves to fit into. 

When you really think about it, beauty should not be pain at all. Beauty is something that is meant to make us feel good about ourselves. I don't mean that you should switch to outfits that don't fit your personal style. All you need to do is realise that you deserve better. 

One of the greatest fashion icons, Coco Chanel decided she did not like the uncomfortable and loud outfits worn by the French women of her time. She did not let the trends dictate her, and instead created clothes that were feminine but comfortable. In the process, she altered French and global fashion dramatically and created a fashion label that is revered the world over to this day. (You can watch the movie Coco Before Chanel to find out more about her story.)

Break the rule. There is no sensible reason to wear smaller-sized clothes that leave you feeling like sardines in a can, or shoes that stop blood circulation in your legs. Don't settle for discomfort because you are worth more than a fashion trend.

You can never have enough

Now that I have adopted minimalist fashion I see the ridiculousness of this statement. But this wasn't always the case. I would shop a lot and laugh it off with a mix of self-deprecation and this trivialising statement, "can you ever have enough?"

Turns out, you can. You can have much more than enough. So much so that you have lesser of the things that matter. Like a healthy bank balance. Or the resources to check a few things off your bucket list. Or own a house.

Break the rule. Skip the next sale and the one after that. Try it for a few months and you will see the impact on your bank account. I did and it was a pleasant surprise.

Read about how I am down-sizing my shoe wardrobe here and how to break the bad habit of compulsive shopping here.

Use and throw

We buy so many things on the cheap so that we don't feel guilty about our extravagance. Clothes that we know will not be worn more than once, shoes that will not survive the season or even expensive handbags that begin falling apart within the year. 

This is not a sustainable lifestyle. I am not usually prone to dramatics and I don't think of fashion houses as essentially evil. Fast fashion does, however, confuse me these days. They must know that their products end up in land-fills more often than not. 

How is it that our mothers have clothes they wore as young girls while we will be hard-pressed to find pieces in our closet that we wore a few years before?

Break the rule. Don't buy fashion pieces to use and throw away at the end of the season. Make timeless investments that you can happily wear for a long period of time. 

Read more about the slow fashion movement here. 

What do you think of my list? Are there any other fashion rules you would like to break? Tell me in the comments below and let's discuss. 

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