Oh, this old thing?

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Of all the pregnancy-related expenses that cropped up, the one that I resented acutely was maternity clothing. I bought as little as possible; fifteen pieces of apparel comprised my entire wardrobe, and carried me from bedtime to exercising, from to working in an office to painting the house, from meeting with my company's CEO to attending a wedding.

At first, having a roomy closet and comparatively few options for clothing felt liberating. Packing for travel was easy. I never had any mornings where I stood in front of the closet in an agony of sartorial indecision. How freeing! Then I hit week 35 of my pregnancy and suddenly got heartily sick of everything I could fit into. The last weeks of gestation were filled with anticipation, both for meeting my daughter and for building a bonfire and using my maternity wardrobe to fuel the flames.

(Kidding! I'd never violate a Spare the Air day.)

As I shrink back down to my pre-baby body, I have had the pleasure of shopping my closet. All my old clothing is new to me; it is a pleasure to put on something that's a few years old and feel surprised by it. My prepregnancy wardrobe takes up one dresser drawer, one six-compartment sweater bag, three clear acrylic shoe drawers and twenty items on hangers; it feels luxurious to have so much choice.

My temporary apparel diet has given me a fresh appreciation for the people who embark on The Great American Apparel Diet. The GAAD is a year-long project in which participants vow not to buy any new clothing for a whole year. The reasons for embarking on the GAAD are varied -- some people do it for environmental reasons (cheap chic chains generate tons of waste as they produce what is essentially disposable clothing), some for human rights reasons (have you seen the kind of conditions in which much of the clothing available to consumers is produced?), some to curb a spending problem. The overall objective is the same: Drop out of the American clothing-shopping cycle for a year and see what you learn about yourself as you do so.

Another experiment in the less-clothing-is-more vein is Six Items or Less, which challenges people to really pare down their wardrobe. The New York Times covered them last summer, along with slide shows illustrating how people mixed and matched the six items they restricted themselves to for a month; it's an instructive look at how much more valuable the versatile items in one's closet are.

These exercises in sartorial abstention are intriguing, living as we do in a consumer culture where Old Navy dangles new, cheap and colorful wardrobe updates seemingly every week, and the changing of the seasons is hailed as an excuse to reinvent one's public presentation via new clothing. And let's not forget that folks on the GAAD had to sit on their hands as retailer after retailer slashed their clothing prices by 30-75% the day after Christmas.

Forsaking new clothing may be one of the quieter yet more radical ways of dropping out of commercial American culture. It's one thing to do so by necessity -- my pals and I did in graduate school, since we were living on grad-school stipends -- but another to voluntarily say, "Enough." And to reinvent the way one presents oneself to the world with the same old glad rags? My hat's off to those who do it.

Would you voluntarily forsake shopping for any new clothing for a year? Have you done so? Share your experiences at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.

Posted By: Lisa Schmeiser (Email) | December 30 2010 at 09:09 AM

Listed Under: Wallet-friendly habits