I got a bit stuck overthinking the Style Lab so I took a break again. Sometimes I just need to do that. However, it's high time I dropped back in to file my overdue report on (not) shopping.

I can’t put my hand on my heart and say there hasn’t been any shopping at all (hence parentheses) but I’ve been far more restrained than I would have been if we hadn’t made this pledge. I’ve been on a couple of shopping expeditions with friends and have found that walking away from the temptations of frivolous purchasing is easier than I expected (as is gently dissuading pals from buying rubbish).

I have made the following acquisitions in the last month:

A Christmas gift: over the holidays, Mr Edge steered me into the men’s department at All Saints to try on a coat he’d spotted and was pretty sure I needed. He was right, as he often is, but I think he secretly wanted me to stop borrowing his.

A craft project: I’d begun knitting a colourful shawl long before we proposed this undertaking. It’s now complete, but I bought a few extra balls of wool to get there. This will fend off the February blues and liven up the winter look.

Some necessary items: a set of colourful boxer shorts (men’s department again) to use as lounge/sleepwear in combination with the excessive collection of concert shirts which I wasn’t wearing otherwise.

One opportunistic sales purchase: a very excellent bra from Marlies Dekkers, absolutely gorgeous and a perfect fit. I am not going to apologise for this, because bras this good are hard to come by on discount, but it raises a good point about why a complete fast might not be for me. I’ll come back to this.

At this point, I don’t feel the need for anything else and I’m not particularly in the mood for looking. Instead,

• I’ve been trying to get a few things off the bench and think constructively about how I want to look.
• I’ve done a few small customisation/alteration projects and found some new ways with old favourites, as well as taming some of my problem children.
• I’ve been dressing more and more around a few capsule formulae. I notice that in this respect I seem to be settling on a few definitive styles rather than throwing things together and hoping they match.
• I’ve done a fair amount of experimenting and had a few epic fails, but I figure it’s good to know what does and doesn’t work.
• I’ve been wearing an awful lot of black, white and navy blue.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile exercise in which some of the key learnings from the Style Lab are being put through their paces. I have a sharper awareness of what’s actually in the closet. what should stay or go, and what will need to be replaced in future.

On the other hand, the bra purchase shows why a complete fast probably won’t work for me in the long run. Some things are necessarily expensive, my budget is limited and wearing the best quality I can afford sometimes means pouncing on it when it’s on sale. This isn’t FOMO, it’s a long standing strategy and one reason why I have such a well-stocked wardrobe to begin with. I need to stick with it, but very selectively.