My Shopping Cart Won’t Fix My Life, But My Closet Might

Exploring the paradox of loving style, needing newness, and still wanting to buy less.

Listen, I get it. I have a black belt in the ancient art of convincing myself that one more purchase will fix everything.

Bored? New shoes. Lonely? A really good blazer. Stuck in a life rut? $400 worth of hope from Net-a-Porter.

Here’s the thing no one everyone on Substack is saying out loud: you can’t heal a boring/shitty/tragic/insert-your-woes-here life with a shopping cart. You just can’t.

You can numb it. You can distract yourself. You can pretend you’re building a whole new identity one knitwear haul at a time. But the truth always catches up to you, usually right around the time the package arrives and you realize you still feel... exactly the same.

And then the cycle starts over: Maybe it wasn’t the right thing. Maybe I need a different color. Maybe the next box will be the one that finally changes everything.

Spoiler: it won’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I love new. Reinvention isn’t just something I enjoy, it’s a principle I live by. I’ve written before about being constructively dissatisfied, always evolving, always stretching toward the next version of myself. But there’s a difference between growth and grasping. Wanting to evolve isn’t the same as needing a new package to feel okay. This isn’t a rant against newness. It’s a reminder that not all new things actually move you forward.

Last year, I lost my mom. And grief cracked everything open. It made time feel meaningless. It made old comforts feel like sand slipping through my fingers. I lost my center.

There were days when getting dressed felt laughably irrelevant. And there were days when pulling on a real pair of pants, good pants, pants that felt like me, was the only thing that tethered me back to the world.

It wasn’t the buying that helped. It was the choosing. The showing up. The caring, even when nothing made sense.

That’s the tension I live with all the time. I care about style. I care about change. But not every purchase is progress, and not every season calls for new.

The chase, that compulsive scroll, the constant hunger for the next high, the next hit of new, that’s not joy. That’s noise.

But there’s a quieter kind of joy. The kind you feel when you put on something that already belongs to you. The jacket that makes you stand taller. The jeans that remind you your body can still move. The color that gives you permission to take up space again.

That’s not dopamine. That’s happiness. And once you’ve felt the difference, you know. You can tell when you're chasing versus when you're choosing.

---

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

---

This week, I had something rare: a full week at home. No suitcase. No carry-on capsule. No mental gymnastics about what I forgot to pack. Just me and my full closet, every piece, every memory, every possibility, hanging right there, waiting.

What a luxury.

(Side note: yes, I’ve written about how creatively stimulating a limited travel wardrobe can be. And I still believe that. But also, two things can be true at once.) (Side note to side note: Isn’t it wonderful when a topic is complex and nuanced and a medium like Substack lets us express and explore that vs. trying to make it fit within a short form video?)

I didn’t waste that abundance. I used it. I reached for the stuff I normally save. I wore variety like it was a sport. I let the full rainbow of my wardrobe live a little. And the joy didn’t come from dressing up for someone else. It came from dressing for myself. No rules. No logic. Just instinct.

Here’s what that looked like:

Sunday

Orange dress. Cricket sweater. Sandals and a spring-bright bag.
It rained yesterday, but today the sun came back, still a little chilly, but full of promise. I dressed for the light: bare toes, bright color, cozy layers. The cricket sweater felt especially right, it’s IPL season, and apparently my brain is playing too. Brunch by the beach. Cozy. Bright. Exactly enough.

Monday

High-gloss yellow shirt, sharp white pleated skirt, tabi oxfords.
Felt like a kickstart. Cool, professional, with just enough weirdness to feel personal. The shirt is structured but light. The shoes say “I’m not here to blend.” It was a strong start, not loud, but unmistakable.

Tuesday

Fresh from the Beyoncé concert, so obviously I wore the tee the next day, like a souvenir and a statement.
Paired it with a lavender cord blazer, dark denim, and snakeskin kitten heels. I loved the friction: soft color, strong print, sharp shoes. It felt like three different moods at once, and somehow that made it feel more like me.

Wednesday

A bubble skirt and a bubble jacket, softness on softness, but still structured.
It was cold, but LA cold. Just enough to justify the layers, not enough to commit to real winter wear. I loved the way the shapes echoed each other: oversized, round, deliberate. It felt like dressing with intention, not armor. Warm, thoughtful, a little weird, my favorite kind of work outfit.

Thursday

All red everything, shirt, skirt, power stance. Anchored it with a leather tie because the texture made me feel sharp, not stiff. My team was in town for a summit. I wanted to look like I was leading, without looking like I was trying too hard to be the boss. The tie said “professional.” The bare feet said “but chill.” Felt good. Felt like me.

Friday

Print shirt, olive slip skirt with neon lace trim, charcoal-y blazer, ring 3 brown slides. I just wanted to have fun today. The shirt is loud in the best way. Like someone handed a paint pen to my inner child and said, “go off.” The skirt looks quiet until you get to the hem, which screams just enough. The blazer makes it office-adjacent. And the Beryen sandals? They say, “yes, I’m in charge but also I’m done with heels this week.” This outfit was pure instinct. No planning. No math. Just good energy.

---

Getting dressed didn’t fix anything this week. It didn’t solve grief. It didn’t make my to-do list any shorter. But it made things easier to carry. I felt clearer. A little more rooted. A little more like myself. And honestly? That counts.

The part that stuck with me was how good it felt to just use what I already had. No new purchases. No impulse scrolling. No desperate search for some magic item that might jolt me out of a funk. I wasn’t shopping, I was just getting dressed. I was reaching for color, for shape, for play. I wore the bright thing on a random Thursday. I threw a weird texture on top of another weird texture and called it a look. I wasn’t getting dressed for approval or attention. I wasn’t trying to be seen. I was just trying to feel like myself. And in small, surprising ways, it worked.

Having access to my full closet, not a suitcase, not a pared-down travel rack, felt like an actual gift. Not because I have so much, but because I genuinely like what I’ve built. That’s a detail I forget sometimes. I’ve spent years curating this closet, piece by piece, collecting clothes that say something about who I am, who I was, who I’m trying to become. Getting to move freely within it, to pick what matched my mood instead of what I pre-packed, that felt like freedom. And I loved it.

There’s this funny paradox I keep bumping into. Shopping, especially when you’re down bad, can feel like movement. It feels like action. Like progress. Like a solve. But then sometimes, it just adds noise. A short-term hit that fades the second the box hits your doorstep. What actually helps is way less flashy. It’s quieter. It’s slower. It’s standing in front of your own closet, the one you've built over time, and finding something that makes you feel a little more like yourself again. And then WHEN you have found it, you can add to it with intention. So maybe it’s not the shopping that is inherently harmful, it is your intention behind it.

I’ll always be someone who’s evolving. Who finds joy in the next version of things, of myself. But this week reminded me that reinvention doesn’t always require something new. Sometimes it just asks you to look at what you already have and make a new decision.

So no, your shopping cart won’t fix your life.
But your closet? If you’ve been filling it with care and intention and even just a little bit of joy?
That might help you get through the hard weeks.

And that’s not nothing.

---