Do you dress like your mum?
Wardrobe staples make up the core of your look; in fact they stay the same for almost the entirety of women's adult lives, according to new research.
For 50 years, from the age of 20 to 70, women will always own six t-shirts and five sweaters. And although the total number of items in women's wardrobes decrease as they get older, 60-something women own as many cardigans as 20-somethings - explaining why mum and daughter duos like Pearl and Daisy Lowe, Jerry Hall and Georgia May Jagger, and Carole Middleton and the Duchess of Cambridge are frequently snapped in similar outfits.
When researchers from eBay asked women about the clothes they did – and didn’t – need during the seven stages of modern life, they found:
• Before their 20thbirthday, women own 30 pairs of shoes. Despite that, nearly one in five (16.7%) say they already have trainers in their wardrobe they no longer wear
• From the age of 20, women will always own six t-shirts and five sweaters – until they hit 70, when they buy an extra jumper
• 30 is the age women give up on the mini-skirt. They rank it as the top item of clothing ‘gathering dust’ in their wardrobe, suggesting it should be sold to the younger generations
• The trouser suit, beloved of the 1980s and 1990s, has officially had its day. Women in their 40s and 50s rank this as the most common item banished to the back of the wardrobe
• When women hit 50, their average shoe count drops to 22. Any 50-something women more than four pairs of flats and two pairs of high heels (the average numbers held by women in their 50s) should dig out the ones they no longer wear and give someone else a chance to enjoy them
• The top five items gathering dust in wardrobes across all ages were:
1. high heels
2. trouser suits
3. denim skirts
4. denim jackets
5. leather jackets
Harley Street psychologist Dr Becky Spelman says while the staple items stay the same, as we grow older we should reorganize and refresh them to suit our lifestyle and reflect our emotional growth.
“Set a date in your diary every six months to look at what you no longer need to streamline your wardrobe.. Be honest if you’ve made a mistake and you don’t like what you bought, or it doesn’t quite work,” she says.
“Then make small changes regularly to the items you own, selling one thing for each new thing you allow yourself to have. Look for a few items that are really unusual that you know not everyone might like but it really represents your unique taste and character.”
eBay Spokesperson, Laura Wilkinson-Rea says: “It’s fascinating to see how people’s needs change as they grow older, and this study shows how we’ve come to rely on certain things, whatever life stage we have reached. However, things change, and we maybe could be a bit stricter on ourselves in ordering our lives, as we reach certain life stages.”
The research marks the launch of 20 free listings each month for consumer sellers, creating an even better reason in having a ‘smart’ wardrobe.
Tagged in fashion Wardrobe Staples