Frugal fashionistas with an environmental conscience — or credit card debt — can slip into a new challenge with the potential to reshape closets, lives, and bank accounts:The Great American Apparel Diet.

Call it The Compact Lite for eco-fashionistas (The Compact, by the way, is a hardcore challenge started by a bunch of people in Northern California who decided to go without buying anything new for a year). Sign on to The Great American Apparel Diet, and you’re committing — along with a lot of other women around the world — to not buy any new clothes for a year!

Rules are fairly lax. First of all, new shoes and accessories are allowed — so the Carrie Bradshaw-esque shoe-obsessed will need to high heel it elsewhere to curb the stiletto habit. Second, gifts of clothing are allowed. Plus, some women are giving themselves the luxury of buying pre-loved clothes — or making their own clothes.

Why a closet diet? Laura Cassidy at Where What When has an interview with Sally Bjornsen, the diet instigator, who says:

I found I wasn’t wearing about 80% of what was in my closet. I gave away clothes to my mom, my sisters, and to friends. I occasionally consigned. I was disgusted by my own consumerism, and then the idea occurred to me: What would happen if I gave up shopping for apparel for a year? Would it make me feel like a schump or a reasonable person? “Who am I,” I asked, “if I am not wearing something new?”….

Dieters range from Sally who wants the time and energy once spent on her closet “re-focused toward other creative endeavors” to Rebecca Kotch in Southern California who decided to sign up as a sponsor for a child in Cambodia — and needs to redirect her clothing funds in that direction. Want to join The Great American Apparel Diet? The diet officially started Sept. 2, 2009 — and you’re welcome to join anytime — but the experiment will come to an end Sept. 2, 2010.

Image via The Great American Apparel Diet

1 Comments