A new ‘no buy’ movement is teaching people how to kick their shopping habit

A practical guide how to stop buying clothes.

Six years ago, Lauren Fay decided to stop buying new clothes for a full year. At the time, this seemed like a radical thing to do; but she was an early member of a growing movement devoted to drastically reducing our clothing consumption.

Back then, Fay was partly motivated to save money. She’s just left a high-paying job in finance for a more meaningful career in the non-profit sector. But she had also become more conscious about how our insatiable appetite for new clothing is destroying the planet. “I realized I was over-consuming,” she recalls. “I had this ‘ick’ factor about how shopping had become compulsive for me, and I was also spending money that could better be spent elsewhere.”