Wardrobe
Ana Kraš
A designer and photographer who calls her style free, yet keeps returning to comfort, simplicity and clothes with a long history. What her approach, in her own words, teaches about buying less.
Latest
Everything we have published, newest first.
-
-
Effect
Anchoring effect
Leaning too heavily on the first number you see, so later estimates and prices stay close to it.
-
Effect
Bandwagon effect
Wanting something more because many other people already have it or are buying it.
-
Wardrobe
Basic is not boring: dressing in repeats
Wearing the same clothes often does not make you look dull. Sameness of shape and surface does. How to make a small set of basics look chosen, again and again, without buying more.
-
Playbook
Buy it for life: when paying more saves money
A thing that lasts decades can be the cheapest thing you ever buy, or an expensive way to own something you stop using in two years. How to tell which, before you pay the premium.
-
Effect
Choice-supportive bias
Rating something higher after choosing it, and remembering the rejected option as worse than it was.
-
Wardrobe
Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran
Two Paris designers who talk about clothes as tools for everyday life, dress practically themselves, and design each season as part of one long wardrobe. What their stated approach teaches about buying for compatibility.
-
Effect
Commitment and consistency
Saying yes to a bigger request after agreeing to a small one, to stay consistent with your earlier choice.
-
Effect
Complete the look
Buying the other pieces of a set that signals a look, role or room, because one piece alone looks unfinished.
-
Effect
Conspicuous consumption
Buying things others can see, such as cars, clothes and logos, to show your standing and earn their regard.
-
Playbook
Cost per wear
Divide what a thing will cost you by the number of times you will really use it. The sum takes a minute. The honest wear count takes some nerve, and it decides almost everything.
-
Effect
Decoy effect
Adding a clearly worse option makes the option that beats it look better, so more people choose it.
-
Effect
Denomination effect
Spending money more easily in small bills or coins than when the same sum comes as one large bill.
-
The Effect
Diderot effect examples: ten chains and what each one cost
A couch, a first job, a phone, a bike, a baby, a house. Ten ordinary purchases, everything each one pulled in after it, and where the chain could have been cut.
-
The Effect
Diderot effect quotes: the lines from the essay people repeat
The master and the slave, the room out of tune, the corner that asked for a cabinet. Twelve passages from the essay, in our own translation, and what each one says to anyone about to buy something new.
-
Effect
Endowment effect
Valuing a thing more once it is yours, so giving it up feels costlier than getting it.
-
The Essay
Everything but the Vernet
Diderot keeps praying, and the prayer turns into a guided tour of his painting of a shipwreck. By the last line he has to admit who his visitors really come to see.
-
The Essay
Everything out of tune
Diderot warns his friends against wealth, remembers how well his shabby study once hung together, and admits that the scarlet gown has thrown it all out of tune.
-
Effect
FOMO (fear of missing out)
The uneasy sense that others are enjoying something without you, which pushes you to join, check or buy.
-
Effect
Framing effect
Choosing differently when the same offer is described in different words, such as gains instead of losses.