When you’re on a tight budget, extraneous purchases often come with a side helping of guilt. If shopping is to be fun, we must get the guilt OUT. Ranked in accordance with the level of guilt our purchases are apt to make us feel, the Triad looks like this:

3. Fast Fashion

-trends-for-less + environmentally unsound = some guilt

2. Responsible Retail

-reasonably-priced staples + eco-conscious brands = less guilt

1. Thrift

-cheap material thrills + recycling others’ castoffs = zero guilt

Just a theory. In other news: No, you’re not hallucinating – I chopped off all my hair.

After ten years of doing the long locks thang, it was time. New year, new ‘do and all that jazz.

To those with long hair considering a change: DO IT.

It takes a fraction of the time to style; it’s a lot more fun to experiment with; it will make your life easier and better.

(FYI: Post-cut ponytails can be donated to Pantene Beautiful Lengths.)

These waterproof, uber-comfortable and seriously adorable Tretorn Rubberized Wedges didn’t just meet my standards; they exceeded them via giving me the extra edge I’m always looking for. Height (obvs).

The additional elevation of these wonderwedges made them the perfect counterpart to my wide-legged, too-long-for-flats
Forever 21 Schlep Pants. Booyah.

(Tretorn Wedges, $23.99 reduced from $75. Like you didn’t see that one coming .

Man, was THAT sentence grammatically criminal or WHAT?! Writer my ASS. Anyway.

Leggings have obvs been my go-to Schlepwear for quite some time, but you can’t spend a New York summer in faux pleather, regardless of how stretchy it is. When stepping outside means entering a sauna, what you wear’s gotta breathe. Hence the purchase of these paper-thin, wide-legged, glorified sweatpants.

I saw these at Forever 21 a while back; they’re Twelve By Twelve and as such, priced at $29. Twenty-nine bucks for an effing pair of sweatpants. Ick. In an attempt to avoid spending this borderline-stupid amount, I spent a solid month looking elsewhere for their equal. No dice. I finally bit the bullet and bought them, on the grounds that the slightly shiny sheen in the material means they can be dressed up as well as down. Stay tuned for photo documentation.

While we’re on the subject of Forever 21, a practical addendum to Making Forever 21 Your Bitch: The best time to shop this beast of a store is on a week day, from late morning to early afternoon. Those of you who don’t have the luxury of doing so know full well the zoo-like mayhem one endures whilst shopping there on weekends.

To counteract said mayhem and emerge sanity-in-tact, I highly recommend tackling the store in installments; that means one trip to try-on, and another trip to buy. Wait in the cursed dressing room line, figure out what you want, and get the fuck out of there before you lose your mind. Then, either go back to the store for your item and wait in the other cursed line to buy it, or – if you’ve got the patience to wait for snail mail (I don’t) – shop it online.

This tactic is known as the Two-Trip Clause.

I made the mistake of hitting Forever 21′s Herald Square location on a Saturday afternoon to buy these pants. The task of simply finding them involved an exhausting amount of crowd-dodging, not to mention continual apologies on my behalf for bumping into people with my massive tote bag (unintentionally, I should add. Bags should be used as weapons only as a last resort). Another big fat GRRR to the fifteen minutes spent waiting in the checkout line. Had I not tried on these pants previously, I seriously wouldn’t have made it out alive.

Two trips might seem like a pain in the ass, but think of it this way – if you try something on sans buying it on the spot, and forget about it shortly thereafter, you probs didn’t want it all that much to begin with. The Two-Trip Clause is thus designed to save both your sanity and your moolah, so give it a whirl. You’ll thank me later.

I’m all for approaching the act of shopping as a game of sorts. But dressing room show-and-tell is a spirited merriment reserved for off-hours only. I hate to rag on these girls, as they seemed like genuinely nice people and honest, funny shopping buddies; even in my pissed off state, I chuckled at their banter. And they certainly weren’t aware that their exchange resulted in an excruciatingly long wait for us Poor Unfortunate Souls behind them (um, yes, that’s a Disney song). But their lack of intention doesn’t change the fact that this kind of dressing room disregard is as criminal as putting on a full face of make-up in a Starbucks bathroom when, behind you, there’s a Mom waiting to change her baby’s poopie diaper or something. My F21 trip was a raging success (as per usual, obvs), but if I’d waited that long with zero pay-off… I don’t know. I’ve never been in a catfight, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone behind me who’d had a less fortunate overall experience started one today with those girls. Nor would I have blamed her.

The real guilty party here is, of course, Forever 21′s management staff, who really need to do something about the construction-related shortage of fitting rooms. But who are we kidding? The economy blows so hard that even successful chains are making cuts, so the odds of F21 spending time and money on temporary dressing rooms are basically nonexistent. And as long as that’s the case, it’s up to those two girls – and to all of us for that matter – to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Shopping is, at its core, supposed to be fun, and you should do everything in your power to make it so. But when said fun starts to inconvenience those around you, it’s time to take the conversation out of the dressing room and into the coffee shop.

The coffee shop where hopefully, in between latte sips, you won’t go to the bathroom to touch up your make-up when there’s a Mom behind you with a diaper to change. Karma, baby. Karma.

…and went dressy with a Forever 21 dress, tights and pumps!

Eighteen bucks for two new outfits? Yes please.

The first one to go? Designer denim. Buh. Bye.

Look brand snoots, I feel you. I used to consider jeans that cost less than $150 an insult to JAPs everywhere. This was before I discovered Forever 21. Unlike GAP, Old Navy and the like, Forever 21 denim is virtually unrecognizable as such. When worn with a white-hot shirt (this one Anne Fontaine, stolen from Mommy’s Closet), they look like they cost a hell of a lot more than $24.99.

If you can’t bring yourself to buy jeans from Forever 21, get off my blog. Now. Just kidding . If you must, must have brand name denim in your life, don’t add insult to injury by paying full price. Hit sample sales, Loehmann’s, Century 21, outlets, designer re-sale shops, whatevs. Anything you buy, be it a crazy leather handbag or an H&M dress, can always be found for less than its retail price; jeans are NO EXCEPTION to this rule.

I’ve had serious success with denim of the designer ilk at Beacon’s Closet. I’m also a big fan of Beacon’s’ no-name stuff; this fantabulous, high-waisted, wide-legged pair was $16.95. The front of the jeans is good.

The back of the jeans is GREAT. Must be that gold shooting star patch.

Or maybe it’s just my ass!