Find your personal style

Now this point is easier said than done. While some people seem to have been born with an innate sense of style that has seen them through decades of dressing well, regardless of seasonal shifts in trends, many of us still struggle to find an overarching look that makes us feel confident, comfortable and complements our personality. Luckily, to give you a helping hand, I’ve already sat down with three fashion experts who shared their top tips on how to perfect a personal style. But beyond just making getting dressed easier each day, it can help make to make us a much more conscious consumer too.

“Understanding your personal style isn’t buying, it’s researching,” explains Barber. “It’s looking at your closet and figuring out what colours you like to wear. What brands do you like? Maybe, when you see this style, you don’t actually need anything new. You can go into your wardrobe because you have these individual pieces. Maybe we just put this colour palette together that we’ve never worn before, and all of a sudden, the stuff in your closet that isn’t new feels new and fresh.

“If we’re constantly in this cycle of buying new things every single month, we never will get to that point,” she says, emphasising the importance of step one. “For me, a lot of times, instead of buying, I spend the time that I would have spent browsing a big fast fashion website and take a look at Pinterest instead. I’m looking at outfits and looking at things that I’ve liked in the past and pulling together ideas from different images, and sometimes that can be just as satisfying as shopping. The speed at which we’ve been moving is exactly the problem. It’s bad for our closet, it’s bad for our wallet, and it’s hella bad for the planet.

“But also, what that definitely does for you is when you do need a new item, you’ve already kind of got a good list of what you want.” Then, when you do need something new, be it a bigger pair of jeans or a winter coat, you’ll be shopping with more of a purpose, which takes us to step three.

3 simple steps to shopping more sustainably, no matter your budget