Allen Day’s Blog

In part 1, I described my experience with trying various designers for fit, and assessing what type of wardrobe items I should buy to begin. I also described where I’ve been considering picking up some items, and how I might go about doing that.

In evaluating the possible strategies for building the wardrobe, I’m considering the following factors:

• time units to acquire a garment
• effort per unit time to acquire a garment
• garment price, as a fraction of retail
• garment quality

These are not necessarily conflicting factors, but there are definitely some inverse relationships. For instance, if I want to minimize time and effort, price will certainly go up. So I can wait; I’m not in a rush. I’m also not much of an active shopper and I don’t want to spend lots of time running around town or shopping online, so I want to reduce effort. I also don’t want to compromise on quality, and I’m willing to pay more to get what I want. I’m also willing to wait longer to get a lower price.

Here’s what I’m doing:

1. Subscribe to department store mailing lists. Here are some deep links to sign up for:
   • Saks Fifth Avenue,
   • Barneys,
   • Neiman Marcus.

   This way I’ll be sure to be notified of clearances like the Barneys Barker Hangar warehouse sale. My impression so far is that Barneys sends out a ton of spam — like 1-2 per day! Yuck! I haven’t received any mail from the other two yet in the ~5 days I’ve been on-list.

2. Subscribe to eBay watch lists. You can set up a watch. It’s like a brokerage trade trigger and emails if new items are listed that match your search terms/categories/sizes.
   • For example, I’m subscribed to a search for Kiton 42L sportcoat.
   • I’m also subscribed to the word couture along with some other terms like so. You see this word appear in the higher-end lines for many designers, or sartorially-oriented sellers on eBay will use it in their titles/product descriptions. Along the same lines, you could subscribe to Purple Label to get alerts on high-end Ralph Lauren items if you like those.
3. Subscribe to the AskAndyAboutClothes sale forum. It appears to be a very active sale forum. The sellers are frequently announcing sales in there and linking to their eBay profiles. I’m using this as a form of vetting of the sellers on eBay as the AAAC forum seems reputable. This subscription doesn’t allow filtering of items by size, etc. The very low prices more than make up for the effort of checking the forum regularly.