Spending on clothes can shrink your cash

Do you suffer from "Closet Guilt?"

If you're a man, the likely answer is no. If you're a woman, you'd rather not talk about it.

I first heard the phrase while talking with Janet Wood, a Dallas friend who now lives in Annapolis and works growing Fashion Fit Formula, a firm she founded with business partner Kathy McFadden. We were talking about the differences between men and women when it comes to clothing.

Like most men, I would rather not think about clothes. In my ideal life, I would be a member of a religious order. This would make it acceptable to wear the same outfit every day.

Wood put me on the road to simplicity more than 10 years ago when, as a friend, she offered a few simple rules for my clothing choices. Her rules worked well to disguise the worst results of sitting at a typewriter or computer for nearly four decades. I have fewer decisions to make, and my wife says I look better.

Like most women, my wife loves clothes. She regularly wishes for larger closets, more drawers and better ways to store accessories. She sometimes suffers from bouts of "Closet Guilt" because her closet is stuffed with seldom-worn clothes.

"She's not alone," Janet advised. "We've found that most women wear about one-third of the clothing they own. The rest just goes to the back of the closet.

"It isn't planned that way. Women don't go shopping for ugly outfits that are perfect for the lost part of their closet. They just discover that it doesn't look right."

Eventually, all the unworn clothing is given away or taken to the booming consignment store market.

Add up all those closets and you get some very big numbers. We're talking billions of dollars in unworn clothing. Every day, millions of women stare into bulging closets and come to the same conclusion: They have "nothing to wear."

In fact, there is a solution. It isn't more shopping and more trips to the consignment store.

The solution, Wood says, is in classic proportions.

Most women, she said, buy outfits on impulse, often because they are on sale. They think it's what they want at the time. But when they try it on at home it doesn't look right, or it doesn't go with anything else they have.

"But that's not the real problem," she says.

The real problem, she explains, is a matter of proportions. Ideal proportions, actually -- what some call "the golden ratio" or "the divine proportion." Fashion Fit finds them with a series of equations and algorithms based on Leonardo da Vinci's observations on proportion in the human body.

Unfortunately, most human beings aren't ideally proportioned. We wouldn't fit in Leonardo's well-known drawing of perfect proportions. So our eyes, seeking that ideal, tell us something is wrong.

And it happens to virtually everyone. Wood observed that they had measured 6,000 women. Only 22 were in perfect proportion. The other 5,978 could be helped with a little finesse.

I asked her to explain.

Wood said they took 12 individual measurements, all based on bone structure. This was important because it meant the results didn't depend on your weight, just your basic body proportions. They entered the measurements in their computer model, and it advised how to make your proportions appear ideal by changing the apparent measurements of the clothes you already own or will buy in the future. You can see for yourself by checking the videos on their Web site, www.fashionfitformula.com.

What does any of this have to do with personal finance?

The answer is on your credit card. Charity may begin at home, but savings can be found in your closet.

© 2007, Universal Press Syndicate