I have acquired a lot of sweaters over the years. This is New England. Winters are long. Heat is expensive. Sweaters fill the gap.

This morning I noticed more than half my sweaters are purple. I’ve got a few in black, a couple in red, but purple dominates. The sweaters used to be all black. I’m from New York where women wear black. It’s a thing. A co-worker in Israel once told me I dressed like a nun. I could never wear the bright colors she wore. I’d feel like I was wearing a neon sign.

Blouses and dresses, on the other hand, are the other color: orange. Bright orange.

If you surmise from this that I love purple and orange, you’d be wrong. It’s not that I don’t like the colors, it’s just that when something is left over at the end of a season, the odds strongly favor they are orange or purple or some variation. Purple sweaters scream “final mark-down.” As a habitue of end-of-the-season sales, I know what to expect. Lots of purple, white, orange and some nasty shades of green in which no one looks healthy.

Leftovers also include “specialty colors” designers were sure would be the next big thing. They are inevitably named after fruits or veggies. They never sell well, so there are plenty of whatever it was in the clearance aisle. As long as it isn’t yellow, lime green, or beige — colors that make me look ill — I can work with it.

By clearance time, neutral colors are gone. What you will find is fruit: cantaloupe, mango, kiwi, aubergine, honeydew, sugarplum, pumpkin, mocha and vanilla bean. We all knew they were tan, orange, coral, purple, off-white and lavender. New names do not make old colors the next big anything.

I’m a big fan of neutrals. In addition to being essentially conservative where personal color is concerned, I spent many years working and commuting. If I wanted to have a life outside of work, dressing had to be fast and easy.

Neutral colors are the backbone of a working woman’s wardrobe. If almost all of your clothing is black, grey, off-white, taupe, brown, or khaki, putting together an outfit is a piece of cake. Grab a top, grab a bottom, attach earrings to lobes and voilà. It’s a go-anywhere wardrobe for the fashion-challenged. In other words, me.

After I stopped working, I didn’t have much money to spend on clothing. The percentage of purple and orange in my wardrobe rose accordingly. Recently, I lost 25 pounds. It was lockdown and I got tired of food. Not only did this make me thinner, but it eliminated my hips and butt. They just disappeared. These days, I’m basically shaped like a tube with two artificial lumps for breasts. You can dress it up, but there isn’t much in the way of underpinnings.

This year, I had no choice. I had to buy some pants because the old ones I had were falling down. Because my hips were gone, everything was also about three inches too long. Luckily, perpetual lack of money had honed my bargain hunting skills so I got what I needed for surprisingly little — and all of the clothing came from very good shops.

I have always been a bargain hunter. First I shopped the sales with my mother and sometimes, when I want to go shopping, I most miss my mother. She could spot a bargain from the other side of the floor. Mostly, I shop final sales and closeouts, even when I am not strapped for funds. It’s a family thing. My mother raised me to hold fast to one unyielding principle.

Never pay full price. 

I take pride in scoring a great buy. You aren’t supposed to brag about how much you pay. You’re supposed to brag about how much you didn’t pay. The less you pay, the greater are your bragging rights. I was astonished to discover there are people who are proud of paying a lot for something they could have gotten for much less if they’d waited a few days. They might have had to take it in purple or orange, but what a bargain!

Would I have different attitude towards shopping if I were rich? To put it in perspective, back in the early 1990s, I got into a tug of war with Carly Simon for possession of a 70% off clearance sale silk blouse in a chi-chi shop in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. The blouse was orange. She had plenty of money, but bargain shopping isn’t just for the poor. It’s an art and a contact sport.

I got the blouse. Fantastic blouse. Somewhere, in the great beyond, Mom is smiling proudly.

Categories: Anecdote, Celebrities, Humor, Shopping

Tags: Carly Simon, celebrities, clearance sale, discounts, purple, Shopping