While at an event with Arabella Greenhill, Stylist’s Fashion Director-at-large, I confided in her that I wanted to buy a Loewe Mini Puzzle bag. Having spotted them everywhere at Copenhagen Fashion Week over the summer, surely my observe-from-afar crush had gone on long enough to warrant paying the eye-watering price tag?

According to Arabella (the high priestess of forever fashion) her rule to shop by is quite literally asking: will I wear the piece 30 times? If the answer’s a hard yes, then proceed to checkout; if the answer’s a slightly more dubious no, then just stay where you are.

When I saw her, Arabella was wearing Prada and Victoria Beckham that, in her own words, she’d had “for years.” That reiterates her point: making smart, incisive purchases enables us to build wardrobes that transcend time. These maxims justify expensive purchases by equating the amount we spend on the durability of the piece.

The 30 rule is contrary to the hard-and-fast rule that other fashion editors I know abide by. Some say that if you will wear the piece you’re lusting after as many times as the number of pounds you paid for it, then it’s worth it. That makes it harder, of course, to justify digging deep enough into my pockets to buy a Loewe bag. Will I definitely wear a mini tote over one thousand times? Who’s to say. Will I definitely wear it 30 times? Absolutely.

In making investment purchases – the sort that provoke thoughts and conscious decisions about our wardrobes – we enable our brains to process our personal styles more than making a snap impulse purchase does. The dream is to be the sort of person, like Arabella, that, in years to come, has amassed an arsenal of pieces that have stories to tell and have stood the test of time. 

Images: Getty