The little dresses that could

If you find yourself looking at your stuffed closet wondering if you’d been possessed by a hooker with a less than tasteful sense of style, wonder no more. We, along with a passel of other hapless people with a compulsive impulse-shopping disorder, suffer from the same fate. See a sign that shouts “Sale!” in bold red letters and your eyes glaze over and, 20 minutes later, you find yourself with three bags of ruffled purple panties clearly designed for an underage streetwalker and a credit card that just got the shit stomped out of it.

The secret, I believe, is in keeping your funds in hard-to-reach places. Keep your credit card and cash — don’t withdraw unless it’s unnecessary, and, even then, only in minute amounts — in the bottom recesses of your oversized purse so it requires some sort of spelunking in order to extract payment. That way, if your purchase is only a passing fancy, groping through the dark, cavernous recesses of your Givenchy Nightingale tote won’t be worth the effort. (Of course, this technique only works if you’re a lazy bastard like me.)

Maybe the real solution is to buy only the things you truly like — which is harder than you think. Trust.

Try resisting a ridiculously formal plunging cocktail sheathe at 50 off! Even if you’ll never wear it, you end up rationalizing the purchase. “Maybe my daughter can wear it to her debut,” you say, while clutching the dress to your chest. Never mind that you’re not married or don’t even have a boyfriend. “The dress is just too irresistible to pass up!” you whisper to yourself while mentally calculating what’s left of your credit limit.

Here, YStyle puts together a few looks worth the expense. So the next time you check out your closet, you won’t have to dial an exorcism to rid yourself of all the crap clothes you purchased while possessed by some evil spirit with a hankering for tangerine bondage dresses.

* * *

E-mail me at jackieoflash@yahoo.com.