My Winter Wishlists
The throughline in my winter wishlists over the past few years
I’ve always kept track of what I’m eyeing because it makes it easier to decide, on the now-rare occasions when I shop in person, if something is worth it because I want AND need it, or if something is just appealing to me because I’m seeing it and it looks new and shiny.
At the end of fall this year, I revisited my 2025 winter wishlist (which you can see here). I hadn’t referenced it since the spring, and it was a pleasant surprise to see how well my 2026 winter wishlist aligns with my 2025 iteration.
What Works for Me?
Looking at my wishlists and my style Pinterest board helps me narrow down pieces that I’m consistently drawn to. It’s easy to feel like I must have a piece because I’ve seen it a billion times, but there’s something very different, to me, about pinning something on Pinterest.
Seeing what I’m drawn to in one space makes it so much easier to see the throughlines. There’s always a gut reaction when I’m going through my Pinterest home feed—even when I see items here that I see written about on Substack all the time, somehow the image is divorced from its cultural context and it’s easier for me to see that yes, I actually do like x item, and no, I don’t really like y.
These two things together—a wishlist with images and a Pinterest board with only images I feel strongly about—has been my number-one way to actually welcome items into my wardrobe that I know I’ll love.1 It’s been such a relief! For instance, I’ve found myself thinking about bandanna prints lately. I even wrote about them here. But here’s the thing—I don’t really love them for me. I skip over them on Pinterest. And so I removed the bandanna prints from my wishlist.
You can create your own virtual, visual wishlist on ShopMy, even if you’re not a blogger! Sign up here.
Wishlist Wins and Years-Long Patterns
Three of the items from the 2025 wishlist made their way into my wardrobe this year—this Tyrolean jacket* which I’m obsessed with, this chain necklace*2 which I wear for girls’ nights, and these jeans*3, which are a GREAT straight leg with a cuff. This isn’t a style I’d thought I’d like, but after noticing my Pinterest board had multiple images of cuffed jeans with socks and loafers, I realized there was a pattern going on here. They’ve been my most-worn jeans of the fall/winter.
Other patterns I’ve noticed for cold-weather wishlists are velvet (these slippers, this dress), wool sweaters, shearling4, tweed blazers (I’m dying for this), polished leather (these or these—can you tell I’m on a Jamie Haller kick?), and checked overcoats. And while I love an oversized sweater and slim trousers combination, my cold-weather Pinterest board shows that I’ve been drawn to more tailored layers with silk scarves. This explains how often I’ve worn this shirt and this jacket, and it’s encouraging me to pull out my mother’s old silk scarves (and potentially invest in another gorgeous one from Janie Kruse Garnett).
The TL;DR of it all
Essentially my wishlist and virtual pinboard boils down to a depth and richness that I don’t really find in “the real world” any longer. It seems to be—well, it is—a recession, but this poverty of depth been so apparent even in days of stock market record highs. For the most part, commerce is simply for profit. Window treatments are skimpy and don’t meet in the middle. Trousers don’t have hems to let out. Poplin is wrinkly and see-through. The layered look is “in,” but the problem is this—you can’t do the layered look on the cheap. There is always a cost. It could be a financial one (i.e. hiring an interior designer, buying furniture from established companies with pricey upholstery), or it could be time (i.e. scouring Facebook Marketplace/your local thrift shop, collecting over years), but you can’t make it work if you’re skimping.
It’s the same thing with clothes. If you want something that looks like it stepped out of old-school Town & Country, then you need to make an investment. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do over the years. Whether it’s researching defunct brands that my family loved and snagging great, low-priced items from Etsy or Depop, or traveling abroad and picking up pieces that I love, or investing in pieces from great brands that put quality over profit, it’s worth the cost to have pieces I’ll love for years and pass down to the next generation.
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Assuming they fit, and look good on me, and meet my exacting criteria for fabric content, etc.
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I need to get on Depop with you & my teenager! 😂
I love this approach! Using a wishlist + Pinterest to see what you’re actually drawn to makes so much sense. Much better than my singular Pinterest board with 1.1k random images on it!!!