Here's the dilemma: It's spring and you're dying for the new look blossoming in fashion magazines and store windows -- but like most Americans, you have very little money these days to buy anything.
Transforming your look doesn't have to mean spending an exorbitant amount, though. It just means getting creative -- and smarter -- about your style and your wardrobe.
This year, I had particular need for a wardrobe refresh. With my new book coming out ("In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood"), I was going to be touring the country giving readings -- but since I work from home, my daily uniform generally consists of jeans, a T-shirt and a comfortable pair of clogs. And like most people, my bank account is screaming extreme frugality much more than extreme luxury.
So I called Samantha von Sperling, the director of Polished Social Image Consultants, for a little help. Von Sperling has worked in both the performing arts and fashion industries, producing style identities for clients ranging from celebrities and royalty to business executives and regular Joes. She usually charges $300 an hour for the works: a full-force closet attack in which she cleans out the old and, through a combination of personal shopping and wardrobe redesign, helps you "to bring in a look that is your best 'you.'"
These days, von Sperling says, even her rich clients aren't spending like they used to. Clients who used to spend $30,000 on a wardrobe are now spending $5,000, she tells me; many are spending only a few hundred dollars.
My new style consultant tells me the key to getting a luxe look for less is knowing your own style identity, learning how to mix high and low, knowing where to make investments and where not to. Here is her five-step program for solving my wardrobe problems.

1. Reassess your look
One vital strategy is to shop your closet. You can work with a professional like von Sperling, but you can also just recruit a good friend with a critical eye to help you see your closet in a new way.
"You have to take stock of what's in there to see what's working and what's not," von Sperling says, stepping into my closet on a recent afternoon. "It also helps you figure out what you need, so when you do go shopping, you do it in an economically smart way. It means not buying a skirt because you saw it in the window and just have to have it and thinking you'll figure out what to wear it with later."
She begins by taking my measurements, asking me my favorite colors, and also asking about my emotional relationship to my body. I tell her that one friend once dubbed my look "bohemian glam."
"I'm seeing a lot of bohemian, but not a lot of glam," she says, smiling. Ouch.
"Your look has to be compatible with your lifestyle, and work for your body, coloring and budget," she explains. "I going to tell you what you can wear, what you can't wear and what we can salvage with a little bit of ingenuity."

2. Regroup (and be ruthless)
For the next three hours, Sam tears through my closet. She pulls out all my clothes and makes three "action" piles:
- Clothes that are in good shape but that I never wear and should give to charity.
- Clothes that are old and worn that I should throw out.
- Clothes that I should remodel or dye a new color to bring back to life.
The rest can stay, she tells me.

3. Restore the classics
At one point, she discovers a piece of mink from an old coat that belonged to my late grandmother stuffed in a plastic bag on a high shelf.
"Now this breaks my heart," she says. It's not because of cruelty to animals -- but that I haven't treated the material with love.
"We're going to bring it back to life by taking it to the tailor to sew in a chiffon lining and turn it into a glamorous wearable scarf with sentimental value."
She also pulls out a faded white collared shirt and tells me to dye it a "happy color," and suggests that I mellow out the hot-pink embroidered tank top that I bought on a trip to India and dye it wine color in order to make it more sophisticated.
After she leaves, I take some of my classic shoes to the cobbler to be refurbished, then get down and dirty with some $2 clothing dye and my bathtub.

4. Refresh your closet
Meanwhile, von Sperling has created a list of essential items that I need. Updating a wardrobe doesn't mean buying the most expensive clothing on the rack, she reminds me: "Money cannot buy you style.
"You can have all the money in the world and have hideous taste," she continues. "But if you lost your job and have only two pennies to rub together, you can still walk into a party and make a smash hit."
I meet up with my new stylist at Runway, an eclectic Manhattan shop whose owner-designer makes most of her store's clothes in her own basement. I invest in a new blue suit, a good pair of black trousers that shape my figure and don't wrinkle, a versatile 1950s style flare flair dress, and great black belt -- von Sperling tells me it will make any jacket or cardigan sweater more tailored looking.
We then hit New York's trendy new Topshop boutique, an extension of the London chain, and von Sperling picks out a few key items to spruce up my look for spring. (Total outlay: $100 for a great purple dress and a fun necklace.) Finally, we slip across the street to a discount store: I attack the $5 rack for some new cotton tanks, and happen across a great blue summer dress for $37.
"Wear the dress with an expensive pair of shoes and costume pearls and you'll look like a million dollars," von Sperling suggests.

5. Revisit and remix
Back in my apartment for our final meeting, von Sperling takes my new clothes and mixes up a few new outfits with items I already own or have redyed. She puts together the newly wine-colored shirt from India with the black trousers from Runway and a refurbished pair of red suede shoes that I bought two years ago, and pairs the blue bargain dress with an expensive pair of classic black heels and my grandmother's costume black pearl earrings.
Presto: two fresh looks for my readings and book parties. We also put together seven other new combinations, mostly by mixing the new bargain finds with clothes I already owned and hadn't before considered putting together.
The result: a fresh new look and attitude, without being trendy. And because I got creative and shopped smarter, I've spent much less than I would have if I had just bought an expensive, off-the-rack new look.
I feel all the richer for it.

Published May 12, 2009