A Case For Buying Expensive Clothes
I like nice clothes. Who doesn’t?
But buying nice things is expensive and often feels like a luxury.
$70 for Ten Thousand gym shorts… $200 for a Patagonia jacket… $300 for Red Wing boots…
Sounds ridiculous, considering there are alternatives to all these brands that are a fraction of the cost.
So we settle for cheaper options that allow us to get “more bang for our buck.”
But do we really get more for the money?
I don’t think so (at least not usually).
The reason we think we do is because we still get something but don’t have to spend as much money.
But our fear of big price tags blinds us to longevity of our purchase.
And it’s probably costing you more in the long run.
Most well-made clothing will last 10+ years.
My most expensive pieces of clothing definitely have lasted the longest.
And if you calculate the cost per wear (CPW), they end up being pretty cheap.
The more you wear it, the lower your CPW is.
The CPW for my Patagonia jacket is less than $0.25 right now.
And it’ll only continue to drop as I continue to wear it.
I recently went through my closet and got rid of a ton of clothes.
The majority of what I got rid of was cheap things I bought on sale.
And even though they were probably only $25 (originally $50+), the cost per wear was ~$12.50…
That’s a 50 times higher CPW than my expensive jacket.
But that’s the problem with making purchases based on what’s cheapest.
We end up…
Buying more
Buying worse quality (because ti doesn’t last as long, it also forces us to buy more)
Buying into trends (because they are temporary, we end up buying even more)
In the short term, cheap feels good and gives us a dopamine hit.
Scoring a deal and shopping the sale feels like a win in the moment.
But when is instant gratification the right choice?
Never…
So we need to approach buying clothes differently and look at it from a long-term perspective.
This looks like:
Buying less
Buying better quality
Buying staples (pieces that are trend-proof)
This shift in perspective has had a huge impact on my wardrobe and my wallet.
Go on, buy yourself something nice.
