A Little Bit of Math: Cost-per-Wear

The price tag on a piece of clothing tells you one thing about the garment it is affixed to: how much the garment costs. What it doesn't tell you is whether or not the item is quality, how often you will wear it, or how many weeks, months, years you will continue to wear it. And yet so often we will make our clothing choices based on price tag alone.

The same price tag may elicit many different responses: What? That's too expensive! Eeew...too cheap for me. Cool! It's on sale! No thank you...marked down merhandise is passe. Is this price for real?

Let me introduce you to the concept of cost-per-wear. Cost-per-wear is a way of assessing a garment's true cost to you. I'm going to take a stab here and guess that most of you aren't in the habit of buying an item of clothing to wear only once. (If you are, then The Very Small Closet is probably not your cup of tea.) But let's pretend for just a moment. You buy a dress for $200 that you will wear just once. That is $200 x 1 wearing = a cost-per-wear of $200. But if you should wear that dress twice, the cost-per-wear drops to $100. If, over the course of the dress's lifetime it gets worn 50 times, the cost per wear is now $4. Another example: Let's say you buy a cheap and trendy t-shirt for $18. After two washings it's already falling apart. You wear it one more time before it gets lost somewhere in the back of your closet. Cost-per-wear? $6. Comparing the two examples, you can see that the dress (almost 11x's more expensive than the shirt) was actually the better deal.

Of course these are just examples, but you can see how the price tag of an item may not be the sole predictor of a garment's true value to you.

Next time I'll show how cost-per-wear is maximized by a pared down wardrobe.

See you later...same blog time...same blog channel....

(For more information on wardrobe planning, or to sign up for my free e-zine, please visit my Wardrobe Planning Website.)