Cost Per Wear: The Economics of Buying Well

I was, it must be admitted, poor at arithmetic. My creditors would confirm it, and several of them did, at length. But there is one sum I understood perfectly well even in my most reckless years: a thing well made, worn often and kept carefully, costs less than it appears to.

The modern name for this is cost per wear. It is the simplest idea in menswear and the most frequently ignored, because it requires a man to think about the hundredth time he wears something while he is standing at the till for the first.

Cost per wear is the price of a garment divided by the number of times you wear it.

That is all. A coat you paid a great deal for and wore every winter for a decade may cost very little per outing. A shirt you bought on a whim, wore twice and then gave to a charity shop cost a great deal per outing, whatever the label said.

The formula is not complicated. What is complicated is being honest about the bottom half of the fraction. Every man believes he will wear his new purchase constantly. The wardrobe, which keeps better records, frequently disagrees.

Let us do the sum with round numbers. These figures are entirely hypothetical, chosen for easy arithmetic rather than taken from any shop window. Your prices will differ.

Imagine two pairs of shoes.

Shoe A costs $100. It has a cemented sole, which cannot practically be replaced. Worn twice a week, it lasts, let us say, about a year before the sole wears through and the upper cracks. That is roughly 100 wears. Cost per wear: about $1.

Shoe B costs $400. It has a welted sole, which a cobbler can replace. Worn twice a week, it needs a new sole every few years. Suppose, again hypothetically, that each resole costs $100, and that over ten years the shoe needs two of them. Total spent: $600. Wears: roughly 1,000. Cost per wear: about 60 cents.

At the till, Shoe A looks like the sensible choice. You keep $300 in your pocket and walk out feeling shrewd.

Now run the clock. To match Shoe B's ten years, you would need to buy Shoe A ten times. Ten pairs at $100 is $1,000, against $600 for Shoe B. The bargain has cost you $400 more, and that is before counting the hours spent shopping for replacements, the blisters of breaking in each new pair, and the fact that Shoe B, polished and resoled, looks better in year eight than Shoe A did in month three.

The expensive shoe is not cheaper because of a trick. It is cheaper because it keeps working. The rest is quality you receive for nothing.

Cost per wear is a fine servant and a poor master. It fails in three predictable ways.

The wears never happen. An expensive garment that suits a life you do not actually lead has a cost per wear approaching infinity. The beautifully made dinner jacket for a man who attends no dinners is not an investment. It is a monument.

Price is mistaken for quality. A high price does not guarantee a long life. Some expensive clothes are made beautifully. Others are made ordinarily and priced for the name. The formula only works if the thing genuinely lasts, which means you must judge cloth, construction and repairability rather than the label.

Care is left out. A good shoe left unpolished, never rested and worn into the ground will die almost as young as a cheap one. Durability is half in the making and half in the keeping. Neglect is the hidden cost in every equation.

Start with the things you wear most. Shoes, an overcoat, the trousers you live in and a jacket that goes with everything. These carry the most wears, so they reward quality most handsomely.

Spend less on things you wear rarely or that date quickly. A seasonal novelty bought cheaply is a reasonable pleasure. Bought expensively, it is an expensive lesson.

Before buying anything, count honestly how often you will wear it in a year. Then ask whether it can be repaired, resoled, relined or altered. Things that can be mended have a long future. Things that cannot have a short one, however handsome they look today.

Finally, budget for maintenance as part of the price. Shoe trees, a brush, polish, a cobbler's bill now and again, a tailor's adjustment when your waist has opinions of its own. These sums are small, and they are what turn a good purchase into a long one.

There is a return on buying well that does not appear in any arithmetic. A man who owns fewer, better things spends less time deciding what to wear, less time shopping and less time regretting. His wardrobe agrees with itself. He gets dressed in the dark and looks as though he planned it.

Fast fashion offers the thrill of the new at a low price. Buying well offers something rarer: the pleasure of the familiar, improving with age. One is a sugar rush. The other is a pension.

Cost per wear reframes clothing as a long-term purchase rather than a one-off expense: the relevant number is not the price tag but price divided by honest use, adjusted for repair and care. On that measure, durable, repairable goods often compete well with cheaper alternatives, provided they are actually worn and maintained. For brands, the argument favours transparency about materials, construction and repairability, because customers who buy on longevity will want evidence, not adjectives.

Until next week,

B.

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Forward this to a man who has bought the same cheap shoe four times and calls it loyalty.