The Real Price of Fashion
By Jennifer

It is oh so easy to fall into the trap of spending all of our hard earned cash on trends that are here one day and gone the next. I know because, for years, I was ensnared by this fashion blunder. I had to be in the latest, greatest, of-the-moment styles. I was always broke and left with a full closet and nothing to wear. Then one day, a conversation with my mother changed everything.

We were sitting at my mom’s kitchen table after a long day of shopping, looking through all of our latest finds. We were both excited about everything we had purchased, but I was beginning to feel a bit of buyer’s remorse over a winter coat that I had bought on a whim. It was beautiful; rose colored wool, knee length, single-breasted, with just the right dose of feminine appeal. It was the kind of coat you picture a very chic French woman wearing as she strolled along the rues de Paris. It was love at first sight, but I was starting to have second thoughts. I admitted to my mother that I felt a little unjustified spending so much money on a pink coat. She looked at me for a few seconds before asking how many times I planned on wearing it. I told her that I couldn’t be sure, but that I was so in love with and was sure that it was to become that winter’s wear-with-anything staple.
   
“Well, then your cost per wear will be relatively low,” she reassured me.
 
“What does that mean?” I blurted out, perplexed more by my mother’s nonchalant attitude when answering the question than her straight forward answer.

My mother explained that it was actually something she learned from her mother, my grandmother, and that she had always employed as strategy to decide whether or not something is worth the purchase price. She explained that in order to find out if something is  worth the cost, you have to find its “real” price. That is, you have to find out how much it will cost you each time you wear it. For example, if you were to buy a coat for $100.00 and only wear it one time, then it cost you $100.00 per wear. Very dear indeed. On the other hand, if you were to buy a coat for $1000.00 and wear it 50 times, it would only cost you $20.00 per wear. Each time you wear it, the price per wear decreases.

I was shocked. Why had I never thought of this before? It was so logical, so easy to implement. For something that took me nearly twenty years of life to figure out, I can’t even begin to think how I would shop without it. It has helped me stop and really think about the clothes I buy. Do I truly love them? Will I actually want to wear them again, and again? Will I be able to wear them next season? Five years from now?

This is especially useful when bargain shopping. I used to try to find the cheapest of everything. I thought that six five dollar t-shirts were much better than one thirty dollar t-shirt. The only problem was that the five dollar t-shirts would often fall apart after a couple of washes while the thirty dollar t-shirt would last cycle after cycle. It was far more cost effective to purchase the thirty dollar t-shirt that would eventually level out to merely cents per wear as opposed to the five dollar shirt that only managed to survive one or two wears. Bargains take on a whole new meaning. That $320.00 Hermès silk scarf that you thought was far to expensive will whittle it’s way down to less than $1.00 per wear if you wear it everyday for a year. So, maybe wearing the same scarf every day for a year isn’t likely, but if you plan on wearing something a lot, then it just might be worth the investment. 

 
 Over the past several years my closet has gone from almost one hundred percent trendy to nearly ninety percent classic and about ten percent trendy. I have items that have lasted through several seasons and many trips to the dry cleaners. Hardly a day goes by that I look into my closet and can no longer find a thing to wear. My problem now seems to be that I have too many options. Because all of my money isn’t being thrown away on fleeting fashion, I am now able to indulge in nice shoes and handbags. I still follow the trends, but I have started to develop my own signature style. 
 

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. I wasn’t going to shy away from spending a lot of money on my wedding gown even though I would only wearing it one time. As with all things, let your better judgement tell you when to use this method. Also, remember that sometimes when you love something, you just have to have it.