I see articles daily featuring titles such as “20 Fall Finds You Need for Under $20!” or “49 Under $49: The Ultimate Shopping Guide for Fall”. These are two links I just stumbled across while browsing different fashion news outlets. They’re everywhere, bombarding us with click bait to buy more and continuously consume cheap products because it’s convenient and, well, cheap. Just for the sake of research, I clicked on the first link to see exactly what I needed to complete my “perfect fall wardrobe”. It included a t-shirt dress for $10, a fleece jacket for $6, faux leather flats for $17, and a $5 wrap skirt that actually has a review citing “Love this $5 skirt! It looks like something you’d pay $49 for at H&M!”. Our consuming habits have become so skewed by the bombardment of inexpensive product that we now think a $49 H&M skirt is the pinnacle of luxury. But what is the frequent buying of cheap clothes really costing us?
Let’s break this down.
Studies show that the average American spends roughly $160 a month on clothing, or approximately $1,900 a year. Break that down further by dividing it by the 60 pieces of clothing most people buy annually, and that comes to just about $32 per item. How about instead of buying 60 pieces of $32 clothing, we buy ten $190 pieces of quality clothing? Since we only end up wearing about 20% of what’s in our closet anyway, there is really no legitimate need to buy so much. In this current day and age, we spend less on clothes (when measured as a share of our income) than ever before. Most Americans spend less than 3% of their yearly income on clothing. That’s a historical all time low.
So what’s changed? Evidently, our priorities. We now own more clothes than ever before, yet expect to pay less and less for them. Coupled with human nature of tiring of our possessions after a few months, our buying habits have evolved into a revolving door of consuming and ultimately trashing our once beloved belongings. The problem with that is clothing was never meant to be mass produced, and it definitely is not disposable. This new mindset has created a recipe for excess product and a disturbing amount of waste.
It’s natural to eventually tire of things. One example that comes to mind is music. We’ll love a song, play it over and over on repeat, and then grow tired of hearing it. But think about those songs that are classics, that you don’t get tired of listening to. The ones you never skip when they turn on. Clothes can be that same way. If you are smart about what you’re buying, and choose well-made, timeless pieces that will last for years, you don’t have to tire of it. This Vince dress is an example of that. I bought this probably 4 years ago, and it cost around $400. I have worn this dress on so many occasions, from cocktail parties to work to dinner dates. It never goes out of style and was well worth the money.
Learning that less is more is difficult. Of course it’s always fun and exciting to get more things more often, and it definitely takes self control to buy less. That doesn’t mean never shop, but it’s a reminder to purchase what you really love, not just what you love in that moment.
-Shelby
