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This is peak HN; I am enjoying it. People boasting about how ones garderobe is more shitty and cheaper than the others. Next topic: why does no one wants to date me?
Clothing is not only functional, it can also help your appearance. Looking good does wonders for your mood. Sex appeal and all that. Unfortunately, aesthetics is positively correlated with price. I wish it wasn´t true. I can easily spot your outfit was cheaply made. I am talking about casual wear.
Premium labels really go the extra mile. Fast, cheap fashion cuts lots of corners.
> Premium labels really go the extra mile. Fast, cheap fashion cuts lots of corners.
I don't disagree that there's good fashion and shoddy fashion but I disagree "premium labels" is how to find good fashion. For me, And I know I'm in the minority here, I find any fashion that shows the branding to be horrible. A plain t-shirt that says nothing vs plain t-shirt with a tiny "Boss", "LV", "Gucci", "Prada" branding on it for 5x to 10x the cost really says "I hoping you'll like my because I'm wearing expensive clothing". It does not say "I have good fashion sense".
Taken to an extreme you get people covered in labels. This is not "good fashion"
https://img.5milesapp.com/image/upload/f_auto,t_i800/v150598...
But it is "premium labels"
I certainly agree that dressing well (different definitions of well) generally has positive outcomes. Much of my family is fine wearing dirty old soiled t-shirts with holes in them and it bugs me. Especially when I want to take them somewhere and they're clearly out of place in those clothes relative to the rest of the people around. At the same time they're all doing fine and no care.
> Next topic: why does no one wants to date me?
> Sex appeal and all that
That's just nonsense. My wardrobe value has never exceeded ~GBP250. I buy new clothing probably once every 2-3 years and even then the average spend is around GBP40-60, usually when stuff has completely worn out. I've only owned one or two items of clothing that had a "label" and they were from TKMax.
As a bloke, despite cheaping out on my sartorial choices I've never had a problem with dates/sex/relationships. It's all about personality, not being a dick and maintaining some semblance of basic personal hygiene.
I dapple in the clothes industry and sometimes it feels like people get really turned off if their clothes are not made by literal slaves. Not all expensive brands are ethical but the few dollar t-shirts etc are never. Drift it or pay for the real costs involved. If we don’t fix the idea about what basic necessities like clothes should cost the planet and people living on it are toast.
Fast fashion is also very harsh on the environment. There is a lot of waste in fast fashion. Much better to buy a smaller number of well-made articles of clothing and take care of them. If you have clothing tailored to fit you well, you will look and feel like a million bucks. It doesn't hurt that you may also become more attractive to the opposite sex. It's the same with personal hygiene and good grooming: it is first and foremost an aid to better health, both physical and mental, and second, a simple way of conveying to the outside world that you are a dependable, social and happy person. However, based on my observations of men, particularly younger men, in software, I have to say they are very poor at taking good care of themselves, physically or mentally, despite a lot of talk about mental health.
Most of the folks in tech, and commenting on this article are likely men in their twenties, and men in that age group do not care very much about their outfits. They also do not have good grooming habits, probably because no one thought to drill it into them at a young age. I have also noticed that if a person in engineering dresses well, he begins to stand out and attract negative attention and comments from his peers, which can discourage even tentative attempts at improving himself in this department (most men in the engineering side of this profession are somewhat shy and reserved to begin with).
> Looking good does wonders for your mood.
For your mood perhaps. I find “good looking” clothing uncomfortable, which makes me feel like shit.
Looking good can make an impression that you don't want.
> aesthetics is positively correlated with price. I wish it wasn´t true.
I guess it depends on the taste. I would say the opposite is true (perhaps excluding the most cheap things you can find, but not necessarily).
Of course more expensive stuff will likely last longer and in many cases will be more practical.
> Premium labels really go the extra mile.
Depends on the label, you generally have to go really premium to genuinely get something either well made or particularly interesting.
I dress like shit and I have gf. I will go out on a limb and say that it even helped my dating (by weeding out undesirable partners).
Tired of this lifestyle and self-improvement nonsense on a forum called Hacker News. Real hackers sit with a big Unix beard in a dark basement filled with old pizza boxes and empty Jolt Cola cans. The only time you should even meet another person is on a demo party.
> This is peak HN; I am enjoying it. People boasting about how ones garderobe is more shitty and cheaper than the others. Next topic: why does no one wants to date me?
> Clothing is not only functional, it can also help your appearance. Looking good does wonders for your mood. Sex appeal and all that.
I would bet good money this was written by a straight man, but have you ever considered there's also butch lesbians working in blue collar jobs that have wardrobes which are primarily composed of functional, rugged clothing, often in dark colors that don't meet your requirement of getting dates and having sex appeal?
not just one segment of society (straight cis male HN reading six figure job guys who don't put effort into dressing themselves) wears something other than what your societal expecations think they should to not be "shitty" and "cheap".
your comment itself is peak HN...
Diminishing returns after a certain price threshold but true still.
Wow, that's a lot of clothes! I wear like 10 [t-shirts,socks,underwear] and 2 pairs of [pants,shorts,footwear] and replace them at the thrift shop (except underwear and footwear) when they wear out. Counting jackets and hats and sportswear and more-formal-wear (i.e. shirts with buttons and collars) it can't all be worth $500.
I live in the following:
- 2 pairs of jeans, on rotate
- About 20 t-shirts
- 20-ish sets of underwear + socks
- About 3-4 sweaters/jumpers/hoodies
- 1 pair of boots
- 1 pair of worn out trainers
Einstein had it right:
"Albert Einstein reportedly bought several variations of the same grey suit so that he wouldn't have to waste time deciding what to wear each morning."
The only clothing I actually care about are my t-shirts. They all have graphic prints on them depicting things I care about. Mostly Films or Metal Bands.
Oddly, the worn-out trainers I wear I bought new on eBay several years ago, and it was only some time later that I realised they were limited edition Nike Cortezs that have since sky rocketed in price (for new-in-box) and now cost £500+ . I bought them because I liked the colour, and have practically worn them to death. Trainer/sneaker collectors must hate me now.
Wow, that's a lot of clothes!
Funny, I looked at his $3,907.65 total estimate and though that it's quite low for an adult.
Consider though that OP used retail prices, not thrift shop.
I found "more-formal-wear" to include "shirts with buttons" to be quite funny. Just think, you could class up your entire wardrobe by sewing NFC buttons to random shirts that don't need them...
I'll join the minimalists here. For the past decade, I've only had about 6 shirts, two pair of denim pants, one pair of boots, 4 pairs of socks, a rain coat and a jacket. I go through one pants every 2 years (as it gets riddled with holes I can't patch up anymore). Most but a few are black and made out of wool. Having worn wool clothing, it's hard to go back to cotton, linen or synthetic. Not only wool dries super fast and regulates body temperature better, it doesn't get smelly as fast as the other fabrics. Black color hides hard to remove stains that otherwise would require harsh chemicals to get rid of, reducing the fabric's life.
The main reason for living this way is not to have to spend brain cycles deciding what to wear every day.
I had the same reaction, though for me I have a bunch more tshirts, most of which I didn’t pay for. I just keep two piles of shirts on my shelf. In the morning I take the top shirt off the “active” pile. Clean shirts from the laundry go on top of the other pile. When they wear out they go into the garage as rags.
Side note, I think cost per wear should factor in laundry costs. I suppose you could consider that just part of overhead if everything is just wash & wear, but it would come into play if you had anything that needed special treatment (suits to dry cleaners or something).
I like the trick I learned to hang all your shirts with the hanger the wrong way. Then when you wash them, hang them normally.
Each spring, if a long-sleeve shirt is still the wrong way, it's time to get rid of it. Then I hang all remaining the wrong way for next fall/winter. Short sleeve get culled in late fall, with the rest reversed for next spring/summer.
Like the author, there are a few I hang on to, for practical (or sentimental) reasons. Sometimes I'll keep an disliked t-shirt around because I'll probably use it for grimy yard work at some point.
I've sometimes had items of clothing I disliked for a decade, then suddenly found extremely great.
But I do agree with the practice for short-sleeved shirts (not t-shirts), except the time for culling is not late fall, but rather, if applicable, early afternoon. Somehow it's an item strictly reserved for middle-aged overweight bus drivers in my neck of the woods.
That is a good system if you spend most of your time in the same general area/climate.
I live in a warm climate and have managed to transition to doing very little business travel anymore. But when I go someplace where it's too cold to wear shorts and t-shirt (or where I just want to wear something slightly more business appropriate) I often have to pack things that I might not have worn for a year or more.
LOL this is awesome! I ran choosemyboxers.com in college back in 2001 and had people rate and pick my underwear. I told all my friends and no one found it interesting because my boxers were "lame". One month it randomly blew up and I got enough ad revenue to replace my entire boxer collection. However it never went anywhere so I let it stagnate and eventually the shell I was hosting it on moved on to new ventures
The most interesting observation I made was color. Everything worn was gray or darkest blue at the flashiest. I was surprised to see no analysis of color. It would be interesting to quantify if the author's "bottom half" was generally 5% darker than the author's "top half" or maybe the opposite or maybe it averages out exactly the same.
I live in a 4-season state and I would be pretty interested to see if I, or people in general in my area, vary their average clothing color by the season. I would theorize the people get tanned in the summer, intentionally or not, varying by race quite a bit of course, and that skin tone change would influence average clothing color selections. Another theory is I notice I wear slightly warmer-brighter clothes in the winter, in an opposition to winter's dreariness, I almost feel compelled to wear a bright Hawaiian shirt if its snowing. A third theory is people would wear lighter colors around the peak of summer to limit solar heating. A fourth theory I have is summer heat seems most comfy in clothing that's tighter or looser than average for cooling reasons and middle of the road size would the minimum of comfort in the heat, whereas in the winter middle of the road tightness would seem the best balance of warmth and comfort. These theories could all be wrong, or right, of course.
A completely different side issue is over the years I accumulate more self-created uniforms and I wonder if that would show up in the data. I have a uniform of grungy old clothes resembling the color of used motor oil for changing oil or similar greasy repair jobs. I have exactly one set of grungy clothes I wear when I paint that are all stained up so I don't care if I stain them worse. I have exactly one set of clothes for lawnmowing/yardwork, the specific type of synthetic seems to clean up well from tree sap and the shoes are a grass-stained lost cause. I have a set of clothes specifically for shoveling/snowblowing that "tech" stuff that dries quickly because sweating and cold equals hypothermia, or at least extreme discomfort. Most people already have that set of clothes they wear to the gym or other exercise, of course.
Thanks for reading! I do need a little more color in my life. The one key observation I made was:
“Was fascinating to see how color played a big part in wear rates as well. My theory here is simply that my household doesn’t own enough white clothing items so the “white load” of laundry is bi-weekly vs weekly for everything else.”
> Current Wardrobe Value: $3,907.65
I don't have any friends (and I'm happy with this), so I have no reference: do people normally really spend this much on clothing!?
My entire wardrobe is worth around $150, and that's 70% socks.
Amount of money spent on clothes probably correlates strongly to number of social events, no friends probably means you just care about warm feet.
Let me get this straight: You own $150 worth of clothes, and $105 of it comprises socks (I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that they are the white, crew kind?). With $45 worth of 'clothes', I'm assuming you have boxers and such, which probably take up another $30. Do you even wear anything other than boxer, undershirt, and socks? I mean, unless your comment is pure hyperbole, I am having a difficult time visualizing your wardrobe! In fact, no matter the distribution, I am still having a hard time understanding how you make do with a $150 wardrobe. Do you wash your entire wardrobe literally every day? If so, does it last longer than a year?
OP here. The value here is really the price it was when new. Most of the clothes was purchased over the past 10+ years. I didn't buy any new clothes the year prior to this project at all. I spent more in clothes during the project than I had in the prior few years. But I also had lost nearly 50 pounds and my old clothes wasn't really fitting.
I have many individual pieces of clothing worth more than that. Nice cashmere is expensive, but soooo soft.
A basic sweater from Loro Piana can easily run a few k, but is absolutely worth the price.
Sky is the limit when it comes to outerwear, I’ve paid around $15k for a nice fur-lined coat. Worth it? Depends on the weather, sometimes I have doubts, but then the winter comes.
If there is a proper winter where someone lives, $150 would barely be enough for a proper winter jacket, no shoes.
Judging by the name of the blog (FAANG FIRE) I suspect this person is plenty well compensated in some sort of prestigious tech job, and if that's the case, then this number doesn't surprise me at all. There are lots of trendy athleisure and technical wear companies that will sell you the equivalent of a sweatshirt for $80, that can add up quick.
"My entire wardrobe is worth around $150, and that's 70% socks."
that doesn't seem possible. If you get a pair of pants, a shirt and shoes it's very likely you are already above $150. Never mind jackets, underwear and other stuff.
Can't relate. No Ren-Fair costumes? No gardening boots, gloves or shirts? What about hiking clothes?
I own about 4 mundane shirts, 3 pairs of pants. That's it. Not much to track for me.
A tip: You can buy decent, unbranded t-shirts from places like [0] for low single digit dollars. I finally got tired of every shirt being subtly different, remembering which ones fit which way, and just bought 15 t-shirts. Same model number, same size, assortment of colors.
There’s a weird thrill I get in the morning knowing that this is one less decision.
Hey HN, this is my original content. Happy to answer any questions. Turned out to be a fun little project.
This seems to me like a case of premature (or unnecessary) optimization. If one really wants to optimize their wardrobe, following a more Steve Jobs-like approach, and reducing the number of garments owned is the way to go.
Due to my carry-on-only lifestyle I own ~ one week of warm weather clothing, combined with a few warmer layers that I wear in colder weather. I wear almost the same thing every week, and I wear it until it's worn out, then replace it. I never own anything I don't wear.
It's so simple, and I waste so little time and money on my clothes. I am fashion conscious though: the little clothing I buy is usually designer or highly technical, and neutral colors which can be combined in many different ways and still match.
Amazing that there are just off the shelf nfc tags shaped like clothing buttons.
For anyone in the UK, I swear by my army desert socks. Very comfy, very hard-wearing, very tolerant to any kind of laundry cycle. eBay is a good place to start:
I am fortunate in that I have a uniform budget from my job and unfortunate in that nice clothes are really a case of "polishing a turd" due to my unattractiveness, so I just coast by on what my job provides.
This is cool. I want to maintain a food log that automatically goes to a Notion doc. Currently doing it by manually logging each major ingredient in every meal. NFC not quite feasible option
This is awesome! Makes me wonder what else you could track with a boatload of NFC tags like this.
Kitchen ingredients? Houseplant watering schedules?
I might have to try out a project like this.
If I saw the cost per wear on some of my shoes I think i’d lock my credit card in a safe.
This is something Patrick Bateman would do if American Psycho was set in 2022.
Thanks for sharing! I think it's pretty interesting to look at cost per wear. Wish I could get the same insights from my wardrobe without all of the effort.
It looks like he wore about 64 unique items in a year. Excluding two pairs of shoes. That seems like a lot?
A fashion brand could take inspiration from this, and offer a clothes-as-a-service.
yay
This is awesome, well done!