Have you ever thought about how much each wear of a garment costs you? I’m not talking about the bargain you may have got at the store, rather, once you’ve worn the garment up to the point of discarding it how much did each wear of that garment cost?
Earlier this year I posted a 30 wears challenge with the aim of heading towards a more sustainable wardrobe. Working out the cost per wear can help with this too. Paying for a quality garment that is going to get a lot of wear rather than a cheaper “it doesn’t matter if I wear it a lot or not” piece can actually work out not only better for the environment (through less waste) but better for your wallet too.
To work out the cost per wear of a garment you need to know the price of the garment, maintenance costs (alterations, mending, dry-cleaning etc) and the amount of times you will wear the garment.
Take for instance the 3 Dress I chose for the 30 wears challenge. I expect and plan wear this dress a lot more than the 30 times of the challenge but for the sake of this activity we’ll work it out based on the 30 times challenge. The 3 Dress costs $120 (sign up for our newsletter and get 10% off your first order too), maintenance wise it doesn’t need any alterations as the size XL fits me as is (though if you need it made with adjustments let me know, generally I will do these free of charge), the dress is also unlikely to need mending after 30 wears; it does not require dry-cleaning, rather it gets laundered with my standard wash each week/wear. Therefore if we take the purchase price of $120, no expected maintenance costs, and divide it by the 30 wears it works out to $4 per wear. As I have mentioned, I plan on wearing this dress a lot more than the 30 times too and each wear will bring that cost per wear down.
Now if we consider a less worn garment, perhaps a dress purchased for $50 that is worn 8 times, maybe it’s worn every weekend over the summer, the cost per wear of this one dress is $6.25.
Glamour has created a calculator that can help you calculate the cost per wear of any garment or pair of shoes, find it here Glamour cost per wear calculator .
Hopefully this helps you be more thoughtful when you purchase new (or used) clothing.
Amanda