How long do you expect your clothes to last for? Not a consideration that's ever really guided my shopping in the past, to be honest. I buy clothes I fall in love with; clothes I have an overwhelming desire to possess immediately.
Then I met a man who epitomises frugality. It's not that he's tight, he just doesn't believe in spending money unwisely. He explained this the first time we went to the supermarket together, while he was calculating which cans of plum tomatoes represented better value.
He's appalled at the thought of replacing any item of clothing before it has done solid service. He has a three-piece suit that's been going for almost 25 years and counting. It's built to last, and nicely cut; you'd never know that Blur were in the charts with Country House when he bought it. He held it up for me to see recently.
All I could think about was what he was missing. Craftsmanship and durability notwithstanding, the thought of having only one suit for 25 years depresses me immensely. What about variety? What about freshness? There are so many gorgeous clothes out there, who can be content with only one of anything?
A suit is a bad example of this, possibly. A suit, of all garments, is something you can make do with only one of. Especially if you're a man, and you wear it only for weddings and funerals. So long as your body shape doesn't change radically, you can reasonably expect to get at least a decade out of it, and if you do lose or gain a lot of weight, well, what are tailors there for?