Frugal Club Tip #2: Clothing

I’m looking forward to never having to buy clothing ever again. To live a sustainable lifestyle one has to rid oneself of all unnecessary possessions and cease all nonessential activities. Shopping for clothes falls neatly into both categories and that’s why it’s a good place to start – you get two for the price of one.

Now, this isn’t something you should dive into unprepared. Implementing a moratorium on clothing purchases at some arbitrary moment in time is not recommended. You’re likely to find yourself wearing some old Hallowe’en costume to your cousin’s wedding – not cool.

Or super cool. It really depends on the costume.

I’m not there yet, but I will be soon. I plan on making a single $400.00 purchase sometime in the next few months and these will be my clothes for the next twenty or thirty years. Here (in instructional form) is how I plan on proceeding.

I already have a favourite shirt – I’m halfway there!

Before anything, you need to realize that no one cares what you’re wearing. Remember this. Ask any of your co-workers what you were wearing on a given day the previous week and they won’t be able to tell you.

And if they can tell you, you should file a complaint with HR straightaway.

The first step is find a brand that fits you and stick with it. You may not know this but every clothing company has a pair of hu-mon models (one male one female) off of whom they baseline all their clothing. All of the different garment sizes for a given manufacturer are scaled to the measurements of these two perfect individuals. Because they use different models, clothing of the same size from the different companies will fit you differently. Find the good one.

Second, pick a motif or colour scheme that works for you. The nice people in the cosmetics section of your local department store will tell you your season. For these of you who don’t know, each person is a season that corresponds with the colours that go best with his / her complexion, eye colour, hair colour, and Myers-Briggs results. Make sure each piece fits your season but it also has to match with all the other articles. This will eliminate any analysis by paralysis situations when trying to decide what to wear.

I’m an introverted rainy autumn at dusk.

Next you need to figure the rate at which your clothing wears out. You’re on your own for this one – inspect the conditions of your current favourites, try and remember when you bought them, determine how long you plan to live, and then do the math. Don’t forget to account for the different seasons if your country has them.

The hard part is acquiring the clothes but your large purchase will allow you to negotiate a special price. You can also fly overseas to buy direct from the factory. Sound crazy? Do some research into the markup on retail clothing and the cost of flights to Asia. Don’t travel in high season.

In addition, an investment like this is a good motivation to eat well and exercise regularly. You gotta keep the same shape or all this work will have been for nought. Also if you have no space in your apartment, you can store all this stuff at your parent’s place.

So that’s my blueprint on how I’m going to proceed – I’ll be sure to keep you posted. And one final suggestion, if you find yourself in an environment where the idiom “the clothing makes the man” has some measure of value, get the hell out of there. Do you really want to be spending all your time hanging around people who judge you by what you wear? Sure it would be fun at the beginning but I bet it would get pretty tiresome after a while.