What is a good cost per wear?

For everyday clothes, under £1 per wear is a good outcome and quite achievable. For outerwear and shoes, £1–£3 is reasonable given how hard they work. Occasion wear rarely comes below £20 per wear, which is worth knowing before you buy rather than after.

Should cost per wear include dry cleaning?

Yes, for anything that needs it. A jacket cleaned four times a year at £15 adds £60 annually, which can double its real cost over its life. Include alterations too, though those are usually one-off.

Does cost per wear mean I should always buy expensive?

No. It means you should spend more in the categories you wear daily and less in the categories bound to specific occasions. An expensive item worn twice has a far worse cost per wear than a cheap one worn weekly — the number rewards frequency, not price.

How do I track wears without it becoming a chore?

Manual counting rarely survives past a few weeks. The practical answer is a wardrobe app that increments a wear count when you log an outfit, so the data accumulates as a side effect of planning rather than as a separate task.

Is cost per wear useful for occasion wear?

It is useful as information, not as a verdict. A wedding outfit will always look expensive per wear. The point is to make that trade-off knowingly, and to consider whether renting or re-wearing something you own achieves the same result.

Cost Per Wear: The Only Shopping Maths That Matters

Cost per wear is the price of an item divided by the number of times you wear it. A £200 coat worn 100 times costs £2 per wear. A £30 top worn twice costs £15 per wear. By that measure the coat is nearly eight times cheaper, despite costing almost seven times more.

The formula is trivial. The useful part is what it does to your estimates — because almost everyone is systematically wrong about how often they will wear things.

The calculation

Cost per wear = total cost ÷ number of wears.

Total cost should include what it takes to keep the item in service. Dry cleaning is the big one: a jacket that needs cleaning four times a year at £15 adds £60 annually, which can double the real cost of a mid-priced piece over its life. Alterations count too, though those are usually one-off and often worth it.

Number of wears is where the honesty comes in.

Why your estimates are wrong

People overestimate wears for aspirational purchases and underestimate them for boring ones. The event dress you will "definitely wear again" gets worn once. The plain grey knit you almost did not buy gets worn weekly for four years.

A more realistic way to estimate: ask how many times you wore the most similar item you already own, in the last year. Not how many times you could have. How many times you did. If you have no comparable item, that is a warning sign rather than a gap.

Everyday basics — plausibly 50–100 wears a year if they suit your life
Work-specific pieces — bounded by how many days you actually go in
Seasonal outerwear — bounded by the length of your season, often 60–90 days
Occasion wear — be brutal, this is usually 1–3 wears a year at best

The honest question is not "would I wear this?" but "when, specifically, in the next month?" If you cannot name two occasions, the number is lower than you think.

What the number is good for

Cost per wear is most useful as a comparison tool between two things you are actually choosing between, not as a justification after the fact. Used honestly it tends to push you toward:

Spending more on the categories you wear daily — outerwear, shoes, the trousers you live in
Spending less on things bound to a specific occasion or trend
Rejecting cheap items that do not fit your existing wardrobe, because low price cannot rescue a low wear count

That last point is worth sitting with. A £15 top that goes with nothing you own has a worse cost per wear than a £120 coat you put on every morning. Price and value are not the same axis.

Where it misleads

Cost per wear does not capture fit, comfort or whether you like the thing. A cheap jacket worn constantly because it is the only warm one you own can have an excellent cost per wear while making you slightly miserable every day.

It also cannot justify a purchase on its own. Any item can be made to look sensible by assuming enough future wears, which is exactly how people talk themselves into things. The formula only works with pessimistic estimates.

And it says nothing about durability. A £200 coat that falls apart in one season is not a £2-per-wear coat. Check construction and fabric before you trust the projection.

Tracking it without a spreadsheet

The reason most people never calculate cost per wear is that nobody counts wears. Guessing after the fact just reproduces the bias you were trying to correct.

This is one of the genuine advantages of keeping a digital wardrobe: if wear counts increment as you log outfits, the number becomes real rather than estimated. After a year you can see exactly which pieces earned their place and which never left the rail, which makes the next round of decisions much easier. Tracking purchase price alongside wears is the only extra step needed.

The version that actually changes behaviour

Before buying, name the two occasions in the next month. Estimate wears from what you did last year, not what you intend. Add cleaning costs. Then compare against the boring option you almost bought instead.

Most of the time the maths points the same way: fewer, better, in the categories you use daily — and nothing at all in the categories you do not. It is the same conclusion the sustainability argument arrives at from a completely different direction.

Three worked examples

The winter coat. £220, worn most days for four months a year — call it 90 wears a year. Dry cleaned twice at £18. Year one: £256 ÷ 90 = £2.84 per wear. By year three, assuming it survives, the purchase cost has spread across 270 wears: about £1.20 per wear including cleaning. This is what a good purchase looks like.

The wedding guest dress. £130, worn twice in two years, cleaned once at £15. £145 ÷ 2 = £72.50 per wear. Not necessarily a mistake — some occasions justify it — but worth knowing that it is roughly sixty times more expensive per wear than the coat.

The £18 impulse top. Bought because it was cheap, goes with one pair of trousers, worn three times before the shape went in the wash. £6 per wear, and it never solved a problem you had. Cheap does not mean good value; it means the loss is small enough to ignore, which is precisely why the habit repeats.

Rough benchmarks by category

These are not rules, but they give you a sense of whether a number is good:

Everyday basics — under £1 per wear is achievable and common for well-chosen pieces
Outerwear and shoes — £1–£3 per wear is a good outcome given how hard they work
Work-specific pieces — £2–£5, bounded by how many days a year you actually go in
Occasion wear — rarely below £20, and often far higher. Judge it on whether the occasion warranted it, not on the number.

The resale adjustment

If you reliably resell clothes, the formula changes: subtract the expected resale value from the total cost before dividing. A £300 coat that resells for £120 has an effective cost of £180.

Two cautions. Resale value is decided at purchase — brand, condition and style determine it, not your intention to sell. And most people resell far less than they expect to, because listing takes real effort. Apply the adjustment only if you have actually sold things before.

Using it as a shopping filter

The version that changes behaviour is short. Before buying, ask three questions:

When, specifically, in the next month? Name two occasions. Not hypotheticals.
How many times did I wear the closest thing I already own, last year? Use that number, not an optimistic one.
What does it cost to keep in service? Add dry cleaning across its expected life.

If the resulting number is worse than an alternative you were considering, buy the alternative. If you cannot answer question one, you have your answer.