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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

To grossly overgeneralize, most men aren't as inclined as many women to get rid of clothing just because they're tired of it after wearing it a few times. Sure, I buy things that I decide aren't as comfortable or look as good as I thought they would be--and I'll donate them. And then there are the copious piles of giveaways I seem to end up with in spite of my best efforts. But by and large, I'm probably fairly typical in that I keep most things until they're stained or worn out. (And sometimes even then if I really like them :-))

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> To grossly overgeneralize, most men aren't as inclined as many women to get rid of clothing just because they're tired of it after wearing it a few times.

I don't even think that's an overgeneralization.

I wouldn't be surprised if studies and stats show that men buy less clothes and reuse existing clothes more often than women, as verified by the fashion market size.

If I go to my local mall which has a mixture of high and middle end in the world, I might find a handful of stores which sell only men's clothes, but they are both rare and tiny. In comparison, the stores which sell only women's clothes are extremely common and take up a huge portion of the mall.

Furthermore, it's rare for me to see a women's only brand also sell men's clothes, but invariably nearly every men's only brand I know of eventually expands into women's.

I own three sets of casual clothes (jeans, t-shirts, nice shirts), one suit, one pair of black dress shoes, one pair of tan boots and a pair of hiking boots.

All the clothes I own would fit in a single bin bag, I can nearly wash everything in one wash cycle.

Just never seen the point in more, I buy good stuff that lasts and that's about iy.

This implies to me that you never do anything besides walk from your air-conditioned home, to your air-conditioned transportation, to your air-conditioned destination.

Hobbies sometimes benefit from different clothing - playing sports, hiking activities, water activities, layers for UV protection or heat insulation, 'work' clothes for getting dirty in a garden or painting a house, etc.

I could admittedly get rid of a lot of clothing that I rarely if ever use or could readily substitute something else for. But I still probably have a dozen different pieces of footwear I need for different purposes and a closet worth of clothing that I genuinely use on a regular basis for work, around the house, and hiking/watersports/skiing/other activities across multiple seasons from sub-zero to nineties F temperatures.

I live in the North of England, Air Conditioning isn't a thing here and I don't drive or use public transport (I live a 15 minute walk away from work).

I do have some cycling gear but that's specifically cycling gear.

> I live in the North of England, Air Conditioning isn't a thing here and I don't drive or use public transport (I live a 15 minute walk away from work).

Ok, it sounds like I was pretty close.

You sometimes cycle but otherwise don't have any hobbies which would benefit from specific clothing and your climate seems moderate enough that you can get by with 3 shirts. I admire the simplicity!

I discovered that moving country is a great way to figure out what clothing you actually wear.

All my clothing now fits into a single army surplus duffle bag.

Apparently you live in a stable climate (or are immune to weather changes somehow).

In my part of the world men's clothing always seems to be several times the cost of comparable women's clothing. This may also have something to do with it.

You can get Kirkland brand men’s khakis at Costco for $20. Decent polos can be had for < $10 from JC Penny. Anyway, that’s what I wear, and they are good until the wife complains about the holes, and then some.

I keep telling her I’ll someday fit into that favorite heavy metal T-shirt from high school; don’t throw it out.

Seriously? What part of the world is this? Are you talking about formal wear?

Fashionable looking clothes for men in I would say Northern Europe is relatively expensive... because people buy brand names.

Jeans, t-shirts the likes... 200-300 USD for a pair of jeans is quite common (above also exists). You can get dirty cheap, but men are stupid (me included) -- and to be fair the quality is pretty decent.

I don't really shop in the US, because quality sucks.

So what does a pair of high quality women's jeans cost in Northern Europe?

I looked very hard for the article I read recently about a woman (in US) who just straight up stopped buying clothes gendered for women because they fell apart immediately. I am extremely curious whether there is a similar cost/construction problem in Europe.

Can't say I know much about womens clothing, but there a wider selection of less expensive fashionable clothes.. Like H&M, which I'm sure also compromises on quality.

Obviously, women can also get highend, quality stuff. But for men it's either highend or the supermarket, there's few things in between.

In the US my experience is that high-end stuff is being VERY high-end, and low end is becoming very low end... likely as a result of incoming inequality.

Fascinating, thank you for the extra breadcrumbs. I think the mental model has to include something about mass produced vs bespoke, not just high/low fashion.

In the US, the easiest example to take is the three tiers of fashion produced by Old Navy, The Gap, and Banana Republic. As far as I'm aware, it's always been the same ownership, but each brand is clearly marketed to different price ranges. And also as far as I'm aware: all three brands use offshore sweatshop labor. Right now, rough prices for jeans:

Old Navy: starting at 25USD The Gap: 40-60USD and up. Banana: starting at 120USD

If I had to pay 200-300USD for one pair of denim jeans, I would make damn sure it's because it was machined by a highly paid local artisan. (I don't really care that they're local. I'd still have to think about the cotton sourcing, I guess. Everything about the supply chain is problematic.)

You're right that income inequality is shaping the market, but I think the reverse is true too. The only go-to-market strategies anyone seems to use are: 1. dominate the market with razor thin margins (or even at an initial loss), 2. well differentiated luxury products at outrageous margins. Changing the subject from cloth, Apple is the only company that doesn't seem to operate barely above margins for their low-end products. But of course they benefit from fierce competition on margin with their suppliers. And electronics recycling is a lot more profitable than clothing recycling. I don't know, I guess I was never talking about clothes anyway, and always talking about Late Capitalism.

Really, I've never observed this. If anything women need more variety and clothing tends to be more expensive. Formal wear comes in all price points for both men and women, as does casual clothing.

This is doubly true if you're buying button-down shirts, because if you're not one of a handful of exact anatomical sizes you've got to have things altered after purchase if you want them to fit well.

Men's button down shirts are generally sized in 3 dimensions - collar, sleeve and fit (slim / normal)... which is more axes than most clothing items. If you're only seeing a handful of sizes, find a different brand.

Unless you're trying to buy a flannel. Then it's small medium large.

You can get custom sized flannels too, I'm wearing one right now. Just have to look around or pay more but it's worth it if you're a fringe size. (I'm tall.) I get mine from Trumaker.

People buy me a lot of cloth that I never wear, because I find them uncomfortable. Either they don't fit or are uncomfortable, impractical or I dislike how they look. By a lot, I mean I get them multiple times per year (birthday, christmas). People don't seem to gift as much to guys.

I had also multiple times had to buy something so that I wear something appropriate (for wedding, job interview, classical dancing or other official occasion) and when similar occasion happened again, they did not fit anymore. Guys can do with same official outfit for all these occasions.

For men, ties used to be the utterly stereotypical gift that everyone gave when you didn't know what to give someone. So men ended up with closets full of the things, half of which they hated. (I've donated a lot of mine and I can still say, with considerable certainty, that I could wear a different tie on every occasion I wear a tie for the rest of my life and I wouldn't run out.)

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