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Comment by casion | Hacker News Reader

> Current Wardrobe Value: $3,907.65

I don't have any friends (and I'm happy with this), so I have no reference: do people normally really spend this much on clothing!?

My entire wardrobe is worth around $150, and that's 70% socks.

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Amount of money spent on clothes probably correlates strongly to number of social events, no friends probably means you just care about warm feet.

That's understandable, however is near this value usual for people who are frequently social with overlapping attendees?

I mean a decent pair of pants is at least $100 and a shirt is $15-20. Throw in a few shoes and jackets and $4k is very reasonable, depending on the weather.

Let me get this straight: You own $150 worth of clothes, and $105 of it comprises socks (I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that they are the white, crew kind?). With $45 worth of 'clothes', I'm assuming you have boxers and such, which probably take up another $30. Do you even wear anything other than boxer, undershirt, and socks? I mean, unless your comment is pure hyperbole, I am having a difficult time visualizing your wardrobe! In fact, no matter the distribution, I am still having a hard time understanding how you make do with a $150 wardrobe. Do you wash your entire wardrobe literally every day? If so, does it last longer than a year?

Even if you’re super charitable and assume they live in a climate that is warm/tropical all year round, and they can get the basics at Kmart or thrift stores (not knocking Kmart, I will buy certain items from there if I think the quality is sufficiently good) this is hard to compute.

I list my wardrobe and frequency of washing below.

Most of my clothes last a few years.

Yes, I saw that. Very interesting, and if you are an American, pretty atypical. Perhaps you are a minimalist and it's nothing out of the ordinary for you.

OP here. The value here is really the price it was when new. Most of the clothes was purchased over the past 10+ years. I didn't buy any new clothes the year prior to this project at all. I spent more in clothes during the project than I had in the prior few years. But I also had lost nearly 50 pounds and my old clothes wasn't really fitting.

I want to make it clear that I'm not criticizing, but genuinely curious. I don't care if people spend their money on clothing. More power to anyone who does and derives joy from it.

Thank you for more clarification, but I'm still curious if you feel this is about average for your social circle or area?

IMO it would be pretty normal for a collection of clothing over 10+ years for someone with a pretty robust social life. I immediately am thinking of weddings, formal events, party events, family events, exercising, dates (both formal and informal), interviews, and work (I assume this person may have worked in workplaces of various formality).

I have many individual pieces of clothing worth more than that. Nice cashmere is expensive, but soooo soft.

A basic sweater from Loro Piana can easily run a few k, but is absolutely worth the price.

Sky is the limit when it comes to outerwear, I’ve paid around $15k for a nice fur-lined coat. Worth it? Depends on the weather, sometimes I have doubts, but then the winter comes.

I find it amazing that anybody could spend the value of a small car on a piece of clothing.

If you think historically, this is in the range of cost that a knight would have spent on his armour, so more in the range of the utility of a main battle tank in modern terms.

$15k is not worth it for any piece of clothing, at this price point you're just signaling.

It’s the most comfortable garment I’ve ever touched, every moment wearing it is pure bliss. The fur is hardly visible to the outside, so little signaling value.

You're signaling right here, and I bet you've mentioned this before. It's not a problem, people do all kinds of things for signaling, but I hope you're not genuinely convinced you can't find similar bliss for an order of magnitude less than what you paid. That being said, do you have a link to see it?

> I hope you're not genuinely convinced you can't find similar bliss for an order of magnitude less than what you paid

I’ve got extensive experience commissioning various garments in workshops around the world, buying furs from auctions and hunting around the world for fine fabrics.

An order of magnitude simply isn’t realistic, you could create something similar for 33-50% of the money if you were willing to accept a cheaper exterior fabric and a lesser grade of fur. Keep in mind that regardless of materials a well crafted coat will tend to cost a few thousand euros, fur lining requires significantly more work.

If you were to just walk up to a decent tailor and ask for a quote, it’s unlikely they’d give you a number below 10000 euros.

> That being said, do you have a link to see it?

Similar to this one, from a past collection https://it.loropiana.com/en/p/man/coats-and-trench/winter-vo...

Little signaling value outside of anonymous internet conversations, visually indistinguishable from the significantly cheaper (5k) cashmere version without fur, except for the colorway that some sales rep or a true enthusiast might recognize.

If there is a proper winter where someone lives, $150 would barely be enough for a proper winter jacket, no shoes.

Judging by the name of the blog (FAANG FIRE) I suspect this person is plenty well compensated in some sort of prestigious tech job, and if that's the case, then this number doesn't surprise me at all. There are lots of trendy athleisure and technical wear companies that will sell you the equivalent of a sweatshirt for $80, that can add up quick.

"My entire wardrobe is worth around $150, and that's 70% socks."

that doesn't seem possible. If you get a pair of pants, a shirt and shoes it's very likely you are already above $150. Never mind jackets, underwear and other stuff.

I get my clothing secondhand/cheap. I suppose we can differentiate "worth" and "paid for", but even the clothing I have is mid-level/cheap brands (except socks).

- $105 - 5 pairs of socks (purchased because of lifetime warranty and comfort)

- $15 - 5 boxers, purchased new

- $8 - 7 shirts (new on ebay)

- $10 - 1 pair of shoes (very lucky to find these in my size!)

- $5 - 2 pairs of shorts

- $5 - 2 pairs of pants

I do laundry about every 3-5 days.

At least you put your money where it matters most: socks! I wear the same kind of socks and they’re definitely worth the ~$20/pair.

>> If you get a pair of pants, a shirt and shoes it's very likely you are already above $150

That's like $10 at a thrift shop or garage sale. Used to live like that back when I was poor. Now that I'm rich I wear a white T-shirt and sweatpants 99.9% of the time since I have barely left the house in the last 2 and a half years.

In my experience, socks are pretty expensive (at least here in Lithuania) and wear out pretty fast, so for me its reasonable to spend most of the clothing budget on socks...

Holeproof Explorer socks (wool inner, nylon outer) seem to last forever.

I have a few pairs that predate having kids (so 20+ years) and they are still wearable.

I probably have more than that in shoes alone.

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