Price per wear

These days we have become obsessed with extracting value out of everything; things we buy, things we see and things we do, everything.  A whole range of tools have been developed to help us with this quest to get value for money or to maximise our viewing pleasure or to get the best return on our investment in time but these tools don’t help, the just drive us deeper and deeper into a valueless morass where the only pleasure is in knowing the cost.

We talk about pence per mile, pay per view, return on investment as if the only worthwhile measure is a financial one.  A Rembrandt has more value than your child’s finger painting stuck on the fridge, a condominium in Miami has more value than the warmth of the family home and paid employees have more value than the closeness of friendship.

What about one of the latest to come to our attention, the concept of price per wear (ppw)?  This is a ruse to try and get us to consider the relative value of clothing that we buy by considering them against the number of times they are worn.  In this way a relatively expensive piece of clothing can represent good value if it is worn a lot whereas a cheap piece could be relatively expensive if only worn the once.  A pair of work shoes costing £100 and worn every day for a year would have a price per wear of 40p while a £20 shirt worn to go out of an evening only twice would have a price per wear of £10.

Oh dear, what a crazy and cynical view of the relationship that we have with our clothing, as if we can measure the pleasure or value we get out of an outfit only by its monetary cost.  What about the wedding dress that is worn once on that special day and makes the bride feel like a princess and which lives on in the photographs and videos and the minds of all the guests (ppw £1500?)?  What about the child’s first shoes in which they learnt to take their first steps, letting go of the furniture and wobbling into its mother’s arms (ppw 30p)?   What about the ridiculous leather jacket that couldn’t keep out a breath of wind and that would disintegrate at the first hint of moisture in the air but which makes the wearer feel great and infallible (ppw £11.75)?

Value and value for money are not the same thing.  The cheapest of items can give the owner pleasure and have a value just as much as something with a high ticket cost, it all depends upon the eye of the beholder.  Boiling life down into a transactional cost undermines the very essence of what we are as humans, our creativity, our eccentricity and our wistfulness.  Don’t think about price per wear, if you see something and you like it and it costs what you think is reasonable then buy it and wear it.  You’re going to look fantastic and think about how much great value for wear you will be enjoying.