Think about the thing you’ve worn most this year. The sweater that’s been on every cold morning, or the jeans that go with everything. Maybe it’s the cardigan that has survived spilled pancake batter, school runs and at least one unexpected puddle, and is still the first thing you reach for.
Now try to remember what you paid for it. Chances are you don’t, and we think that says something. There’s an idea we’ve been thinking about lately called cost per wear. It’s very simple: take the price of something and divide it by the number of times you wear it.
A top that costs $40 and is worn five times works out at $8 a wear. A knit that costs $120 and is worn a hundred times comes to $1.20. Nobody walks around with a calculator, of course. But we like it as a way of looking at things, because it reminds us that the price on the tag is only the beginning of the sum.
It isn’t about spending more
This isn’t an argument for spending more. A lower price isn’t automatically a bad deal, and a higher one isn’t automatically a good one. And we know that paying more upfront isn’t always possible when there are so many other things to pay for. What cost per wear really measures is how often something earns its place. A beautiful piece that lives at the back of the wardrobe costs more than almost anything, because it never gets worn at all.
And with children, the sum gets more interesting. They don’t wear anything for very long. They grow, and the sleeves are suddenly short, so the number that matters changes. It isn’t how many times one child wears something, but how many times it gets worn, full stop. A jacket worn forty times by one child, then forty by their little sister, then a few more by a cousin, has done a lot more work than the price on the tag suggests.
When we’re designing, the question we keep coming back to is a simple one: will this get worn? That means comfort, first of all, and pieces that go with everything else in the wardrobe, and that wash well enough to be worn again and again. And clothes that are made to last long enough to be handed on.
And when they’ve finished with it
When your child has outgrown something, the wearing doesn’t have to end there. Through our Give Back programme with Manymoons, you can send back your outgrown Simple Folk pieces, and we’ll help them find their next family, so another child can start adding to the count.
So next time you’re deciding on something new, we hope you’ll ask one gentle question: will we reach for this again? If the answer is yes, it’s probably already worth more than it costs.
