Secondhand, sales, sizing charts and spotting a bad seam.
Shopping Smart
A £300 coat worn twice a week for five years costs less per wear than a £40 one worn six times. The maths is trivial and almost nobody does it before buying.
Shopping Smart
The resale market has made good clothing accessible at a fraction of retail. It has also made it easy to buy something that arrives in the wrong size, condition or colour entirely.
Shopping Smart
Recycled polyester, organic cotton, conscious collections. Some of the claims are meaningful, several are measuring the wrong thing, and one of them is largely marketing.
Shopping Smart
A medium is not a measurement. Sizing is set by each brand against its own fit model and has drifted steadily upward for decades, which is why your size is different in every shop you enter.
Shopping Smart
It goes over everything, it is seen more than anything else you own, and a good one lasts twenty years. It is also where the difference between wool blends and real wool is most consequential.
Shopping Smart
Retail lighting and mirrors are designed, not neutral. Knowing what they are doing is the difference between buying what suits you and buying what suited the changing room.
Shopping Smart
Discounting is engineered to defeat judgement, and it works. The countermeasures are simple, unglamorous, and mostly involve deciding things before you arrive.
Shopping Smart
Standard sizing is graded from one fit model, and the further you sit from that model in any dimension the worse the compromise. The practical responses are specific and mostly involve alterations.
Shopping Smart
Everything worth knowing about how a garment was made is visible in the shop, and the whole inspection takes about as long as reading the price tag properly.
Shopping Smart
The cost reductions are visible in the garment if you know where to look. They are not primarily about fabric quality, and understanding what was cut explains how long the thing will last.
Shopping Smart
Charity and thrift shops contain a small amount of excellent clothing distributed through a large amount of ordinary clothing. Finding it is a search problem with a reasonably efficient solution.
Shopping Smart
The gap between a £40 shirt and a £400 one is partly construction, partly materials and substantially marketing. Knowing which is which lets you buy in the right tier for each item.
Shopping Smart
The formal outfit worn once has the worst cost per wear in any wardrobe. There are now four ways to solve it and only one of them is buying.
