I HATE sending money on clothes

[Alan H]

Seriously. I do.

I just ordered, and received a very nice J. Higgins Braemar-style sportcoat/kilt jacket. It's lovely, in Navy Blue. The only reason I went with J. Higgins is that after looking around for almost a year and a half, I never saw a Braemar-style jacket in a size that would fit me, for a price that didn't make me dizzy. Spending hundred and hundreds of dollars on something that I'm going to wear two or three times a year just sticks in my gut. OK, so I'll probably wear this thing...uh... SIX times a year! UGH....

I'd wanted charcoal gray. But when I went to the Higgins site, a charcoal jacket was $70 more than Navy Blue. A Navy Blue jacket that fits is just as useful as a charcoal one, so I got it, even though I really wanted the charcoal. But it's just a JACKET, you know? It's a thing that I "wear" it's not THAT important. Evenwith going with the less expensive alternative, it took me two months to digest the fact that I was going to spend $229 on a piece of CLOTHING.

You have no idea how long I agonized and fretted and delayed and fussed and so on, over ordering a kilt from M'Lady Chrystel. I COULD have made that kilt myself.

I just commented in another thread about spending $140 on a pair of kilt hose. I could never do that. Turns my stomach. Buying clothes just to have them....yuck. I got epoxy (fiberglassing up a cracked caber) on my blue jeans two months ago, and I simply can NOT make myself go buy a new pair. There is NOTHING wrong with these jeans. They just have some yellow spots on them, right?

Buying things which result in experiences....like a boat, or a ticket to a ballet or a symphony, or a new backpack, or a new throwing weight, airfare to someplace I haven't been before, a registration fee for a class... things like that are NO problem. I have no problem at all dropping wads of cash on things like that. Those are things that become part of me, part of who I am.

But clothes? They're just clothes. Some of them are kind of fun, right?...like kilts.... but they're still just clothes. They're not important...they don't become part of who I AM, you know?

There's a reason that I've made most of my kilts. The MAKING is more than half of the point...the experience is now part of who I am.

[AKScott]

Alan, pelase do be strong. Your pragmatisism is reassuring to little old me at least, and I am confident many others.

I have no problem dropping US$200 on a good pair of work boots I can wear three or four days a week, but like you a pair of socks (not rated to -60dF) for $140 is not in my budget either.

Please do continue to demonstrate is possible to look great without spending a prince's ransom, it is that ready quiet smile you have that pulls every outfit I have ever seen you pictured in together as a coherent whole.

I bet your new jacket is going to be smashing.

[Alan H]

Alan, pelase do be strong. Your pragmatisism is reassuring to little old me at least, and I am confident many others.

I have no problem dropping US$200 on a good pair of work boots I can wear three or four days a week, but like you a pair of socks (not rated to -60dF) for $140 is not in my budget either.

Please do continue to demonstrate is possible to look great without spending a prince's ransom, it is that ready quiet smile you have that pulls every outfit I have ever seen you pictured in together as a coherent whole.

I bet your new jacket is going to be smashing.

ugh.... I don't own anything that is "smashing"...though I used to.

It was a 1972 Volkswagen squareback that I plowed into a tree at about 25 mph at the age of 22. I backed it up and drove it home...unbolted the fender,. replaced it with a 2 x 6 and kept driving it for a good 4-5 more years.

However, thanks for the kind comments regarding my smile.

I, too would drop $$ money on a pair of work boots.... or on a pair of hiking boots. Something that I USE...no problem. Something that just "looks nice"...no can do. *sigh*.... or at least, when I do, it's a long, painful battle to bring myself to the point where I do it.

[Alan H]

You know, part of why I can't bring myself to do it (at least not very often and without much soul searching) is that I ruin clothes all the time. I dump epoxy on them. Or paint. Or coffee. Just a couple of years ago, before I was "into kilts" I bought a nice pair of slacks. The third day I was wearing them I went downstairs to help the very pretty and sexy woman who was in charge of the faculty media support center. I said hi, turned slightly to one side and caught the leg on the corner of her two-drawer filing cabinet. The pants tore with a horrendous ripping sound, to reveal a length of pale while leg and even whiter underwear. She was quite shocked...and get this...what was her response?

she grabbed her hand disinfectant gel, and cleaned her hands. I will never understand that. Anyway, I had to go to the bookstore to buy another pair of pants. They promptly shrank upon washing, and I never wore them again. That's about $130 worth of pants, for nothing, zip. zero.

I remember in college, I went and spent some exhorbitant sum on a new pair of pants, and went roller skating in them with a date, that night. Sure enough, something happened and I blew out the knee, or split the crotch or whatever it was.

Just last year I bought a new shirt. It was a spiffy white and red Stanford rugby-style shirt. We all went to lunch the second time I wore it, to celebrate the department secretaries birthdays (they're on the same day)....red wine down the shirt front.

Pine pitch on pants, when backpacking or hiking? I'm all over it. I can't tell you how many cups of coffee I've deposited on shirts, pants and so on. So far, I've only ruined one kilt this way. I LOVE Marton Mills washable PV. Even pine pitch washes out, in time.

This is my life. And I'm supposed to drop hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on clothes, not to mention $140 on a pair of SOCKS?

When hell freezes over.....

[Alan H]

I don''t know about you guys, but I look at retirement information all the time. Like....what's it going to cost to live when you retire? I'm always amused when the accountants say that clothing costs are going to go down by a huge amount because I won't need to wear business attire any more and my dry cleaning bill will go away.

Right.

[Mickey]

I am the cheapest SOB I know, at least when it comes to buying clothes for myself. I take great pride in telling people at work that I dressed head to toe for under $20, including my shoes.

I am known by name in several thrift/goodwill stores as I hit them at least 3 times a week. And I feel no shame in this. I haven't worn a pair of shoes that actually fit me correctly in 20 years, because it is too damn hard to find shoes in my itty-bitty size. And when I do, I am not spending $60 on them. I absolutely love my pair of Florsheims that I picked up for 8 bucks even though they are a full size too large and hurt like hell when I wear them.

There are two times when I was willing to "pay what it costs" [Seinfeld]. One was when I bought my USMC dress blues, and when I wanted to get the Scruffy Wallace from Rocky (which I couldn't do due to unforseen circumstances).

Yet I have no problem spending cash on clothing for my wife and kids. I am quite happy to spend $200 on a sexy dress for my wife, or dropping $100 on shoes for my son because they grip his skateboard better, while complaining about the price of a $20 polo shirt for myself.

Plus the fact that I can wake up in the morning, put on a brand new white T-shirt, go back to bed, and wake up 1 hour later and have 3 coffee stains on it... and I don't drink coffee anymore.

[Alan H]

Yeah, Mickey, I get that.

I mean, I don't necessarily take PRIDE in being "cheap". It just seems that way because I spend time here on X Marks, where guys talk about the other end of the spectrum so much. I don't BRAG about wearing inexpensive clothes, I just....do.... generally...wear inexpensive clothes and wear them over and over and over and over again until they flippin well wear out, and then it STILL kills me to throw them away.

I grok the idea of not batting an eye when my woman goes and buys new stuff. I HAPPEN to be hitched to a female who hates clothes shopping as much as I do. But it would not bother me the slightest if she were a clothes horse, as long as it didn't endanger reasonable stability of the family finances.

I'm a sexist pig, that way. oink.

[Alan H]

Recently the Mrs. and I went to Santa Barbara (think Southern California beach town plus "culture") after Christmas with the family. One afternoon, for a while, we walked down State Street and got coffee. We walked by some shops and I actually saw a sweater in the window that I liked, so I stopped and looked at it. The Mrs. said..."If you like it, just get it". It was $48.

I already HAVE four or five sweaters, of which I wear exactly one of them. I just gave two to the Goodwill. I didn't even walk in the store.

Not three hours later, I saw an advertisement to go Whale Watching in the Santa Barbara Channel. Well...hell...I've seen whales so many times that..*shrug*. But it sounded like fun. The Mrs. wanted to go. I called and dropped $110 like *THAT*...*snap* without a second thought.

There. Perfect example of how I think.

BTW, we saw four pods of gray whales that day, and a big pod of dolphins came and played around the boat for a good half-hour. I loved it. The Mrs. was ecstatic. Totally worth the $110, and a bazillion times better than some stupid sweater.

[Mickey]

It isn't so much that I brag about it, but rather the pride I feel when I'm told that I look great, where did you get those, etc... and I tell them where I got them and how little I paid. Maybe not so much pride as it the pleasure I see in the look of horror on their faces. I was once complimented highly by a high level government agent on the boots that I was wearing. When asked the price, I said "eleven". She said "eleven hundred.. nice price for python". I said, "No, eleven dollars... Kmart vinyl". The look that followed was priceless.

And yeah, just when my clothes get to being perfectly comfy, my wife throws them out because she says that the holes and frays are a poor reflection on her. I agree because I'm married... but I still miss those boys

[Alan H]

If I wore python boots, I'd step in a puddle, three steps from the truck door and ruin them, ninety seconds into their useful life.

Or I'd do a mess of calf raises in the gym, my ankles would get bigger, and they'd stop fitting and give me blisters.