Hiphopsideproject

Cost Per Wear (CPW) is a concept that’s intrigued me for a while. Whilst I think it has many good uses in deciding whether or not to buy that bag/dress/pair of shoes, I do think that it can be used irresponsibly as an excuse to splurge on certain items. I’ve decided that after my wardrobe clearout (mentioned in 27 things) I’ll be making my new purchases using CPW as a guide.

So, what is Cost per wear?

It’s not that difficult, really, it’s all in the name. You buy an item of clothing/accessory for X amount, wear it Y number of times and Z is your ‘cost per wear’… The cost per wear formula is X/Y= Z, substituting your real figures will let you calculate cost per wear.

CPW Examples

Item A is a dress from a high street chain store notable for their cheap, mass produced but in-style fashions. The dress is basic, not incredibly well made or cut, and will probably only suffice for one season’s worth of wear. The style itself is not classic, it won’t be able to fit into a wardrobe of fashion staples nor will it be an heirloom item. Infact, chances are this will go to a charity shop within a year.
Item A cost £12, it will be worn around 4 times. Cost per wear for this item is £3.

Item B is a leather jacket from a reputable retailer of mid to high range fasions. The lining is superbly cut and finished, as is the leather seam work. The item will age well, fit comfortably with a myriad of outfits and last years & years. Looked after, this item could possibly be handed down as an heirloom piece.
Item B cost £200, it will be worn on average 60 times a year for at least 5 years (before being stored or passed along). Cost per wear for this item is 67p*

Item C is a pair of tights from a high street retailer. They ladder whilst putting them on.
Item C cost £1, cost per wear isn’t calcuable as they were never worn. The entire £1 was wasted.
Bummer. The lesson here is to consider higher priced items, it’s sometimes a false economy to purchase the cheapest option. A pair of tights that were £3 may have been wearable 10+ times, taking CPW to 33p.

And finally item D. A simple black dress from a high street fashion shop. This retailer is known to produce items of high quality & well cut design. These items are made to weather the storm and pass from season to season. The style can be transformed to accomodate evening wear or day wear, and the cut will accomodate a little weight loss or gain. This is your classic LBD.
Item D costs £200, it will be worn on average of 10 times a year for at least 10 years. Cost per wear for this item is £2.

*keep in mind that outerwear will pretty much always incur a low CPW as they’re very rewearable.

Outerwear makes for a great example of Cost Per Wear. The duffle coat above costs £80, it’s a classic design that will transcend yearly catwalk fashion and, looked after, will resist wear & tear. Consider 90 days of winter wear, and within it’s first year the CPW is already below £1.

How can cost per wear influence everyday purchases & wardrobe choices?

The majority of people won’t be considering £200+ items of clothing on a everyday basis, however there are several instances where cost per wear can influence your regular buying activities.

Anything that can scupper an impulse buy and help reign in your spending is a good thing in my book, far too many purchases are made without due consideration, especially at sales time! If you’re not going to get the wear out of it then that £5 bargain really isn’t a bargain at all, it’s just another item of clothing that’ll get thrown to the bottom of the wardrobe to be charity shopped in a year or so.

CPW is all about making smart choices when you shop, this can be from spending a little more on a pair of better tights or stockings, to simply buying that cheaper dress alternative if you know it’s only a one-time-deal. CPW should help you consider your buying choices beyond the ‘ohh’s’ and ‘ahhh’s’ of on-hanger lust. When you pick something up in a store and start doing your CPW sum you will be forced to ask yourself the following questions:

• What will I wear this with?
• How often will I wear this?
• Is this item good quality? how long will it last?
• What will I really be paying for this item?
• Is there an alternative that will give me a lower CPW?
• Would I wear a higher quality version of this item more?
• Would this lower the CPW or increase it still?

These questions alone will certainly make you think twice before heading to the checkout. Cost per wear is a great method of streamlining your wardrobe to flexible, long lasting and investment items of clothing.

Things to watch out for…

Don’t let CPW become an excuse for the extra splurges on designer goods. For CPW to work you need to be honest about how often you will wear the item in your hands. Lying to yourself that you’ll most definitely wear this bright fuchsia betsey johnson skirt every day for the next 5 years will of course result in a super low CPW, but is this really being honest?

Don’t get too caugt up in the CPW of everything you buy. We all need treats.
I know, I know, I’ve been banging on about CPW being super good for your wardrobe and wallet, but sometimes you just have to go with what your heart desires. Better just occasionally than all the time like before, though, right?

Some things that make for excellent CPW considerations

Leather jackets – whilst costly for a decently made one, these can turn into ideal heirloom pieces.

Little Black Dress – Every girl needs one! (I don’t have one yet, I’m weighing up my CPW’s)

Biker Boots – Last year I bought some biker boots in the Office sale for a nominal sum. I wore them throughout winter and their CPW is already well below 50p. When I saw they were reduced again, down to something ridiculous like £7, I snapped up another pair that currently lives in the bottom of my wardrobe ready for when the first pair die. Consider Doc Martens & similar brands, these are made to withstand more than usual shoes, and whilst they cost £100+ they will last.

Designer bags –  The only thing I’d say though is be completely, 100% sure that you’ll use this bag. Is it big enough? Will it fit all your crap in? Is it too big? When you’re 100% sure that this bag is for life then it’s time to invest! Bag’s make for great CPW. However, would you be better with several cheaper bags? think about it.

You all know I like making lists, so here’s a fun one! I read a good blog called Yes and Yes, and Sarah, the writer of said blog, has a list of 31 things she’d like to achieve in her 30th year before she turns 31. Seeing as I turned 25 in January I figured that I hadn’t really given myself enough time to do 26 worthwhile new things in only a few months, so instead I’ve decided to make my list of 27 things to do before I’m 27, giving me around 18 months. Fun, hey?

Here’s my list, I’ll be updating a page I made specifically for it with links to any posts about the tasks at hand. These things range from the ridiculous to the extreme and right back down to the mediocre.

1. Get my long anticipated foot artwork.
2. Run my first 10km race.
3. Dye my hair red.
4. Co-organise a craft market.
5. Visit Wales.
6. Watch all the Star Wars (yes, even the new ones…) back to back.
7. Pay off 50% of my debts.
8. Go vegetarian again for at least a month.
9. Read the H.P Lovecraft collection ‘Necronomicon’.
10. Adopt a puppy.
11. Go an entire week without chocolate or desserts.
12. Learn to make tortillas.
13. Find an okra recipe that doesn’t make me throw up.
14. Start writing a novel (or maybe a short story?).
15. Read a self-help book.
16. Reach 1000 sales on my Etsy store.
17. Hang all the artwork I own, finally.
18. Learn to walk in high heels.
19. Get a face treatment at a salon.
20. Learn HDR photography manipulation.
21. Walk to-and-from work every day for two weeks.
22. Go on the motorway on my own.
23. Subject my wardrobe to a ‘Not Worn in the Past Twelve Months’ clearout.
24. Master a hooping trick.
25. Wear dresses every day for a week.
26. Post a video blog entry.
27. Finish a crochet project.

So, there you go. LET’S DO THIS THING!

A couple of weeks ago I started asking my friends if they might want to write a guest post for my blog, quite a few of them have piped up wanting to write about their speciality subjects, favourite things and other random shit. The first post comes from Dave, an optical astronomer, who has written about his observing travels to South Africa. Enjoy!

Hi, my name is Dave and I’m an astronomer. Recently, Kim sent out the call for people to provide guest posts for her blog, I said “Sure, sounds like fun” without any real idea of what to write about. “Stick to what you know”, that’s what they say, so what do I know? I’d like to think I know lots about lots, but that’s probably pretty wide of the mark, so I’ll stick to astronomy (something I should know something about). Now, what about astronomy? Some of it is dull as fuck, if you’ll excuse the language (if you won’t, then fuck you twice in the eye). How about an observer’s diary? A sort of “Week in the life of a telescope-using astronomer”, maybe that might be of interest to people who for one reason or another have no idea what we astronomers do (I can’t take credit for this idea, it was originally an idea Adam had for the Jodcast that never came to fruition). Here goes:

Our story starts about three months ago when I submitted an application for time to use a telescope, in this case one near the town of Sutherland in South Africa (the coldest place in the country, apparently). Anyway, at regular intervals the organisations who control telescopes (different depending on which telescope) invite applications from the astronomical community, in which you have to detail what you want to use the telescope for, how many nights you need to do it and why it’s worth doing. These applications then go to a panel of senior astronomers called a Time Allocation Committee (or TAC) to decide how best to distribute the time available (seeing as there are only 365 days a year they can only divvy up 365 nights between all the astronomers applying to use their telescopes). On this particular occasion, I was lucky enough to be given a week (I asked for two).

Now, fast forward to the day I have to fly out. It’s a Sunday, my flight leaves Manchester airport in about 3 hours; I haven’t packed yet. I quickly throw some clothes in a case – plenty of layers, remember coldest place in South Africa – and call a taxi. Some hours later I’m sat in Heathrow reading the book I’ve brought with me to read on the plane (Things The Grandchildren Should Know the autobiography of Mark Oliver Everett of EELS – the chapter where his mam dies almost made me cry), while waiting for my delayed flight to Cape Town. Several hours later, I’m stuck in cattle class on an 11 hour flight next to an old woman I can best describe as scuffley. By now I’ve already finished the book I was intending to read on the flight, so I watch a few films: Fantastic Mr. Fox and An Education. One a kids film distinctly not for kids, the other a film with paedophyllic undertones that I find pretty discomforting. About 8:30am South African time, we land, I collect my bags and go to the guest house where I’ll spend one night before travelling to the observatory. Even though the Sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day, I go straight to bed (having not got any sleep on the flight). I surface again at about 6pm but only to feed. The following day, I set off on the transport to the Observatory which will take about 5 hours, providing yet more opportunity to catch up on sleep. I wake up about an hour before we get there and notice we pass a baboon at the side of the road. I laugh out loud at its giant red arse. This only serves to get me a few funny looks from my fellow passengers. When I arrive, I negotiate the change-over with one of my colleagues who has been observing for the past week. I will start late so I can watch the Bayern Munich – Manchester United match, and he can finish early so he can get a good night’s sleep before the 5 hour journey back to Cape Town. I win in the end, because shortly after he goes to bed the weather turns bad and forces us to give up and go to bed ourselves.

The telescope plateau and astronomers’ hostel of the South African Astronomical Observatory

Here is an appropriate time to get technical, so as the advert says “Here comes the science bit”. The observatory I’m at in South Africa is an optical observatory, meaning the telescopes are all designed to detect optical light (the stuff our eyes can see), other observatories are set up for other types of light (i.e. Parkes in Australia, where Adam has just come back from, is a radio observatory, meaning its geared up to detecting much longer wavelengths of light than optical). Observing at different wavelengths of light demand different conditions. Radio observatories, for example, can be pretty much anywhere as radio-waves pass straight through clouds, optical light on the other hand obviously can’t (our eyes can’t see any stars on a cloudy night!), so optical observatories have to be in places with the clearest and darkest night skies around. One of the ways astronomers measure the clarity of a sky is with a thing called seeing, which, for the sake of further clarity, I’m going to call twinkle-icity. You see, the twinkling of stars, is not something intrinsic to the stars themselves but as a result of us looking at them through the atmosphere (just like looking through a rippling pond). The best sites to observe from are those with the lowest twinkle-icity, or the places where the atmosphere has the least influence on what we’re looking at – giving us the clearest picture of what is happening in space. In practice, this means that the best observatories are in high and dry places, like Cerro Paranal (in Atacama Desert, Chile), at the top of Mauna Kea (in Hawaii) and the Roque de los Muchachos (in the Canary Islands, see picture).

Me at El Roque de Los Muchachos in La Palma, Canary Islands

Me with the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands

Back to the “diary”. Having gone to bed early on the first night, I’m up at a spritely 2pm to have breakfast and take a little walk around. The Sun sets at around 7pm so at 6:30pm we’re back up at the telescope, opening the dome and preparing the camera for observing. It reality, the camera is nothing more than a very expensive, very sensitive, black-and-white digital camera stuck on the back of the telescope. Going back to the beginning, the project we proposed in our application was to look for undiscovered binary stars – two stars in close orbit around each other like the Earth and the Moon. These stars are so close together, that we actually can’t tell them apart, they just look like one star (partly because the twinkle-icity smears the two stars together, but mainly because it would be almost impossible to build a telescope big enough to see the gap between them), so we have to be clever about it. We find them by taking lots of pictures of the star (that we think might actually be two stars very close together) over an extended period of time and measure how bright the star is on every image. If there are two stars orbiting around each other, when one star passes in front of the other it will block out the light from that star (just like the Moon during a Solar eclipse) making it appear fainter than when the two are side by side. So, we draw a graph of star brightness versus time in the hope that we’ll see these dips in brightness (as one star passes in front of the other) at regular intervals corresponding to the amount of time it takes the stars to do a full orbit (see picture. Credit: Swinburne).

And, this is what we do for the next seven nights, 12 hours a night, in the coldest place in South Africa, sharing the control room with Steve the Light Scorpion (see picture). We monitor the brightness of several stars, in hope of detecting binaries. It can be tough and is always pretty exhausting. There probably aren’t many jobs where you are expected to work 12 hour night shifts, often alone, but people don’t do it because it’s a job – they do it because they love it (that’s why I do it, at least).

Steve the Light Scorpion

Dave Jones
Night 7 of 8 at the South African Astronomical Observatory

p.s. If this was at all interesting to anybody at all, maybe I could do a follow-up on why we’re looking for new binaries? It won’t be too boring, I promise, plus it’ll be crammed with astronomy pretty pictures!

So there ya go! I hope you learned something new, I did! mainly that Dave can go quite a while without cussing, who knew?! Thank you to Dave for the interesting insight into looking at twinkley stars, and scorpions. Do any of you have something you’d like to share? Please get in touch! I’d love to have some more posts like this on the blog :)

Taking your own advice is the hardest thing to do sometimes, so I’m putting these here as my own incentive.. YEAH!

• Not take things too seriously.
• Listening to Pop music isn’t wrong, neither’s Glee… (!)
• Enjoy things as they are.
• Start being creative everyday.
• If something feels wrong, it probably is.
• Document.
• Remember you’re only one person.
• Remember that one person can do whatever they want.
• Organise, little boxes are great. Use that label maker, too, be Monica for a day.
• Wardrobe clear out, use the 6-month-rule. Unbelievable catharsis, dude.
• Don’t feel guilty for standing still for a while.
• Don’t stand still for too long, though.
• Do things differently
• “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr Seuss
• There’s nothing wrong with buying a tub of plastic dinosaurs.
• If it’s not fun, then it’s probably not worth it.
• If you’re feeling sad, pick up a cat.

Dear Ugg Boots,

I thought it was time we cleared a few things up, I mean, the air between us hasn’t been good for a while now… and I feel like I owe you an explanation. Where should I begin? …

I remember when I first saw you, wow, that was a long time ago. You weren’t as popular back then, or as colourful! heh… You were cute in that short and dumpy way, I’ll give you that — I guess in your own little way you still are. I remember those stories you told me about how you used to hang out with the surfers and swimmers, I’m sure you fitted right in there!  I don’t know whether it was your homesickness from leaving Australia and your attempt to fit in, or some wish to be thought of as ‘cool’, but ever since you started hanging around with that Paris girl, well,  you changed — you never used to wear pink for a start. Then I started seeing you with all her friends too, that crowd of people… why did you do that? I guess I can’t lay all the blame with you for that, they knew you were different… paraded you as some kind of new toy. Even when they dropped you that time for Mukluks? when they came running back to you I watched on as you greeted them with open arms.

Yes, looking back that’s when things started to change. I think it got worse when I saw you hanging out in those cheap high-street shops, you’d really let your standards drop… you’d turned so synthetic, half the time you went by some weird pseudonym or something, too. What happened? I think you might have started to spread yourself too thin, wanting to be ‘in’ with as many people as you could.

And now? Now I don’t even know who you are anymore, one day you’ll be wearing wool, the next you’re covered in laces…and some of the colours… oof. I see you more than ever now, sometimes I think you look like you’re doing ok, other times I really wonder what went wrong. Like the other day, you were hanging out with this girl who was wearing baggy sweat pants and a baggy pink hooded sweater, and she wasn’t even at the gym. Wow. I thought you had a bit more class than that. When I saw you in Australia last year you looked so well! Like your old self again! You’d got your colour back and looked homely again.

Anyway, I’m babbling, I just wanted to let you know my reasons. I hope you can understand. Don’t get me wrong, I still think you’re so lovely, warm and cosy… I just can’t be seen with you anymore. I hope we can still hang out around the house, though.

Yours,

Kim

PS. I don’t know if you’ve been in touch with Crocs lately, but I’ll be writing to him at some point. We also have a few things to clear up.