Imagine wearing the same dress, day in and day out, for one year.
Pretty hard to imagine, right?
Not if you are Seattle mom Alex Martin. Martin wore the same brown dress, a dress that she made herself, everyday from July 7, 2005 to July 7, 2006 and chronicled it in her blog/journal called The Little Brown Dress.
She paired her homemade brown dress with cardigans and stockings, for both practical and stylish reasons. And, for the most part, no one noticed that she was wearing the same dress everyday.
Martin states on her blog/journal:
I challenged myself to reject the economic system that pushes over-consumption, and the bill of goods that has been sold, especially to women, about what makes a person good, attractive and interesting. Clothes are a big part of this image, and the expectation in time, effort, and financial investment is immense.
So, Martin is right. We are pushed and prodded to buy stuff — often to emulate the lifestyle we see in celebrity fronted fashion and beauty lines. Even so, most of us aren’t going to stop shopping at Target to make our own biodegradable brown dresses. Personally, I would love to know is how much money she saved by wearing the same dress everyday for a year. Enough to buy a car?
Read next: The Budget Fashionista’s guide to dresses
Note: Alex’s little brown dress project as well as her plans to create an entirely new wardrobe from recycled clothing from her own closet are no longer online.
Cost-per-wear implications
I talk a lot about cost per wear. My thinking is that budget shopping is more effective when you’re focused on cost per wear vs. cost by itself. Specifically, a $12 top you never wear costs you more than a $30 top you wear 100 times. Because in the days you’re not wearing the $12 top, you’re putting on something else — a garment you paid for. And that pushes your cumulative spending on clothes higher.
To demonstrate, say you spend $2,800 to buy 28 jeans and t-shirt outfits and you wear each combo 13 times a year. Your outfit cost per wear is $7.69.
Now say you spend $750 on a single dress you wear everyday. Your cost per wear on that piece is $2.05. And if you’re wearing it daily, you don’t need much else — so your total spend should be way less than $2,800.
Should you wear the same dress daily?
Wearing the same dress daily would be an amazing budget move, but it’s too extreme to be workable. What you can do is take some inspiration from the Little Brown Dress Project and consider ways you can get more use out of the pieces you already own.
Read next: How to revive and repurpose your little black dresses
And if one piece isn’t inspiring you at all, consider selling or donating it. You don’t need old, dated clothes taking up space in your closet or your life.