Cost per wear: the maths fast fashion would rather you didn’t do

The price tag is the least useful number on a piece of clothing. It tells you what you pay once. It says nothing about how often you will wear it, how long it lasts or what it costs the planet to replace it. There is a better number, and once you start using it, fast fashion looks expensive.

The number: cost per wear

Cost per wear is the price divided by the times you actually wear something. Here is an illustration, with the numbers clearly made up for the sake of the sum. A £6 tee that loses its shape and gets binned after six wears costs £1 a wear. Our BLVNKS Organic T-Shirt costs £30.99. Wear it once a week for two years, around 100 wears, and it is about 31p a wear. Keep it for the average lifetime of clothing in the UK, and it gets cheaper still.

The cheap tee only wins if you wear the good one fewer than 31 times. That is the whole argument, and it is why the fast-fashion model depends on you not doing this sum.

What the research says about how we really wear clothes

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s research on the textiles economy found that global clothing production roughly doubled over 15 years. Over the same period, the average number of times a garment is worn before it stops being used fell by 36%. The foundation estimates that the equivalent of one rubbish truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second. It also estimates that customers worldwide miss out on USD 460 billion of value each year by throwing away clothes they could keep wearing, and some garments are thought to be discarded after just seven to ten wears.

Seven to ten wears is the fast-fashion business model in one figure. It isn’t that people are careless. Cheap clothes are designed and priced to feel disposable, and the feed makes last month’s purchase look old.

The UK picture

WRAP, the UK waste charity, tracked British clothing in its 2017 report Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion. Using HMRC data, it estimated that 1.13 million tonnes of clothing were bought in the UK in 2016, almost 200,000 tonnes more than in 2012. Its consumer research found that clothing lasts on average 3.3 years before it is thrown out or passed on. Around 300,000 tonnes of clothing a year was ending up in household rubbish bins.

Then the useful part. WRAP modelled what happens if people simply keep clothes in active use for longer. Extending the life of half of the UK’s clothing by nine months would cut the total footprint by about 8% for carbon, 10% for water and 4% for waste. No new technology, no new fabric. Just wearing what we own for an extra season.

Why “better” matters, not just “less”

Buying less only works if what you buy survives being worn a lot. That comes down to boring, checkable details: fabric weight, the type of cotton, how the seams are finished. Before you buy anything, from anyone, look for three things on the product page:

• Weight. A heavier jersey, around 180gsm for a tee, keeps its shape through more washes than a thin, see-through one.
• Construction. Double-needle stitching at hems and a taped neck stop collars from going wavy.
• Honesty. Does the brand tell you what the garment is made of, including when it isn’t organic?

That last one is where TRVTH tries to be different. Our Originality and BLVNKS ranges are listed as GOTS-certified organic cotton, cut and printed in London. Where a piece isn’t organic, such as the 100% polyester “cotton-feel” Decadence tees, the product page says so. We print each item fresh to order under our zero-waste policy, so there is no warehouse of unsold stock waiting to be dumped, and orders ship in an eco mailing bag.

A cost-per-wear habit you can start today

• The 30-wear test. Before buying, ask honestly whether you will wear it at least 30 times. If not, leave it.
• One in, one considered. When something new comes in, pass on something you no longer wear rather than letting it sit.
• Fix it. A loose seam is a ten-minute job. Patagonia built an entire campaign on four words: “If it’s broke, fix it.”
• Buy the base, not the trend. Spend on the pieces you wear weekly: tees, hoodies, sweats. Have fun with the rest.

None of this means you can’t enjoy clothes. It means the clothes you enjoy should stick around long enough to become yours. TRVTH’s Originality range was built on that idea: timeless essentials that will last longer than a lifetime, in only six product styles. Fewer, better, worn harder.

Future thinking. Sustainable. Honest. Do the maths, then stay true to it.

Shop timeless Originality essentials →

Sources

• Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Fashion and the circular economy
• Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A New Textiles Economy (2017)
• WRAP, Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion (2017, PDF)
• Patagonia Works, Worn Wear tour: If it’s broke, fix it (2015)
• TRVTH, BLVNKS Organic T-Shirt (price and spec, 7 Nov 2026)

Photos: TRVTH product photography.

Also on the TRVTH main site.