Last weekend, I chose a podcast about styles while I was cleaning, and there was an unfortunate explanation that style doesn’t necessarily mean buying designer items, but you can pull it off cheaply from fast fashion stores. I completely agree with the first part, but the second half is, in my opinion, very misleading and quite annoying, at least for me. It’s especially frustrating because I’ve been avoiding these stores for years. I just don’t have the patience to sift through all the poorly made clothes, many of which are already falling apart on the rack or made from unwearable materials, just to find a few decent pieces.
A few days ago, a lean expert friend shared a visual management tool about parking meters, and it seems that lean thinking really sticks in your brain and starts showing up in all areas of your life. When it comes to clothing decisions, I use a simple metric: the cost-per-wear ratio. For shoes and certain types of clothing, I also use a kanban system to manage replacements. Both of these save time, energy, and money—just like in a factory.
I can’t remember if I came up with the cost-per-wear ratio on my own or if I read it somewhere, but it has been helpful for every decision I make for years. The concept is simple: how much does the item cost, and how many times will I wear it? The result is a number, and the smaller that number is, the happier I am with the purchase. The problem with fast fashion is that although you buy it cheap, you probably won’t wear it many times, so in the end, it’s worse compared to medium-priced, high-quality, and long-lasting pieces. This idea also protects me from overpriced brands because no matter how much you love something that costs hundreds of thousands of forints, you just can’t wear it enough times to make it seem reasonable :-D. Often, I can already tell in the store that I won’t wear something enough to make it worth buying, and it’s also common for me to choose a pair of shoes in the morning because they have a bad cost-per-wear ratio and I want to improve it.
I’ve perfected the kanban system mainly for shoes, mostly because it’s such a hassle to find the perfect pair that I want to deal with it as little as possible. It’s simple: a pair of black leather sneakers starts as street shoes, and after 7-8 years, when they’re worn out, they become garden shoes. That’s when the red card comes in, signaling that it’s time to start looking for a new pair that meets the exact specifications: black, leather. And yes, the specifications and instructions are strict: no nubuck, no covered heels, and the shoes must be stored in their box, stuffed, and waxed, ready for the season.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this, and this system assumes a certain level of awareness, refined taste, and independence from current fashion trends. But now that I’ve developed this lean-based system, it has saved me from buying a lot of unnecessary stuff.
So why did I write this? First, to point out that fast fashion is NOT cheap when you look at it from this perspective, and in the long run, it’s terribly harmful to our environment. Secondly, it shows that there is no activity or decision—whether in a factory, office, or any process—where you can’t apply a good metric or find a lean tool that helps.
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