Women’s fashion changes significantly from season to season. Men’s fashion does not. For women to buy “throw away fashion” that lasts for a season is perfectly acceptable. This is not the best idea for men.

Let’s look at the typical wardrobe:

Women’s wardrobe – has a high turnover of a wide, yet shallow assortment of clothing. “Wide” in the sense that women have many different types of clothing in a variety of styles. “Shallow” meaning that there is barely a style that that is duplicated in their wardrobe.

Men’s wardrobe – has a low turnover of a narrow, yet deep assortment of clothing. “Narrow” in the sense that men have fewer types of clothing to choose from. “Deep” meaning that with each type of clothing, there is lots of duplication of style. Just consider the number of near-identical collared shirts that the average man has in his wardrobe.

Since men’s fashion has a longer life, men keep items for longer. It is therefore important for them to be discerning about quality by shopping at better-end chain stores (e.g. Banana Republic) and department stores (e.g. Nordstrom) for premium products (budget permitting of course). Hence: “boys need to buy better!”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 6:41 am and is filed under Men's Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.