Author Craig Johnson complains about having to get dressed up for his book tour, and goes on to describe the clothes he feels most comfortable in:
My favorite shirts are threadbare at the elbows, collar, and cuffs-and after ten years of wear, are just about right. My favorite jeans all have unidentified stains and holes in strategic places (look for the hole in the cuff of my dress jeans where they got punched by the hardware wire in the hay shed). My favorite boots are mud-stained and battered, with heels that have kind of dropped off-I’m kind of like Walt in that respect. They do need a bit of attention… This all points to a dread disease of character-I am sentimental. I refuse to throw old clothes away simply because they’re properly broken-in. I guess I feel a connection of spirit, especially since nobody’s thrown me out… Yet.
From the Penguin Authors’ Blog.
In recent years, I have gotten a lot better about getting rid of clothes that are horribly shabby. But I still hold on to favorite garments long after most people probably would have chucked them. Case in point, a pair of pajamas I got for Christmas in 1999. They are the most comfortable pajamas on earth, and I will not get rid of them until they fall apart like the one-hoss shay. Probably easier to hold on to pajamas than clothes I might actually wear out in public, though.
Recent psychological studies have shown that as soon as we own something, we value it more than if we don’t (i.e. immediately after buying a shirt for $20, people wouldn’t sell it for less than say $40 or more).