I love to buy clothes, and I realised that’s caused a problem: I have more outfits than I can wear in a lifetime.
How it started
Seeing jumpers piled in my wardrobe, I sensed I had too many. I saw the potential for one of my favourite activities: cataloguing things, and even better, in an Excel spreadsheet!
The best place to start was a complete inventory. I took everything from my wardrobe: every shirt, jumper, hoodie, tie, shoe. Counting and cataloguing took a long time, but was necessary to see the full scope. It was certainly beyond what I expected.
For ease of reading, the full quantities are:
| Item | Quantity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Belts | 3 | One belt, the one I included in my 33 items, is reversible: tan one side, black the other. Tacky, but efficient. |
| Coats and jackets | 7 | Spanning light bombers to thick ski coats. |
| Hats | 1 | I have two baseball caps I never wear; they're more like decorations than clothes. |
| Jumpers, hoodies, blazers | 27 | Blazers here are not part of suits |
| Scarves | 4 | Another reversible one here, but that didn't make the cut. |
| Shirts | 14 | Of which five were white. Gentlemen, don't underestimate the need for white shirts. |
| Shoes | 11 | Two pairs of Oxfords, two trainers, two high-tops, and some that defy easy categorisation. |
| Suits | 2 | I have a suit in my 33 items, counted as separates |
| T-shirts | 24 | Of which "only" 10 are game-related. |
| Ties | 8 | I bought a 99c bowtie for a Christmas party; apparently I should wear it more often. It's not in my 33 items. |
| Trousers | 12 | I love buying trousers. |
| Total | 102 |
The scale of it really surprised me. I knew I had a lot of clothes, but owning more than 50 t-shirts, jumpers and hoodies in total was really eye-opening. I kept coming out of the bedroom to ask Hannah how many of x item she thought I had (she usually undershot by about 50%, out of kindness, I’m convinced).
How many outfits combinations is that?
That was my first question too, but I didn’t want to simply multiply all those numbers together, for two reasons:
Combinations: You’d never wear a black belt with tan shoes, trainers with a suit, or a shirt with a hoodie (actually, I did think this could be “my thing” for a while)
Redundancy: With some outers, what you wear underneath isn’t seen, so it’s hardly a different outfit if you have a white or grey t-shirt beneath that thick hoodie
What I ended up doing was much more curated, looking at the number of combinations of fundamentals. After discounting needless items – jumpers that don’t go with shirts, running shoes etc. – and omitting redundant combinations – jumpers where you can’t see what’s underneath – I arrived at the below figures.
| Shirt | Jumper | Trousers | Shoes | Total # of outfits |
| 14 | 17 | 12 | 9 | 25,704 |
| T-shirt | Hoodie/cardigan | Trousers | Shoes | |
| 24 | 3 | 12 | 9 | 7,776 |
| Jumper | Trousers | Shoes | ||
| 7 | 12 | 9 | 756 | |
| Total outfits | 34,236 |
Wow. With 34,236 outfits, that means I could wear a different outfit every single day for almost 94 years and never repeat an outfit.
These figures don’t include a jacket or coat worn over the top: just looking at four favourites (three jackets, one coat), adding those into the mix quadruples the number, for another 102,708 potential outfit combinations, or a different one every day for 281 years. And what if it’s really cold, and I decide to wear a scarf? An additional 128,520 outfits.
They also don’t include suits. Even keeping it simple, wearing a shirt + tie with one of two suits and one of two pairs of shoes, I had 448 different outfit options. If I wore a suit to work every day for a year and a half, I still wouldn’t repeat an outfit.
I think you get the idea now: things were out of hand. For the final standings in the table below, I’ve omitted accessories like hats, scarves and belts, to keep the numbers realistic and meaningful.
| Outfit type | Number of outfits (without jacket or coat) | Number of outfits (with jacket) | Number of outfits (with coat) | Total number of outfits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shirt, jumper, trousers, shoes | 25,704 | 77,112 | 25,704 | 257,040 |
| T-shirt, hoodie/cardigan, trousers, shoes | 7,776 | 23,328 | 7,776 | 38,880 |
| Jumper, trousers, shoes | 756 | 2,268 | 756 | 3,780 |
| Shirt, tie, suit, shoes | 448 | n/a (I wouldn't wear my jackets with a suit) | 448 | 896 |
| Totals | 34,684 | 102,708 | 34,684 | 300,596 |
More than 300,000 possible outfits from combining four staple items and a coat or jacket. That blows my mind. I’m glad I’m doing something about it – more on that next time.
In closing
Although I’ve done my best to keep the combinations within realistic parameters, there are plenty of combinations that slipped through: would I really wear my smart trousers with a Sonic t-shirt and boots? Not every shirt, tie, suit and shoes combination works. But the purpose wasn’t to calculate the precise number of outfits I’d actually wear – as we’ve seen, whatever method of calculation I employed, I had more outfits than I could wear in my lifetime. Removing some combinations that don’t work together wouldn’t make much difference – only a massive reduction in item mass would do so.
So that’s what I did next.
My name is James Newton, and this is my website - a collection of my writings about
videogames, music and all my other thoughts.