Affordable business casual men: a cost-over-time guide

For affordable business casual men, the price on the tag is the smallest of the four bills a garment sends you. The others arrive later and quietly: the tailor, the cleaner, the cobbler, and the replacement.

A wardrobe that looks cheap on purchase day and expensive over three years comes from paying the first bill and ignoring the other three.

This page is about the other three, and about the one place where a man on a budget has a genuine structural advantage. The tailored garments in his register are sold by measurement and hold their value second-hand.

What to take away

The four bills

The tailor. Almost nothing fits off the rack at every point, so the alteration is part of the price, not a repair. Typical shop prices are about $10 to $20 for a trouser hem, $12 to $30 for a sleeve, and $15 to $35 for a waist taken in or let out.

A shoulder is not worth doing. Count the alteration when comparing two garments, because the cheaper one with a shoulder that fits and the dearer one that needs the shoulder moved are not the prices on their tags.

The cleaner. A wardrobe that all requires professional cleaning has a running cost and a delay every time something is worn. Most of what a cleaner is asked to do is pressing, which can be bought on its own.

Cloth that can be brushed, aired and pressed at home is cheaper to own even where it costs more to buy. The label tells you which you are dealing with before you pay: under the FTC care labeling rule it has to state a complete regular care procedure.

The cobbler. A shoe whose sole can be replaced costs more once and less over five years. A shoe whose sole cannot is bought again each time the sole wears through. Heel tips, replaced early, are the cheapest repair in the wardrobe and the one most often skipped until the heel block is damaged.

Typical prices are about $5 to $15 for a heel tip and $50 to $100 for a leather resole, with city rents pushing both up. Welted shoes from Allen Edmonds, Alden or Meermin can be rebuilt by the maker or by a cobbler. A shoe with a glued sole usually gets replaced instead.

The replacement. The rate at which each garment wears out is the bill that dominates over time and is never printed anywhere. A shirt collar frays in a couple of years of weekly wear. A knit pills and grows. A trouser in heavy cloth outlasts three in light cloth.

Consumed or kept

The table redirects most budgets. The instinct is to spend on shirts, which are visible, and economize on the jacket, which is worn less often. Over three years the jacket is the garment that either holds up or does not, and the shirts are replaced either way.

Second-hand tailoring is the value in the field

Tailored menswear is sold by measurement. A second-hand jacket or trouser can be checked against numbers, not a size label that means nothing.

Well-made tailoring is built to be altered. That makes the second-hand rail the best value in men's business casual, and it is safe to use. In the United States the deepest supply is on eBay, Poshmark, Grailed and The RealReal, with local Goodwill and Salvation Army shops holding the cheapest stock.

Three checks, in order, before anything else:

Sleeve length is cheap to fix unless the cuffs have working buttonholes. The hem and waist of a trouser are cheap.

Cloth should have weight and recover from a crease, read alongside the fiber content disclosed under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act and, for wool products, the Wool Products Labeling Act. The spare cloth inside the seams is what a tailor will use.

A garment that passes the first three and has generous seams can be made to fit properly for the cost of a tailor's afternoon. For broader wardrobe context, see men's professional wear.

Leave anything with a shiny seat, a collapsed collar, moth damage or a cloth that has gone limp. Those are the four things that do not come back.

Buy the second trouser

One rule does more for a small wardrobe than any other. When a trouser works, buy a second pair in the same cloth before the line changes.

Retailers such as Suitsupply, Spier & Mackay and J.Crew sell trousers as separates rather than only as part of a suit, which makes the repeat easier to find.

Trousers get worn more than jackets, wear out at the seat and knee, and are the hardest garment to replace like for like. Two pairs in rotation last far more than twice as long as one, because each pair rests a day, about 24 hours, between wears.

The same rotation logic runs through the whole wardrobe and is the reason a small set of good things is cheaper than a large set of average ones. It applies with most force to shoes, where a rested pair recovers and a daily one does not. See work shoes for related guidance.

Where the money should not go

Novelty, which is bought to avoid repeating an outfit and is the largest single waste in most wardrobes. Repetition is not the problem it feels like; the same few garments in good condition read as deliberate. For more on the broader dress code, see business casual for men.

Technical cloth bought for comfort. The comfort is real and the register is wrong, and a mid-weight wool trouser that fits at the waist delivers most of the comfort without moving the outfit into the wrong room.

A jacket cut from suiting, bought cheaply because it was half a suit. It will never be a sports jacket, at any price.

Anything bought without the minute of inspection that tells you whether it was made to last. In practice that means the shoulder seam, the cloth weight and the inside construction. For related brand guidance, see best business casual men brands.

Common questions

Is it worth paying a tailor for a cheap garment?

If the shoulder fits, yes, almost always. The alteration turns a garment that nearly fits into one that does, and the combined cost is usually below that of a garment that fits nobody off the rack.

What is the first thing to buy on a small budget?

The trouser, in a cloth with weight, in a color that takes every shirt you own. Then a second pair of the same. Then shoes that can be resoled. The jacket comes after those, because in most buildings on most days it is on the chair.

Second-hand shirts?

Rarely worth it. Collars and cuffs are where a shirt is consumed, and a second-hand shirt has already spent part of its life. Buy shirts new and cheap, from Uniqlo, Charles Tyrwhitt or Lands' End.

How do I know when to replace rather than repair?

When the failure is in the cloth rather than at a seam, a hem, button, seam or sole is a repair. A shiny seat, a limp cloth and a frayed collar are the end. For related outfit ideas, see business casual men ideas.