Too Many Ties

Originally Posted by Jackie Treehorn 

It's fine to own more clothing than what you need, at a bare minimum. I don't think anyone on SF would be here if he intended to own just the basics, no more, and to derive no pleasure in a tiny bit of excess. Nevertheless, too few people -- especially beginners here -- take any cognizance of their true needs.
The difference between a wardrobe, and a random assortment of clothing, is superficially small but practically enormous. Compiling a well-curated wardrobe means starting with a conscious and considered accounting of one's needs. Straying too far above one's actual needs is no more admirable a feat than being perpetually underdressed for lack of the basics. Restraint is an art form seldom practiced, but immensely important.
Let's take the example of a man who wears a tie maybe once a week. At a bare minimum, this hypothetical iGent could get by on about a dozen ties, assuming they were all variations on the basics. But this is no fun, and it's at stark odds with the tastes of most of us here (myself included). So lets's say this man acquires a selection of somewhere in the range of 12 and 50 ties. Toward the upper end of that range, he's probably got some ties that he'll never get around to wearing, unless he makes a deliberate attempt to wear each tie in succession (which means he'll wear each tie once a year). More likely, though, our man will have favorites in the bunch, and he won't wear each tie only once in the rotation. So there will be a lot of ties that lie fallow for years on end. Now, let's take things even further. Let's say he owns 75 or more ties. There will now be ties in his closet, taking up valuable and presumably limited space in said closet, that will practically never see use. The opportunity cost of each of these marginal tie purchases, coupled with the space they take up, places a legitimate constraint on his ability to buy, maintain, and store other sartorial items.
More often than not on SF, we encounter this sort of problem: the problem of having too much in one area, and, perhaps, not enough in others. This is an imbalance in a wardrobe. Even for someone who really, really fancies collecting ties. Let's take even ten excess ties, purchased for about $50 apiece (on B&S, say). That's $500 in excess ties. Surely that same $500 could have been saved, or else spent on a decent pair of shoes, or something else altogether. Is $50 a tie too high? Even if he paid $25 a tie, that's still $250 in excess. That $250 could purchase a respectable pair of shoes, or a very nice set of cufflinks, or a mid-high-end custom shirt, or an excellent bottle of wine, or a few boxes of great cigars. The point is, the money could have been put to better use than collecting dust in the darkened corner of a cramped closet.
If I had a dollar for every SFer who owns 100 ties and 2 suits, for example, I'd have enough dollars to purchase those SFers some more suits.
Balance is everything. In between the two extremes of too much, and not enough, lies a grey area that should be navigated carefully and deliberately. It may seem like a more "boring" path than simply making purchases, here and there, as the heart suddenly and occasionally desires. But it's a more rewarding path, even emotionally, in the long run.