Statistics on clothes buying habits of the French

[Fabienne]

These numbers are from an issue of "Le point" (jan. 13, 2005) that featured a long article on "a day in France" that gave numbers about everything from the amount of calories a French citizen eats a day, to how many baby boys and girls are born each day, or else how much the state's debt costs in interest per day. There are approximately 60 million inhabitants in France. My translation of the section about clothing:

In 2002, The French purchased 87 123 shirts and 76 712 pairs of jeans per day. French women bought 279 452 pairs of stockings or pantyhose in 2003. According to a study by the IFM (Institut francais de la mode), women spend 1.50 euro a day to dress themselves, whereas men spend 1 euro, and spending for children's clothing total .49 euro. The younger, the more money is spent on clothing: 15-25 year olds: 2.20 euros per day for clothing, over 35 years old, 1.50 euros. Undergarments? They cost 6.8 million euros per day to the French. A woman thus spends an average of 27 centimes of a euro. (...) The French buy daily 884 931 pairs of shoes, of which 109 589 are sports shoes. It costs them 21.9 million euros per day.

 

[JLibourel]

These figures seem weird. That figure about shoe purchases would mean that every living human in France, from babes in arms to seniors in homes bought an average of five pairs of shoes a year. At an average clothing expenditure of one euro per day, it would seem that they would have very little money for any other apparel.

 

[Horace]

I would've thought that French women buy fewer but more well-made pieces of clothing than American women. I also would've thought that the clothing that French women buy, despite it's haute-timeliness, would be more enduring fashion. I also would've thought that, in the consumption of fashion, the one place that French women would've consumed more, is clothing accessories like scarfs, etc.

 

[imageWIS]

I'm not going to pretend to understand the French, suffice to say they have the capital of the fashion world and their clothing purchases should reflect that.

Jon.

 

[november]

Stats are weird inded. Sometimes an average doens't tell one much as the French could dress from low-end CÃ

lio to Hermès.
365 euros a yr for the average French man for clothes, I wonder how much the average American or the British spends.
That would be easier to put into perspective.

I would think the French spends less than the British.

 

[Fabienne]

Sometimes an average doens't tell one much as the French could dress from low-end CÃ

lio to Hermès.
365 euros a yr for the average French man for clothes, I wonder how much the average American or the British spends.
That would be easier to put into perspective.

I would think the French spends less than the British.

This is what the whole lengthy article was missing: perspective. And each category left me with more questions than useful answers. It was fun overall nonetheless. I would think they figured tourists in the equations, as I don't know how they might have separated "the French" as opposed to "the foreigners", which necessarily would somewhat falsify the numbers, given France's huge tourism industry.