We Asked 5 People How Much It Actually Costs to Look This Good in Public

There is an unwritten rule that you never ask. You compliment the fit, you ask where the shirt is from, and if the person wants you to know what it cost, they will tell you. Usually they do not.

So we asked directly. Five people, one outfit each, every item priced, including the ones they would rather not itemise.

1. Tomiwa, 26, “The whole thing is thrift except the shoes”

Total: 47,500

He is very clear that the number is misleading. The shirt was 3,500 at Yaba, but he went to Yaba eleven times before he found it.

”People see one shirt. They don’t see the eleven Saturdays.”

The shoes are the only new item, and they are the reason the total looks the way it does. He has worn them, by his own estimate, more than two hundred times.

2. Aisha, 23, “I don’t buy clothes, I buy tailoring”

Total: 62,000

Fabric was 18,000. The tailor was 30,000. The rest is jewellery she has had since university.

Her position is that the tailoring is the actual purchase and the fabric is a raw material, which is why she will spend twice as much on the former. It is hard to argue with the result.

3. Kelechi, 29, “Two items, and one of them was a gift”

Total: 210,000

The jacket is the whole outfit and he knows it. He also volunteered, unprompted, that he paid for it across three months and would not recommend that to anyone.

4. Zainab, 24, “Everything here is under 10k”

Total: 34,200

The most expensive item is a bag she bought in a market in Kano four years ago. She has been asked where it is from roughly once a week ever since.

5. Seyi, 31, “I stopped counting on purpose”

Total: he declined

He was willing to break down individual items but not to add them together, which is its own kind of answer.

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The pattern, across all five: almost nobody’s most-complimented item is their most expensive one. The thing people notice is usually the thing that took the longest to find.