I once paid $1000 for some sneakers. I’m still regularly wearing them 7 years later. I’ve bought $50/$100 and they never last that long. It was an insane purchase at the time, done in a moment of jet lagged madness when my shoes fell apart in an airport. But over time it’s turned out to be a great investment. Smart, comfortable, well made.
Do you wear them like $50 shoes or like $1000 dollar shoes? I run around 18 miles a week on trails and I doubt your $1000 dollar sneakers would last ten years with that usage pattern.
When you run 18 miles a week you should measure the lifetime of your shoes by mileage rather than time. I think 600 miles is about right for a pair of running shoes. It's just that some people run 600 miles in a year, others run that in ten years.
I'm sure that if you got super high quality durable running shoes, and only used them for running, you'd get some good milage out of them before the shoes either wore out or wore through.
I play tennis regularly and only go through a pair of shoes maybe once a year or every 18 months. I always pay extra for a higher quality and more durable pair because they last. I only use the shoes for tennis - I put them on when I enter the court and take them off when I end my session. The shoes probably run me $180-200 but totally worth it if they can last me 100+ hours.
The maximum durability running shoes are $150-$200. No amount more than that will give you more durability and assuredly almost all $1000 shoes won’t last as long as $200 Asics Superblasts
One sad thing is that I am allergic to plastics and leathers and so my choice of shoes is drastically limited. The shoes I can wear aren't great for running and wear out in about 3-6 months, but I usually just keep running on them for about a year, until my toes start sticking out.
I do have a pair of $250 leather riding boots that have lasted me many years so far and I'm pretty sure will last that long, but they also require cleaning and polishing a few times a year....
I'm happy to pay $$$$ for something that lasts but my exerience is some of the most expensive things I've bought, well known luxury brand names, had the lowest quality.
In my younger years, I really did believe that cost correlated with longevity, but as I've gotten older, I'm finding that most of the very affordable things I've purchased, including shoes and pants and jackets, have lasted 15+ years. So I no longer believe that paying a thousand dollars for an item of clothing is going to yield a material benefit in terms of longevity -- I think some of it is just marketing, but there are also other elements of comfort and fit. I'm just not very discerning.
You're often much better off buying 10x of the thing than a thing that is 10x the cost; if it's a wear item, not wearing it all the time will greatly extend its lifespan.
Almost all clothes is destroyed by the washer and the dryer, not by wearing.
My understanding with Common Projects, is that if you are looking to spend $400 on a blank sneaker, they set the standard and have the most brand awareness, but now there are plenty of smaller brands making virtually identical sneakers with better materials and/or construction for the same price or less.
Like with anything else, buying Common Projects you are paying for the brand (the subtle gold lettering on the side of their shoes).
I got a pair of Common Projects Chelsea boots maybe 10 years ago now. I still have them, they're good shoes. I wore them all the time for the first year I got them. They don't make it into my rotation much now these days though. My most worn shoes now are: Guidi PL2, 11 by BBSxSalomon Bamba 2 high, Rick Owens "Vans", Rick Owens "Dunks", CCP Prosthetic Tornados, and Visvim Christo slides. Everything except the Bamba 2 highs is a replica and cost under $400.
