That's a phrase that's been around for a long time. Basically, if you buy something cheaply, you can bet that it will soon wear out and you'll have to buy another one. More money.
Terry Pratchett, the fantasy writer whose stories threw light on our everyday lives, even though they were full of witches, trolls, dwarves and wizards, came up with a good description of this theory - that the rich spend less money because they buy more expensive stuff - in his books about the guards of Ankh Morpork called "Men at Arms":
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
There's a nice article here that talks more about that: https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socio-economic-unfairness/
Why do I mention this phrase? Because a couple of weeks ago, I saw an article in The Guardian newspaper praising the clothing range called Heattech from Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing chain. The prices seemed reasonable (about 15 euros for a long-sleeved top, for example). And the products were lauded to the skies.
Hence, after a walk, I went home via the Uniqlo shop, picking up three articles for around 60 euros in total.
Reader, they're not very good: I sat on the sofa with all three items of clothing on under my outer wear, freezing and shivering. And they soon became smelly. Well, they would: they're not made of natural materials. Which is why I have returned to the best solution I've found to chilly temperatures: merino wool base layers, the stuff that mountain climbers wear.
Anything made of merino wool will keep you warm and toasty. It's like the mythical armour made by dwarves in The Lord of the Rings: mithril. It's so strong that not even a spear wielded by a mountain troll can pierce it. No matter how hard the troll tries to skewer you.
Well, it's the same with merino wool clothing: the cold just can't pierce it.
However, it's not cheap. A merino wool top I bought from the men's section in a mountain-climbing shop a couple of years ago cost EUR 90. However, after wearing it one winter, I got 270 euros back from my heating bill. (This was before heating became hideously expensive.) Well worth the expenditure, then.
So when the winter sales come in January, see if you can find anything with merino wool in it: underwear, thin tops, long johns, socks or pullovers. Non-scratchy, non-smelly, non-bulky, easy to wash in the waching machine...you'll thank me for it.
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