Few States Spend More Money on Clothing than Illinois

I am a simple man who lives a simple life and I wear simple clothing. It appears that in Illinois I am the exception and not the rule as new data shows few states spend more money on clothing than Illinois does.

Perhaps this is my male DNA talking, but I spend very little time thinking about clothes or buying them. I wear what I have until unsightly holes appear and I have to go get new versions of the clothes that just broke. That's probably why I'm rarely asked to judge fashion shows, but I digress. A new ranking just shared by 24/7 Wall St shows the states that spend the most money on clothing and Illinois is nearly at the top of the list. Check out these numbers from the Land of Lincoln fashionistas:

• Personal clothing and footwear expenditure, adjusted for population: $1,694 per capita
• Cost of living: -1.1% less than national average
• Total clothing and footwear expenditure: $21.3 billion

That places Illinois at #7 in America for the amount of money spent to decorate your person. Staggering. It's the $1,694 per person per year number that astonishes me. Maybe the rest of Illinois is shopping at places more ritzy than me (Editor's Note: likely), but I would be stocked up on jeans and hoodies for decades with that kind of clothing investment.

I think my problem with spending a lot on clothes is I'm constantly trying to make sure my kids have the clothes they need so my wardrobe is an afterthought. The fact that I look like the opposite of Tom Cruise probably doesn't help either.