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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

You talking undershirt or an actual tshirt? That’s disposable clothing at that price.

The miracle of textiles is an artifact of the past. In order to make the insane supply chain make sense, the product is cheapened to the minimum viable level. Most of what happens today is financial engineering.

My old ring-spun champion sweatshirts from the 80s:90s are a much better and cheaper product than most stuff on the market today. All made (farmed, spun and sewn) by US labor in South Carolina or New York.

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>That’s disposable clothing at that price.

I have not found price to have much basis on the lifetime of a tshirt. The design/mass production of the design seems to be most of the cost. You can buy a high quality tshirt for very cheap its just the same design has been sold 500,000 times already.

Decent t-shirts can be had at most department stores for around $10 where I live. Minimum wage here is around $7ish. It's not quite an hour after taxes, but it's comfortably two hours of labor per shirt. Sometimes a lot more if you can score a good deal at a discount outlet store.

Granted, you can also buy very cheap quality shirts at Wal-Mart for around that price, but those won't survive much longer than a year with regular wear and washes.

I bought a 5-pack of T-shirts from ASOS in April, they go through the washing machine weekly (low temp, hang dried) and are still perfectly wearable. Nothing particularly eye-catching, but don't fall apart either.

The price was $6.72 per shirt and the same pack is currently on sale for $4.27 per shirt.

Based on previous experience, I expect them to last around 100-120 washes. Worn every other week, this translates to 4-5 years.

JC penny printed t-shirts $6 us. But, to your point, they are "terrible".

You can still find high quality fabrics that have been turned into garments but it is rare and costly. I, as someone who is tall, am mostly locked out of these markets. Interestingly however I am more often then not forced to buy more expensive and better formal items (suits in particular).

Those markets for quality textiles are often now, as they were then, bespoke. Your height is just more fabric.

You can pick them up in bulk from a wholesaler for under $2/3 a shirt (that is premium ringspun).

Tbh, if you get from a decent supplier then the quality is usually fine. I am not sure why there is a stigma around non-US products. A lot of third-world countries have very skilled labour. And most of the "US-branded" t-shirts today are of very variable quality...but that is the only product these days for certainty that your clothes weren't made by a child.

Actual t-shirt. Not uncommon under $5, sometimes $1, at Walmart. Yes clothing can be disposably priced if you search a bit.

Well, there are still very high quality t-shirts being made. Namely Velva Sheen in the US and Merz b. Schwanen in Germany. There do cost the same as a proper shirt.

Undershirts are much cheaper; at least the last ones I bought were like 6 for a few dollars.

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