But the article isn't really about that. The article is about how making stuff new nowadays is so cheap that there is barely any cost savings over making stuff out of recycled material. This is partly because our standards for new stuff have slipped to where good quality fabrics and material are no longer valued. But it's also because a lot of the costs of making stuff new are so externalized that nobody's paying them. Also, people are so accustomed to the cheap stuff that most people wouldn't even know how to differentiate between good quality and bad. They've outsourced that discrimination to brands but the brands have wised up and there isn't as much of a relationship between the brand equity/prestige of a luxury brand and quality as there used to be.
There is also a floor for how cheap thrift stores can sell things, because it requires labor to sort through clothing donations and figure out what is actually still in resalable condition, and stores need staff as well.
Not really because the fast fashion types of clothes don't hold up well over time.
> The reality is that not everyone can afford to buy new and that segment of the popularion is unfortunately growing.
The trends leading to this are because people can afford to buy new. The clothes are cheaper and don't last as long. They're so cheap that it ends up being cheaper to buy new ones and throw them away than to bother trying to recycle them (because thrifting and recycling have their own supply chain costs).
Because, for the most part, our clothing doesn't serve any purpose besides signaling, in the west. Most fast fashion is about looks - not function.
If you do serious physical work, the cheap stuff will fall apart and right quick. If you travel a lot and wear a suit 5+ days a week, cheap suits will constantly fail you. But most people don't have that issue - so they just go with what they can afford and gets the job done.
Two things going on here. First just the general race to lower prices means you have less material used in most brand's items and it's designed to be manufactured cheaply not to last. Which is different than designing it to break fast. Breaking faster is a side effect of saving money during manufacturing, not the goal.
Second is survivorship bias. There were plenty of junk products in the past but those are already at dumps. The vintage items you see in stores were either high quality in their day or were not used before sitting on a shelf for a very long time.
Yup. I've long suspected that tee-shirt manufacturers do extensive research to find the cotton-blend that goes from crisp white to dull yellow after just one wear and stays yellow no matter what amount of bleach/detergent is applied.
I know people who run a vintage store, and they still hit the thrift stores. Along with garage sales and estate sales. They can go through racks in a thrift store and find items they can get for $5 and turn around and sell the next day for $200. I love the smell of arbitrage in the morning.
Although now that they're established, they've got other people doing the digging and bringing stuff straight to them.
The olden days were not better. Obligatory-"survivorship bias"
But Im having more and more difficulty finding that real good classic shor that is well made and is maintainable/fixable and which is a good fit and could be happy with for a couple of years. I live in NYC and the market here is innundated in low quality crap. Even an expensive brand such as Prada doesn’t have well made shoes, they’re made to not last very long
they are not stylish. they will last forever. you send them your measurements and they make a form (last) which they keep and you can order against again. that first pair had some minor fit issues, I sent corrections and the second pair was a perfect fit.
Don’t buy shoes with EVA/foam soles, problem solved. All my shoes have leather, vibram (rubber), or dainite soles. All of them can be resoled as well.
A few brands to get you started, prices range from $200-$500ish but mostly $200-$350
Shoes: Grant Stone, Allen Edmonds, Meermin, Carmina
Boots: Red Wing, Wesco, White’s, Thorogood, Chippewa
Does anyone have recommendations for longer lasting every day clothes? I feel like I often have dress shirts and pants/jeans that wear out more quickly than they should. Dress shirts tend to have holes wear in the elbow area and pants tend to wear in the pockets where I have phone/keys.
For the shirts, you could sew patches on the elbows, but the would probably be at-home/casual shirts at that point.
The skill of mending clothes is one I think many people don't think about, out maybe they just don't think it's something they want to do. It's not rocket science at all, and there are tons of guides and videos or there to show the various stitches and techniques.
I mend all of my clothes when they start to wear, fix and replace buttons, even slight alterations to fit. When a piece of clothing finally becomes overall too threadbare, I harvest buttons and sometimes zippers, as well as scraps of remaining good quality fabric, all for future repairs.
My current pants are all from the Finnish store Varusteleka. Their ordinary jeans are good, their tactical jeans are amazing, and their worker pants are a breath of fresh old-fashioned air, with high waists, pleats and buttons for proper suspenders.
The materials chosen are solid, as is the workmanship, although you wouldn't call it superlative. Like the style, it's practical, not flashy.
I like their wool shirts too.