Are high street clothes getting worse quality?

[FajarVega]

I feel like clothes don’t last the way they used to. Things I buy now seem to lose shape after a few washes. Am I just choosing badly or has anyone else noticed this?

I actually got am amazing quality skirt last week. Long, brushed 100% cotton. Stitching and seams look fine. It's very "Toast" in style and I could easily believe it was a Toast skirt. Cost me £11 on Temu!

Their clothing range was called Pepperberry. It pops up on Vinted quite often.

I reflect on the fact I earned £12k, early 80s and would spend £80 on a pure new wool coat, in the sales, M&S sold pure new wool, lambswool clothing and to buy a suit was significantly higher proportion of my earnings than you pay now. You can still buy some gems, but you really do have to search, and I think it is not just where you buy from, but which factory produces the items and honestly even so called better brands seem to rely on marketing and fancy shops rather than quality of production. I have clothing from the 90s still in my wardrobe, some secondhand items from quality brands long gone, but also much newer items from Uniqlo, Tu, M&S (just bought the grey velvet suit and it is a cracker) and am currently wearing a Primark jumper that washes and wears brilliantly. I also think that care when washing clothing is vital, the right detergents, drying clothing on racks, no tumble drying and definitely no dry cleaning (I spot clean, steam and sponge or wash items marked dry clean only and have only once lost an item). I didn't ask for poorer and cheaper items and now buy considerably less, but I do know that less good new clothing is also less good secondhand and there will need to be a market reset sooner rather than later!

I was very struck by something someone posted yesterday about people buying multiples of cheap clothes - seemingly at random - and constantly needing to ask what ‘goes’ with what.

It clarified something I’ve found puzzling on S&B lately - where people do seem to be flailing about with almost no idea how to dress themselves. Buying an item and asking how to wear it, without even bothering to try it on with what they already own. I’ve found it incredibly weird. My wardrobe is limited by the fact that I like to buy the best quality I can access, but also by the need to keep the number of items to a manageable quantity; so I always know exactly what I have, and can visualise, without effort, exactly how any new piece might fit in. If I buy a green jumper, or a grey skirt, or a pair of brown leather boots I expect them to work with pretty much any of my other clothes. That’s why I’m happy to pay a lot for things - I’m expecting them to earn their keep for years to come, not to be tried once and relegated to a huge pile of abandoned detritus.

In my town 90% of all women I see are wearing black leggings, a big black puffa coat and big white trainers. 90% of men wear grey joggers and a bomber jacket with either work boots or slip on deck shoes. Its a poor, rural town.

I wonder if these clothes became ubiquitous because they can be had cheaply and you don’t have to have a lot to look put together? I used to see girls coming out of primark with bagfuls of random stuff, but not for the past year or two, its black leggings and black puffas all the way.

Temu?! Ethics aside then..

That’s true but the retailer/ brand knows this and is happy to let us poor consumers suck up the consequences

That sounds a bit like lockdown hangover maybe, @Leftsidefacing? I’m obsessed with clothes but I remember the first time I had to go to a meeting post-lockdown it took two hours of sweating and panic to simply get dressed. Maybe everyone lost the knack for a while?

Yes I think you are about right with the timeline. Think of when Sports Direct and Primark started as examples.

I noticed this year the quality of coats were dreadful, I don’t expect the best when going round the usual lower end high street shops but primark were actually the best and they used to be noticeably cheaper quality than other shops.

I know. Cheapness trumps everything, this is the problem. I started a post on why an £11 skirt from temu was a terrible idea but in the end couldn’t face it 😖

I’m sure it did start as that. With people still working at home, less money around, towns dead and nowhere to go but the supermarket in the dark and cold (Scotland) it could well be still going on.

I went out this evening in Rundholz black velvet drop crotch trousers, a cream waffle weave mohair jumper and combat boots.

Sounds a nice outfit. I had vague plans for these but never quite got round to pressing Buy. Maybe if they repeat them in the spring:

https://palomawool.com/products/long-cofre-long-harem-style-trousers-dropped-crotch

Palomawool is a new one to me! These are the trousers I wore today, with similar boots and cropped cream jumper.

i have some pepperberry items, but some that is labelled Bravissimo and was bought in Bravissimo shops -

You are not imagining it, I've noticed it too. The quality of knitwear is mostly abysmal now. So much stuff is recycled polyester and it looks awful after one or two washes. Even the better quality stuff that actually has some natural fibres in it just doesn't last very long before the stitching fails or ladders and holes start to appear or hems come down. It's as if everything is intended to be disposable and just a short term thing. Even in places like M&S that used to be reliable quality, I find myself touching clothes and recoiling from the nasty cheap polyester feel of all the fabrics.

It's getting harder and harder to find any clothing that isn't totally or predominantly manmade fibres unless you are prepared to spend an absolute fortune.

Was just saying this to Mum, today. She was admiring my jumper. It’s a St Michael I got in the charity shop a few years ago. 100% lambs wool, lovely shape. Comes out every winter!

And my most recent M&S merino jumpers both have holes already!

That is so true. Gone are the days when the St Michael label was a cast iron guarantee of good quality and your knickers and sweaters would last for donkey's years and always wash well.

My DH bough a couple of merino wool blend roll necks from M&S for £45 each. Quite thin knits but felt nice. Within half a dozen wears and a couple of washes they had laddered, come unstitched under the arms and holes were appearing randomly. I'm careful about how I wash and dry woollens and delicates, so I know it's not me.

Ha! Crossed posts. YES!!!

The polyester knitwear in M&S is awful, and don’t get me started on the recycled polyester. Nasty texture and wears very badly.

I agree that fabric quality has gone down a lot on the high street and admit that I do spend a fortune if I buy knitwear to get real wool and good design.
I also knit and sew a lot of my own clothes, which makes you realise the value of clothes and the work that goes into them.

I have bought a Landsend cashmere jumper which I love, hadn't bobbled at all, lovely and soft and can't stop wearing it. I'm going for better brands and quality to go out in but bought the cheap ones for doing jobs and chilling at home where no one really sees me apart from husband who would rather I wore old or cheap stuff in case I get bleach on it!

https://www.dunnesstores.com/cotton-straight-leg-pyjama-set-1669118char/p?skuId=196402 other types are available but Dunnes Stores is where I get all my 100 percent cotton pajamas. I can't mess with other fabrics since peri.

They also do really decent tights.

Ah, yes, @Betsylee - that’s another bugbear of mine, which I often pontificate on here - leisurewear. I swear I didn’t even know what it was until lockdown. For my entire life homewear consisted of old, bedraggled or hand me down garments that had become too shabby to be seen in public. I never bought clothes to lounge around the house in, to cook in, to garden in. In my twenties and thirties I had my partners old school sorts kit and shredded tweed jackets; after that my siblings and I began working our way through growing teens’ cast off things. It was only during lockdown that ran out of properly old stuff and, for the first time in my life, had to buy official leisurewear. And discovered that most of it is synthetic stuff - being produced in vast quantities.

You don’t want to know about my journey of discovery from Primark to Uniqlo to Community Clothing - but I can honestly say I’m viewing any current purchases of ‘out’ clothes with an eye beyond their maybe five years of smartness to their potential fifteen years as home clothes.

Yes, indeed, but C&A used to be the "cheap" option. M&S isn't cheap (compared to Primark, supermarkets etc), but the same poor quality as them.