To think the price of clothing has soared!

[Orangegreen]

Not talking particularly high end brands. Even supermarket clothing lines, historically cheaper shops, ASOS etc. Hard to find a dress for under £30 and that is often pushing it, usually they are in the £40-60 bracket just for an every day type dress. Occasion wear is probably much more but I’m not in the habit of buying this!

I nipped into Primark the other day thinking they would be cheaper but not anymore.

Why has it gone so crazy?

@neverbeenskiing do you not just wash the clothes before you wear them? I got a top that was apparently new but smelt of perfume so just washed it.

I think that the problem is that clothing is now offered in sizes which are very large yet have to keep the price the same no matter the size. So a dress in a size 10 is exactly the same price as the same dress in a size 22. It’s obviously costing far more to produce the larger sizes than those in smaller sizes.

It wouldn’t go down well if people were asked to pay more for larger sizes so the manufacturers spread the cost across all sizes.

Absolutely - shops that I've bought from for years are now almost double. Same items 2-3 years ago £35/39, now £59 or £69.

Good point. Look at museums and vintage shops; garments used to be very much smaller.

I wouldn't purchase from those vendors under any circumstances.

I wouldn’t mind paying more but the quality in most high street shops is really very poor.

The phrase ‘Cotton Rich’ on anything makes me walk away instantly.

Changes in the exchange rate and customs changes are a factor. So if you voted for Brexit you have contributed.

Not sure if Brexit has anything to do with it but I live on the continent and was shocked to find I had to pay import duty picking something up from the post office that I'd ordered from UK. Needless to say I never do anymore.

But COL has risen everywhere. Going to get worse I reckon with the shit going down in the Middle East....

Everything5pounds.com

Inflation has hit there too, so more things are £6.50, but there is still loads of good stuff

I usually buy 10 items, delivered for under £100. Maybe a couple go to charity but most are great

I got an ASOS dress (didn't know brand when buying) which was tagged at £70 for £8
Aldo some Ted Baker trainers for £30 - they do some higher priced lines too

It's appropriate prices now.
I remember being a teenager and having to save up for Levis, one black one blue. They were a major purchase and lasted years, I would re dye the black pair.
I also had fewer clothes than the standard teen has now. I remember having a Benetton jumper and wearing it every Friday night 😁 I don't think teenagers would do that now would they.

They don't want quality they want quantity. Same with lots of adults. If you buy really good quality items they last, but they are investments and you have to care for them properly. A lovely hand knitted Scottish jumper might last ten years..but people rant about the cost. Plus they don't want to wear the same jumper three times a week.

It's not that long ago that people owned three or four outfits. Have a look at a vintage wardrobe and how little hanging space there was.

I don't mind paying for good quality fabric and finish, I've never been a slave to fashion and prefer classic things that last.
In the 1970s I bought a Daniel Hechter designer blazer. I worked for the shop, so got a hefty discount, but it was still ££££. I wore and wore it, and then wore it some more. But one day the dry cleaner sent it from off white to dingy grey, and despite them recleaning it, it was ruined. My mum said we had nothing to lose by her washing it in the machine. And it came out beautifully, though sadly it shrank a full size. Which was handy for one of my sisters, so she inherited it. She wore and wore and wore it. Then she gave it to another sister, who had it relined as all that wear had worn the lining out. She went on to wear it to actual death, last time I saw it the external seams showed distinct signs of wear. But we got the best part of 40 years of wear out of it between us. So when buying stuff, consider the cost per wear. A more expensive purchase might turn out to be a bargain, though you'd have to go some to beat that blazer!

That is my experience. Very good.

Do people honestly need new clothes or do they just fancy new clothes.?

Family funeral everyone wanted to look smart - so dark formal clothes which many of us didn't have or didn't fit since last worn- male female teens to late 70s- all struggled to find things.

None of the expected shops had anything - ended up being lucky charity shop finds, on-line purchases and unexpected finds in shops we hadn't previously considered and odd existing item.

As a family don't tend to buy frequently - do use charity shops and mend clothes and make last - not really fast fashion people - but sometimes you do need new items and you really notice prices are high and quality is really low.

If you look on websites that compare how ethical brands are, you will avoid most high street brands too.

Spanx and tom ford are both in the same category as temu and shein, classed as 'we avoid' in 2023, according to one site. The same site classes brands such as m&s, Zara, h&m, ASOS, new look as just one step above, 'not good enough' 2/5.

If ethical buying is important to you, then it's not just Shein and Temu that are an issue.

We should be encouraged to buy less but what we should be getting for higher prices is better quality. I am happy to pay more for quality that will last several years.
The obsession with 'fast fashion' that started in the 90's lead to shops like Primark being a success. They, and their like, piled it high and sold it cheap which led to the big profits they wanted but also to clothes that barely lasted six months and of which, billions of tons, ended up in landfill.
I have a top that I bought about 1993 and a cardigan that I bought in the late 80's and they look as good today as when I got them. The top is starting to show wear but the cardigan still looks relatively new and all I've done is change the buttons a couple of times to make it look up to date. Tops that I bought last year (from M&S) look a bit knackered already so are no longer 'best' wear and will get relegated to every day wear which is very annoying.

The problem is that 'we' are spoiled. We do not want to pay more but we want to be up to date AND have quality and it's not possible. I look at the seams on items and despair at the shabbiness on what are expensive clothing items.
When I was a child, a teenager and a young adult (so 70's-90's) we went clothes shopping a couple of times a year and we'd buy a few new seasonal 'fashion' items plus more practical stuff such as jeans/t-shirts/underwear etc if you needed it because you'd outgrown it or had worn it out. It's a habit that I have tried to continued but over the last 20 years it's actually been really hard to find quality items that last.
It's not unusual to have t-shirts that fall apart at the seams after two washes even if you've paid a decent amount of money and this is what clothing manufacturers used to want knowing that we'd always be back to buy more...but now they have issues. Climate change has made it more difficult to grow cotton, chemicals to make artificial fabrics are in short supply, cheap labour is drying up due to developing countries tightening up their laws or charging more (think of factory fires where workers lost their lives, corruption etc) and transportation costs have hugely gone up post covid. All these costs have to be passed on but now what we get is same quality but twice the price - sadly I think we have to buy less or you just have to suck it up.

I am about the same age as you @MothralovesGojira and agree that we are spoiled. There are new things arriving in the shops every week, online sites are updated daily. 30 or 40 years ago shops had a spring/summer range and an autumn/winter range, changed around March/September, sales August/February to get rid of the previous season. Now it's constant sales, constant promotions, constant churn of stock, endless internet returns which end up in charity shops because that item is no longer on the website (that's where all the charity shop Zara comes from, the Oxfam where I used to volunteer had 90 boxes of it), shopping as a hobby, online "hauls", the idea you can't possibly wear the same thing to more than one party/night out.

It makes me quite sick really.

The issue now is that shops produce very large sizes in the same range of clothing. Those large sizes use around three times the amount of fabric compared to smaller sizes yet all are priced the same. The cost of this is spread across the range of sizes and therefore the cost all clothing has to rise to cover the increased manufacturing spend.

This is a fairly recent change and not really to do with the increase in sizes from the past.

What website do you use?
I don't understand the hate for Shein/Temu r.e. quality. I won't use them, because of data mining. But they sell the same crap as a lot of high street stores, as you mentioned. Primark is no better than them.

However, unlike Primark most stuff on Shein and Temu is 'fashionwear', not basics that anybody actually needs. I agree with @Delawear that people these days have too many clothes!

It's a human right to be clothed appropriately. Not fashionably...

And sizing is dodgy too. No body shape or weight change but a size 14 in my regular shop isn't fitting...im buying a size bigger. The amount of cloth being used has definitely reduced!

This was the website I looked at https://goodonyou.eco/

@Petrine
I think that some stores did try charging more for bigger sizes a few years ago but it didn't go down very well as 'larger' people felt victimised so they stopped after a SM campaign.

@Misthios
😆yes, we are probably about the same age. When I was a teen, our secondary served a large 'depressed' area and many of my friends didn't have many clothes so it was a huge event to get something new and up to date. One friend's mum had a work bonus and bought her a new long tiered skirt (V fashionable at the time) and she was so thrilled with it she smiled all the time wearing it - how many kids do that now?
I agree that most of us have too much and I am guilty too. I think that I will have sort out this week actually. I work in charity retail so I do move quite a lot on but I've still got too much....and yes, it does make me feel bad too

@allypally33
We get corporate donations which are online returns from some of the 'bad' clothing suppliers and some of the stuff is crap and we sell it on cheaply but some stuff is so bad that we have to cut it up and send it for specialist disposal. I'm talking kids pyjamas & tops that were so suspect that we tested them in the carpark by throwing a lit match on them - they caught fire and went up like an inferno leaving nothing by a few burnt fibres behind! And before you ask, yes, they were from China.

It’s also about shopping savvy. I noticed a smallish add with offer for casual trainers in the Saturday colour supplement. A well known shoe manufacturer 50% using a special code.
I went onto the site and they were full price, when I put in the code from the paper the discount applied. Obviously only a bargain if you wanted the trainers, but it could have been easily missed.

No different to some big expensive brands...

and lets be honest here, everyone thinks with their own wellbeing and needs/wants first.

Shopping on ethics alone would leave me bored, broke and wearing some butt ugly crap

2nd hand shops overpriced, new price for 2nd hand stuff? No way, always stretched out and rarely find my size now that a size 14 is 'normal' and only bigger stuff is donated. Plus its never in a style i like
Have no interest in sewing and id rather not wear a sack

I enjoy shopping, so what?

and everyone i know is pretty much the same, we all use shein and temu - they have huge followings in Aus

What a delightful picture you paint of you and your friends.