To think the quality of a lot of stuff has drastically reduced in recent years

[Tommalot]

Maybe over the course of around 20 years or so. I'm concerned this is a symptom of side effects of widening social inequality generally.

I'm sure I remember being able to buy pretty decent quality natural fibres clothes from the early 00s and before from high street shops for a semi-reasonable price. Now it seems very polarised, like you can buy either cheap synthetic nasty shit from Shein or New Look which falls apart or hangs poorly, or have to pay £££s at a very upmarket outlet for anything approaching quality that will last.

Food is similar. There's been a lot in the media recently about UPFs but the majority of most supermarkets are packed with unwholesome products. Whereas buying good quality, natural food is now a lot more expensive.

I feel it may be the case with other products and services as well, that there's increasingly just a choice between something cheap but shit or decent quality but out of reach of most people, with very little in between.

AIBU or am I just blinkered to affordable middle of the road stuff? Am I doing John Lewis all wrong? Help me out here 😁

I’ve ordered a few things from Cotton Traders and Roman that were decent.

Watching with interest. I love The White Company for this reason. Timeless and reasonably priced loveliness

I think M and S has gone downhill but still the best generally for stuff. I love their uniforms and will only buy there

I think of this in the sense that it benefits companies to have us constantly needing to buy their products again so I notice it more with items that should really last a long time and previously did but now companies can't seem to function if their product is good enough to buy once & last a lifetime, they need to make their product not last anywhere near as long or do some clever marketing with a special colour or new feature that we need to update to.

This is an interesting point and I agree with you - but I'm guilty of this too - it's just really hard figuring out what IS suitable and looks good. I mean, how do you know?

Yes exactly - vintage! Some of mine is Next too, their manufacturing quality used to be good. There's also some odds and ends I picked up from little boutiques and whatnot - not just vintage but unusual and rare 😁

I agree - and also that clothes or food were never as cheap as they are now.

We have (collectively) got used to low-priced clothes that we change often. While your average consumer's happier to spend £200 on 20 tops or 10 dresses, that's what retailers will get for her. In order to provide it, they have to use cheaper fabrics and have them made in a blazing hurry.

The same £200 would probably buy one top and one dress made with more care and better materials, at 17 hours' worth of minimum wage. The 1978 equivalent would be about £25 - which would have bought a dress and a top from your mum's catalogue or somewhere like Etam, mass market but better quality. We simply didn't have huge, overfilled wardrobes back then!

Similar story with food. We're so spoiled now. I'm not complaining, mind you! We take it for granted that we should be able to get an enormous variety of food, regardless of season, on an ordinary wage. Food used to be a far bigger proportion of the household budget, and it was nowhere near as interesting. Alongside scale economies, better transport and so on (and the EU), this ready availability comes from stuff being grown to schedule with a cost in terms of flavour.

I'm sympathetic to restaurants charging realistically. At the same time, I've been thinking the market's probably come back for the kind of no-frills restaurants that kept me going in the early 1980s. They served very limited menus of filling food, crammed in as many customers as would fit, and served in a hurry. They were actually cheaper than a takeaway, although we usually spent a bit more having pudding and wine.

@Tommalot Completely disagree about food. BASIC ingredients to cook from scratch aren't particularly expensive. Carrots, onions, stock cubes, chicken, potatoes, ginger, pasta, garlic, spinach, courgette, beef mince, eggs etc... SO much cheaper than UPFs.

And as for clothes, I use Vinted and eBay to buy quality second hand stuff. I got some lovely Boden trousers (beautifully made - my last pair lasted me 8 years!) for £20 including postage. Charity shops are fab for clothes too. I won't use Shein due to the link with slave child labour.

There's a hell of a lot of poorly made crap from China. Plastic toys that break within minutes etc, cheap poor quality clothes etc.

We need to accept buying less of this stuff. Yes often its cheap and convenient but its utter rubbish.

I try very hard now not to buy things made in china & the far east generally.

With clothes, you have to look carefully, and it depends what you are looking for.

You can still get decent T-shirts for teens from Tesco. I've bought two thick, pure cotton t-shirts, 40"chest for DS this, week, £6 each. Jeans from H&M. But you have to search through a lot of poor quality stuff to find them. Chinos and collared shirts for 6th form are going to be more expensive.

For ladies, I've struggled to find good quality tops this year - buying Boden with a 20% discount code has been closest. They've all been either pure cotton or linen. Four out of five were good quality. But well-cut wide-legged trousers have been hard to find in cotton. There's a lot of polyester & viscose around. 😕 I've already started looking for clothes for autumn. It takes a lot longer to find & buy within a budget.

Shoes are difficult too.

But food, no I don't agree. I cook from scratch and feed one adult, one hollow legged teen on about £60 a week. That includes fish, meat, dairy and plenty of fresh fruit & veg with lots of variety and snacks for ds.

Id also agree, i can still feed a family of four on fresh, nutritious food includinv meat, fresh veg, fish, fruit etc, from sainsburys, for £75 a week. That includes snacks like flapjack & fruit. Its cheaper cooking fresh than buying processed stuff.

Clothes used to be much more expensive though. So, people bemoan the decline in quality, and it’s true, but many would also baulk at paying equivalent prices to those paid in the 1980s. People are addicted to fast fashion.

Don't agree about the food. UPF is just so heavily marketed, addictive and widely available. It's cheaper to eat a bowl of porridge instead of processed breakfast cereal. Likewise pasta and homemade sauce is cheaper than the packaged equivalent.

I buy UPF fairly often as can't be bothered to cook from scratch all the time but it's not cheaper.

I worked in homewares for years. These are two examples out of many that I can think of where customers will have noticed a difference and wondered why.
Fogarty (make duvets and pillows). They had a factory in England, but prices were creeping higher and ultimately, the business was failing. The brand name (not the factory, the stock or the staff), just the name, was sold to Dunelm. They now sell under the name, but can make whatever crap they like and slap the name on. It's now made in the far east, with no link to the heritage brand.
Dunelm did the same with Dorma bedlinen. A Dorma duvet cover bought from Dunelm will be worlds away from one bought in the 80s.
Then so many brands sold under licence like Sanderson for example that have no link to the actual original makers. I would think that customers would realise, but I don't think they do.

You are partially right. Some cheap clothes are still good quality such as ASDA mens t shirts and Cotton Traders. Shows it can be done.

I was thinking this earlier this year when I was trying to buy cotton knit jumpers (not sweatshirts) and couldn’t find any pure cotton jumpers, not even at expensive stores. The best I could find was “cotton rich” which sometimes isn’t even 50% cotton. Meanwhile I have a cotton jumper from Etam that is 30 years old and still in great condition. I wish I had more time to knit and crochet so I could just make my own at will! I hate man made fibers, they make me clammy.

@Flavabobble

As for fast fashion, did no-one ever shop at C&A? Cheap and cheerful, and probably falling apart after 3 months.

My OH still has a couple of suits from C&A. We both still have ski jackets from C&A. Must be 30 years old and still going strong - a little bit more than 3 months!!

I agree. On so many fronts. As a child we only had one tumble dryer. Nigh on 15 or 20 years. Now dishwashers etc are only built to last 3 or so years.

I remember high street things used to have a lot more wool in them. It was easy to buy a mostly-wool coat on the high street in the 90s and early 00s. Now I find it very difficult. A £200 coat from Mint Velvet that looks wool is actually 100% polyester. Lots of knitwear that is marketed as containing wool actually only contain 5% while the rest is polyester and/or nylon. So much polyester shite going into landfill.

I pulled out an old cotton commemorative T shirt which dates from 2004.

It wasn't particularly expensive at the time but the quality is superb. Really thick and heavy cotton that washes beautifully and keeps it shape.

Modern ones are dreadful in comparison. I went into M&S for some basic ones this year and refused to buy any of them, they were so thin. The best I was able to find were Tommy Hilfiger. They were expensive but much better. Still not a patch on my 20 year old T shirt though.

I still have some C&A clothes in my wardrobe! They are rather more than 3 months old.

I think you saw the same piece I did, or very similar.

I had a wander through some mid-range shops like Next the other day and it was just depressing, tatty-looking clothes piled on the rails and looking like a jumble sale, so not just low-quality clothing but badly presented. Didn't inspire me to look any closer.

Everyone is cost cutting.

Went to Ted Baker yesterday (they are closing down) and 99% of stuff was polyester tat. No idea what the full price of anything was, not even sure what the sale price was as didn’t look at anything apart from a coat which was purchased at a quarter of the original price.

so many shops selling polyester dresses for well over £100 and I’m talking shops I’d previously have thought were quite decent, Whistles I’m looking at you. If I want a polyester dress I’d go to H&M and spend £30.

im not surprised Ted Baker has gone to the wall and other places will follow if they don’t sort themselves out.

Eating out - cost of food has gone up and portion sizes down and standards down. Had a reine pizza in Pizza express yesterday, loads less topping than last time I had one years ago. My local “swanky” cafe charges £4.50 a mocha and they’ve stopped providing lotus biscuits on the side. They do a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel which used to be served open, so salmon on both sides. Now it’s closed so half the amount of salmon, same price.

We have all but given up eating out. "pulled pork" No Thanks.

Many people don't seem to realise.

I'm not sure they know what quality is, in fabrics or in the make. SM is full of recommendations for Shein - telling everyone how perfect the item of clothing is, photos where everyone says how great the clothing looks when it really doesn’t).

@littlegreydevil Try House of Bruar - pure cotton cable knit. www.houseofbruar.com/cttn-babycable-crew-navy/

I’ve just checked the composition of the new Ted Baker coat, 75% wool, 5% cashmere and 20% polymide. For £80 I’m happy with that, full price was £300.

no idea what the actual garment quality/stitching is
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