Why is the quality of everything so shit?

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So tired of this. For example, recently bought sine flannel pyjamas from Hush. They arrived and looked lovely and cosy - great, these will last me for years, I thought... I look after my clothes - wash at low temperature, low spin and air dry. I have washed these 3 or 4 times and the fabric has become really rough and slightly bobbled - they look like I have washed and tumble dried them about 100 times.... Same with a jumper I bought in uniqlo.

This did not happen with clothes I bought 20 years ago. I know it’s the quality of the fabric. Grrr...

TU seem to have started doing a petite range too (or maybe I've never noticed it before). Not sure if it is stocked in shops but it is online. Got too dresses from there- fit perfectly first time. I do find they can be a bit hit and miss as a brand - I have some light cotton sweaters that hobbled and faded really fast, and some seasons I can't find anything I like, but I have found some gems.

For casual tops, I tend to use outdoor clothing shops and brands. Have found some good quality stuff, but they do tend to have slogans/pictures so no good for basics or for tailored/office wear.

I agree that Morrison’s t-shirts and tops are good - nice and thick and generously cut. I have a cardigan from there that’s really heavy and hangs well. Unfortunately the styles are pretty frumpy/basic but it depends what you wear them with. Kid’s stuff is amazing for the price, too.

Some good recommendations on this thread, I totally agree about quality.

I was supposed to be not buying clothes at the moment but then I clicked through to the Community Clothing website.. exactly the sort of basics I need.

Thank you for introducing me to The White TShirt Company and Community Clothing.
They look good.

[quote SulisMinerva]I share the frustration with poor quality items from what are supposed to be higher-end brands. Clothes shopping is such a source of frustration.

I’ve found this website helpful:

uk.buymeonce.com/collections/buy-for-life-womenswear[/quote]
Thank you @SulisMinerva. That is a brilliant resource.

I pay quite a lot for clothes but I do find that every piece of knitwear bobbles really quickly.

What I don’t get is, not so long ago there must have been a real appetite for well made clothes, designer feel at top of the high street prices. Has that demand vanished?

I think many people genuinely can’t distinguish good from bad quality fabric and finishing anymore. Whenever some asks for recommendations for good quality high street brands Uniqlo comes up again and again, even though it really isn’t good quality at all. Their linen is nasty papery stuff, the merino is so thin you could almost poke a hole in it with your finger, the cashmere is short staple, the cotton hugely variable. This is not to pick on Uniqlo - their pricing is cheap, after all. But if this is what passes as “good quality” then it’s no wonder that the high end shops have also started getting away with declining quality. If all you’ve known is cheap papery linen, when you go into a higher end shop you won’t know to expect anything better for the ££

Terracotta but some of Uniqlo is very good quality. I bought a fine knit merino polo neck from them for £9.99 in the sale and it’s brilliant. Perfect for layering under things and washes well. My other fine knit merino from them are everyday workhorses. They are superior to merino wool costing twice as much - I sent back a jumper from woolovers which was much thicker but very badly cut.

I can forgive bobbling in a jumper costing under £20 but not at £60! It’s that price is no longer an indicator of quality.

I also think that brands started by women tend to do better until they are taken over by others (men?).

Another vote for Community Clothing - I have a shirt dress from there which is very good indeed.

I love the ethos behind the companies posted here but I have a real problem with the dresses and skirts. It is all tunics/shifts, boxy shirt dresses and midi or maxi length on tall models. I am a short pear shape, those cuts and lengths do nothing for me. I appreciate this is about current fashions not just these companies but when they are carrying smaller collections (because they are a small, ethical company) it seems to mean there is no other choice where the big brands are less ethical and poorer quality but do at least have some other styles.

I saved up and bought myself a Louis Vuitton bag simply because I want one that will last years and won’t fall apart.

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants

Yes, it’s true that Uniqlo has varying quality. A couple of years ago I bought a plain t shirt which is very nice quality - buttery smooth cotton with some heft to it. Unfortunately the one I bought this year is thin and not at all comparable.

Uniqlo linen is universally rubbish.

I check their knitwear every season, and have never seen really good merino there. Actually I just compared a merino jumper I have from Uniqlo to my best merino piece. The Uniqlo one has a lot of fluff across the surface and the weave is gappy. The other piece is much smoother and a much tighter weave. I don’t doubt that you managed to find a good quality merino piece there, but it’s not standard.

Woolovers is mediocre quality too.

I used to buy the best I could afford, so year's back would wait for sales to buy from labels that were normally beyond me and on the whole the clothing wore well, performed very well (so didn't crease or pill) with clothing really only being moved on when it dated. I now have a wardrobe with a wide variety of labels, new and bought second-hand, and really no longer believe the fashion press hype about what's supposedly good (they seem to think expensive = quality and it no longer does imo). I've got items from supermarkets that have done far better as regards design, wearability and function than much more expensive items and have found items in Primark that outperform expensive labels too. I have also seen how similar cloth, design of an item, whether from a so called premium brand is almost identical, with sometimes the only difference being the label and the fancy shops / websites the items is purchased from. The press coverage this weekend about the same item, with a different label, being sold for differing amounts by the same company owning all of said brands, is not something new, but something you'd have noticed if you shopped widely and has been going on for many years, with consumers believing the hype of label. I miss my British manufactured items from M&S, Jaeger, Planet and have held on to some from this heyday of British production and they would leave high fashion production, like that of Harrods designer rooms standing. Did we ask for cheap fashion or is this a similar issue to the wonky carrot debate - who does it serve to sell cheap fashion ultimately, as I don't think it is benefiting the consumer.

@Iamthewombat

Even Reiss is full of wretched polyester now. They used to do loads of silk. Who wants to pay £300 for a polyester dress?

I’ve noticed that when a garment is made of a natural fibre, the website on which it is sold is desperate to tell you in the description by the thumbnail: ‘COTTON t shirt’. As if it were such a big wow to sell a t shirt made of cotton that they have to boast about it: twenty years ago it would have been a shock if a t shirt wasn’t made of cotton. Now it’s all dreary viscose blends and it’s a certainty that if the natural fibre isn’t mentioned in the headline description, the garment is synthetic.

Yes definitely

I won't buy polyester and try to avoid viscose as they are sweaty on me. I have some Hobbs viscose tops which aren't too bad saying that

The M&S jeans I buy are fine on the whole

I hate the styles now, so unflattering on the whole on me especially those polyester blouses

Agree about the knitwear bobbling, even when I worked for Austin Reed/ viyella the jumpers could cost over £80. but still bobbles after only a few wears, that was over 5 years ago.

pigtails I also like viscose - generally I’m happy if a skirt, dress or blouse I like is viscose and not polyester. It drapes well and doesn’t make me sweaty, and it’s not as much a synthetic fabric as the plastic ones afaik. It’s made of wood or bamboo. You can also get beautiful, high-quality viscose fabric for dressmaking.

@Terracotta9 I couldn't agree more with you re: Uniqlo, after reading so much on here about amazing quality I finally visited their store and the quality of fabrics was so bad. Paper thin, all made in China. I bought some cotton PJs and socks for DS to give it a go. Socks still shed tons of fluff everywhere, after several washes, PJs which were already quite shapeless look like complete rags after 2 washes. It just proves the point on how our perception of quality changed in the past few years.

I see natural fabrics mentioned here frequently as a sure sign of quality; however there is a huge difference between nice thick cotton and cheap, paper thin cotton, nice linen and one which only has linen in its name, and so on. Few years’ back I could buy in the likes of Jigsaw, Whistles, Jeager, Hobbs with confidence, knowing I was paying for the better grade of fabric but not anymore it’s mostly awful and not lasting longer than 3-4 washes. It would be helpful if brands in addition to fabric composition breakdown provided information on fabric quality, in a similar way thread count is stated on bedding.

From my most recent buys I found Paul Smith t-shirts to be really good quality wise and you can get them reasonably priced on sales, ditto Tommy Hilfiger for DS. My leggings from Baukjen, washed several times now, are top notch, not buggy, not bobbly, and The White Company cotton shirt, I am really impressed with, washes well, irons well, good finish.

Out of interest is anyone here familiar with ME+EM, Essential Antwerp, Brora quality? I like their designs and would happily pay the price but don’t want to spend £££ if they will disintegrate in the 2nd wash.

I once read an article where Edina Ronay said the mark of a good garment is that you should be able to rip the seams apart with your hands and the fabric should not tear in any way.

These days, you are more likely to rip the fabric before the cotton. That's how bad it has got.

The problem is across the entire cycle of garment production: the spin, particularly, nowadays is horrendous. Fibres are too short, that's why everything bobbles so quickly, so buying merino wool/cotton doesn't necessary work.

My mum has recently died and I've been going through her wardrobe. She had garments from the 80s and 90s, from places like BHS no less, and they are virtually indestructible. The quality is extraordinary.

The same is true for all manner of other products: furniture and soft furnishings, in particular.

When people talk about wanting to pay 90s prices, I'm not sure that fits. One measure that stands throughout time is that you should be able to buy a tailor-made man's suit of clothes for the price of an ounce of gold (so a proper Savile Row suit, pretty much). Now that would be about £1200 at today's price, and that's about right-ish. You can buy a ready-made Dege and Skinner suit for £995.

So really, we should be able to pay £60-£80 for a decent, mass-produced lambswool jumper. But we can't.

It's the same when you look at bespoke footwear. You'd need a budget of about £1000 for a handmade pair of boots with cobbler stitching. So you really should be able to buy something fairly decent for about £100-£150 by purchasing mass produced, but these days, boots at this price range fall apart after a few years (the glue goes, mainly).

My belief is that fast fashion is designed to produce extraordinary profits by selling us a load of old toot disguised as speed trends. There's a reason why Gaona is worth $63 billion.

One thing I have found that works a bit is to buy "artisan/hippy" garments made in India/Kashmir from shops that tend to import directly. So if you have one of those old hippy shop in your area (the ones that sell clothes alongside incense and carved bits of wood), check it out. Also check out fabrics spun in places like Afghanistan; my experience is that they are pretty good and there's the added bonus of supporting traditional industries in Central Asia.

Also, if you have older garments that have faded, but the quality of the fabric is still good, dye them! Dylon machine dyes are brilliant for this, and there's no mess. I've revived all manner of old cotton and linen clothes through dying them back to their original colour -- they look brand new.

I'm sure I was told that a lot of the wool is recycled and produced in Italy and they have chosen a different way of manufacturing which is lower quality itms

Most clothing companies stopped manufacturing their products in the UK round about 1999-2002.
Jigsaw, M&S, Topshop, C&A etc used to be manufactured locally and my friend's dad owned one of the factories, he lost his business circa 2000 as production moved mainly to Turkey.

My friend used to give us the samples from the factory, the quality was impeccable, it doesn't exist in today's high st offerings.

Laura Ashley used to have factories in Wales and the quality of clothing in the 80s was amazing

I bought 2 tops from Baukjen last year when there was a discount for NHS staff/key workers. I couldn't have afforded that normally, 1 is good quality, the other not so much. Certainly not worth £60s each !
I've had 2 decent tops from Seasalt, again discounted. Nice thick material but the patterns are a bit meh.

Beaumont Organic cotton is lovely, but their styles don't suit everyone. A lot of their clothes are loose/oversized – bad news for petites like me. However, I have a few carefully chosen things from them and they are are amazing. I think their cottons are made in Portugal.

I also bought a thick lambswool jumper in their winter sale... half price at £125 so not cheap even after the reduction... which is also utterly dreamy.

I've torn holes in two things just putting them on recently. That has never happened before. The fabric has literally ripped. I thought it was just me!

Yes, I agree @Packingsoapandwater - I often use this shop

www.karmaripon.co.uk

Because the owner travels to India where she works with local producers who design and make the clothes for her.

www.facebook.com/karmaripon/photos/a.205501423205616/1130602004028882/

The PJ's are fab as are the kimonos and yoga pants.

I've really enjoyed the recs on this thread thank you.

One discovery I have made - REW clothing, based in Barmouth. She makes short runs of drapey oversized garments, I bought a few things from there recently. One a cotton/lycra sweater (with pockets!) and it is HEAVY. Feels very satisfying to wear.