How well made things used to be!

[MintyAraminta]

And I have proof in my hands today!

My closest town is a bit miserable and the charity shops dire tbh, but had to wait for a prescription so pooped in to closest one to pass the time.

Found a pair of wide leg 100% linen trousers with a flat waistband, mid rise (perfect for me) and pockets. They are extremely good quality, not at all see-through and the perfect fit. The stitching is amazing as is the cut. I have only recently seen this level of quality at White Co or Poetry.

And they were from Tesco
I can only imagine they were purchased long ago and never worn, as they are like new. I could find nothing of this quality now almost anywhere on a high street so am a bit in awe for £5!

Certainly shows how different it used to be even in value stores.

@IndianSummer78

you have nailed it. I started buying clothes for myself in 1970’s with my Saturday girl money, and I had to save up for everything, even the ‘teenage’ shops were proportionately much more expensive than their equivalents today. so we had fewer things and we expected them to last- they had to.

What does seem to have changed is that even more expensive garments are made from flimsy material, and are often badly shaped. The fashion for dropped shoulders is typical, they take much less skill to cut and sew, but they don’t fit onto the shoulder, so they don’t drape around the bust.

Clothes are awful now.... everything is see through ffs

Agree with all the above.

I have a long cardigan (I believe it's called a coatigan these days 🙄) from Zara. Zara in 1986, I bought it in Spain when I was studying there and it is still perfect.

Now, if I'm on holiday and need an extra t shirt I might grab one from Zara or H&M but I know it will either fit 6 of me inside after one wash, or turn into a crop top.

I now buy 90% of my clothes from M&S. But quality varies. I have some of their cheaper T shirts that are no better than Primark and a couple of Autograph ones that would knock socks off Cos and Arket (which is where the other 10% of my stuff is from)

I buy a lot from Zalando off season and a Hobbs t shirt that was £60 but I got for £15 is no better than the cheaper M&S ones. Likewise Jaeger now they're at M&S. Some stuff is still phenomenal but again, I remember going to their outlet shop and feeling the fabric of their tops and thinking "now I understand the pricing". I got a Jaeger T shirt from M&S and again, worth no more than £10 and quality indiscernible from their own brand cheaper stuff.

I do wonder if the backlash against fast fashion will mean a return to affordable quality being the norm. Sadly I doubt it.

Prism I used to search for brands etc then realised there is usually a reason why those clothes are in the charity shops in the first place eg the style is not in fashion any more, there is an obvious flaw that can't be solved, the colour or detailing is not easy to wear, the size is not quite right. So I ended up with quite a few branded or "quality fabric" items only to realise I actually didn't really wear them for one or the other reasons I mentioned. This was repeated quite a few times, until I realised the chances of finding the perfect quality branded item in my size that fits, in a colour that flatters me, isn't damaged or worn or bobbly and looks either properly current, or true vintage instead of the sad in-between which just looks out of date, was close to zero or a one-off at least. I was fooling myself that I actually really liked the item in a real life, day to day wear, first out of the wardrobe kind of thing, when what I liked about it was the brand or the quality. That's just my experience anyway.

Plenty of underskirts in M&S @DuesToTheDirtGot one recently.

I'm an avid stalker of St Michael on eBay these days. Not everything was excellent quality from there in the 80s and 90s, but if you look for cotton, linen and wool it's generally good.

IndianSummer exactly. Tops used to be £30 in the early 90s. I bought a Miss Selfridge swing lace tunic dress for £35 in 1992. Great quality, still have it. I'd probably still pay £35 for a lace swing tunic these days but the quality wouldn't be there. That tunic would probably cost proportionately in terms of wages then and now (I don't know for definite but as a guess) £80-£90 or even more. People had far, far less clothes then and they wore them out constantly. So people bought less because clothes were so expensive, and it was expensive because it was higher quality. Back then, people paid for quality because there was hardly any cheap clothing alternatives. So the quality of today's clothes may have gone down - but so have the prices comparatively, I think people genuinely don't think about that.

@Sequinsandfrills , I think I'm just lucky with the shops. I find good things often, but in a whole shop, only 2 or 3 things might be good. Sometimes they might need a small repair or have a stain to remove.

Any mistakes, I sell or pass on or re-donate.

Sometimes the item might be from a fairly obscure brand. Sometimes they are out of season or not trendy any more. I got Birkenstock sandals for a £1 when nobody wore them.

So maybe you know this part already, but when you're cutting out fabric for clothes it needs to be lined up with the grain - if you use a pattern there are arrows to show the direction in which you need to lay it out. If you don't do this and your fabric is patterned, the pattern won't be straight on your garment, and if the fabric is stretchy it won't hang right. (Bias cut is different; the fabric is deliberately cut on an angle. This is I think mainly used for slinky fabrics, and in my experience only looks good on skinny minnies with great figures...)

Anyway, you'd think that commercially-made clothes would do this, right? But they aren't always made that accurately, and it's not just the cheapest brands, either. The main culprits for me are cotton jersey t-shirts and tops, and the easiest way to tell is to look just below the bottom of the neckline on the front. If you look carefully you can see the weave of the fabric across the t-shirt - it should be as close as possible to horizontal. If it's a few degrees off your top will end up skew.

Guess I gave up looking... I picked up a skirt off the rail in Zara recently and it was so see-through it just went straight back on the rail. Who wears these things?

Well!
I remember always buying my winter coat from topshop when i was a teen, early 20's. I lived in an urban area then, so it was the thing.

I recall a red, pure wool coat from topshop that cost £100, i wore it for a decade. This was around 1999. Seems expensive, but there are no equivalent options now from such brands. It was a serious treat, a once a year privilege at most. Usually a birthday gift.

I kind of miss that. How you could find such things in the average high street. I lived rurally but our closest town was ex industrial, just a regular northern space. Yet the high street was utterly buzzing, not just with brands but unique stores and handmade stuff too. It is so sad to visit on the train now, to see endless terraced streets and no infrastructure, with most stores having closed down.
All you see now is B&M, Poundland and New look:(

Internet shopping has killed the high street OP. It is very sad. I envy your red coat! Love red coats. Max Mara sells pure wool coats. As does the army surplus store for considerably cheaper, but there's obviously no choice of styles. I used to love trying things on when shopping on the high street, searching out the perfect item and chatting with friends, coming home laden with bags after saving up for 6 months for the trip. All my spare money used to go on clothes. Internet shopping just isn't the same

Thanks for the info on how to look for wonky weaves DuesTotheDirt

Re: wonky weaves, this happens because they are squeezing as many pattern pieces out of the length of fabric as possible, regardless of the direction of weave. If pieces were cut out in relation to the straight grain so they should hang correctly, rather than any-old-how, there would be a lot of waste pieces left over which... pushes the price up. Because on quality items you are essentially paying for pieces cut on a straight grain - and all the waste in-between bits too.

Another reason why quality costs more. But we are all so used to cheap prices but remember or know of the quality from yesteryear when they were cut on the grain and did hang correctly, etc etc - but they cost far more (in relation to wages).

It's not (just) that the quality has gone down. So have the prices, correspondingly. If we want quality, we need to pay more for it like they did back in the day.

Minty your £100 coat in 1999 (24 years ago) would probably cost upwards of £250 now (again, relative to wages). You can definitely buy a decent wool coat today for £250. Brands would have diversified and changed anyway depending on consumer shopping habits but the rise of internet shopping between 1999 and now will have been the biggest change.

I’m the same! Can’t bear to part with 20 year old clothes when the quality is so much better than new !

I tried on a cotton dress with a lining of sorts in the bottom part it was see through! I would have needed to wear my nude slip underneath underneath and this could have been mine for the reduced price of £40. Ok I suppose if it was a holiday dress for chunking on over a swim suit etc but for everyday wear then it was a no!