Your top gripe with buying clothes at the moment?

[Clotheswoe]

Mine is that often when trousers are described as 'high-waisted', they are not at all high waisted on me. They just aren't hipsters!

I'm 'plus size' which is a nightmare because the designs are all awful. I think it's been said earlier on the thread (I'm late to the party and don't have time to read all of it) about stupid emblems and silly phrases about 'live,laugh,love' plastered all over them.

The thing I'm struggling with is that the cut seems to be shorter in plus size clothing, so although it's wide enough it just isn't long enough. I'm not that tall (5.6) so 'tall' fits are too long. So I end up with a vest top on under everything which then ruins the shape of the top/dress across my bust.

I't shouldn't be so difficult to find suitable clothes whatever size you are. I also seem to sweat in everything I wear because of the horrible material.

Some days I feel like wearing a bin bag because that would be easier.

It's not synthetic

I'm in NZ, and I agree with you that polyester has been around a long time - I can remember garments made from it being sold as long as I have been shopping.

However, it really is only in more recent times, here at least, that cotton and wool have been more difficult to find, and in the case of wool, have become so expensive. Linen is much more available than it ever was, and here in NZ we all buy merino, which can range from cheap to very expensive, but is plentiful. So many garments are now made from "blends" and the natural part of the blend always seem to be the lesser percentage of fabric. I for one, don't want blends - unless something like merino/cotton.

I used to buy from a catalogue company many years ago. They still exist, online now, but whereas once they had a lot of cotton clothing it is really difficult to find cotton tops/skirts etc. now - so I no longer even bother to look at their website.

https://www.trvst.world/sustainable-living/fashion/environmental-impact-of-cotton/

It would be good if hemp was more widely available. My t-shirts are organic cotton and jumpers are second hand wool from vinted.

Global Organic Textile Standards (GOTS) cotton does not have those problems though so I’m not sure why you keep posting your links about cotton production being bad. Also your comments about silk production. Are you seriously suggesting polyester is preferable?

Yes, I was wondering. What can we wear then? At least cotton doesn't need daily washing like polyester. Polyester stinks.

Organic cotton is grown and harvested in a sustainable manner. It minimises use of bleach water and chemicals. It is more environmentally friendly than polyester

(15 years a designer and 20 years textile science teacher)

But it's over 30 years ago since I started shopping at Next when all their shoes were leather lined and made in Italy and their clothes were notoriously expensive and worn by young professionals on good salaries, and the shops were small and boutique like with carpet.

In the late 90s I was a student, and bought the occasional thing from Next, but even then on student budgets we rather turned our noses up at it for being mid-market office workwear! And it was very synthetic then. My first outfits for my first office job were cheap synthetic skirts and blouses from Next. As soon as I got paid I bought a couple of lined wool suits from Jigsaw and M&S’s better range (pre-Autograph - I forget what it was called). Yes, the mid-market high street ranges were very synthetic, but if you went up a price point or two you soon got to decent quality clothes on the high street.

All through my 20s in the 2000s (and I was a grad student for a long time) I was able to afford a capsule wardrobe from places like Hobbs, Jigsaw, Gap, French Connection, Oasis, Kew and Agnes b which was decent quality - eg. silk, heavy cotton and linen and wool knee length skirts, 100% cotton tops and cardigans, wool/cashmere sweaters, and proper leather boots from Jones Bootmaker (I miss them!) A couple of quality dresses from Jigsaw, a long wool/cashmere coat from Jigsaw, and a suit from Hobbs for best. On a student budget/salary!

When I started earning I was able to afford a range of decently priced, great quality clothes from places like Comptoir des Cotonniers, Jigsaw, Kew, Gap, Whistles, Topshop, French Connection, and the odd item from Anthropologie, Reiss or Banana Republic. And they were great quality, lined, natural fibres, and I didn’t spend a fortune on any of them. I still have many of those actual items (albeit far too small for me these days!) and the clothes themselves still look great, even though the styles are outdated.

Those are the days we’re all harking back to, I suspect. You could get a 100% cotton, wool or linen skirt from Topshop for not a lot - £30 ish? Less in the sales? You could get a 100% F&F cashmere cardy at Tesco for £35! You could get a cotton jersey dress with silk inset panels from Jigsaw for £89. You could get a lovely lined wool/cashmere coat from Hobbs for about £180. In about 2010 I bought, for a wedding, a beautifully cut pure silk tulle dress lined with heavy pure silk from Temperley London for £240 (in their sale); and it was the most expensive item I had ever bought, but there’s literally just no way in hell you could get that kind of quality even at that price point these days.

We really took those clothes for granted at the time. Now in the days of bobbly viscose for £200 and shapeless acrylic and polyester, I wish I’d kept more of those nice items from when we could get them. (Or that I was still a size 8 and could fit into the blooming things I still have 🤣)

Have a look at the Uniqlo U range ones. They're very nice quality cotton. https://www.uniqlo.com/uk/en/product/crew-neck-short-sleeved-t-shirt-462666.html?dwvar_462666_color=COL58&dwvar_462666_size=SMA004

Well, @asterel, your student budget must have been higher than mine because I certainly didn't shop at Next on my student budget, nor was I anywhere near to buying a couple of wool suits from Jigsaw with my first pay check. Even in the 1990s Jigsaw was expensive and towards the higher end of high street fashion prices.

Agreed. The rose tinted glasses are doing heavy lifting on here. And the effects of inflation are being ignored.

I can assure you it’s perfectly true: it was quite normal when I was a student to have not many clothes, but a few decent ones. I had a graduation dress from Jigsaw and I’m fairly sure the things I had were most probably often from the sale, but the brand was definitely not at the same price point then that they are now (they hiked their prices very dramatically in the early 2010s, and I mostly stopped buying from them, because I thought the prices were too high for the quality even then). They were more like Monsoon prices in the late 90s: definitely not the same market they aim at today.

In the late 90s Jigsaw and Monsoon did a roaring trade in my university town! I was on a grant (last few years of the old student grant!) so I was hardly well off. But I didn’t go out drinking, never went clubbing or similar student pub nights out - just wasn’t really a thing at my uni - never ate out or got takeaways etc., didn’t smoke, and had a pretty quiet time. We weren’t allowed to have mobiles, television, a car or even a part-time job where I studied, so it wasn’t like there was even much to spend your student grant on. Definitely not strange at all to have a few clothes from Next/Jigsaw or similar.

And my first job in the late 90s was a graduate job - it paid just over 18k at the time - and it was civil service adjacent so you were expected to have a couple of smart suits (my other one at the time was a grey wool suit with a long skirt from M&S, hardly Versace, but it was still lined and in wool!)

I’m also pretty sure my black Jigsaw suit was £120 and my grey M&S one around £110 at the time (I still have the Jigsaw one; not sure what happened to the M&S one). That wasn’t remotely beyond my first paycheck in the late 90s on an 18k salary, especially given that the spare room I was renting in a friend’s flat in Zone 5 was £250 a month, and my Zone 1-5 railcard was around £28 a week. I mostly existed almost entirely on tuna baguettes from the Upper Crust concession at Victoria Station and gin and tonics. No mobile phone or broadband or Netflix subscription. Food and rent were really affordable. Good times!

Could you possibly link to the M&S trousers please?! Thankyou! x

Jigsaw was much more expensive than
Monsoon.

However, Monsoon pitched much higher and was much better than now.

Tbf Jigsaw and Reiss used to be a fair bit cheaper than they are now.

This.

Couldnt agree more!

I won’t buy polyester 😊

Silly names like 'cottagecore'.

Shit plastic shoes, bags and purses being sold as 'eco' and 'vegan' because it's not leather and then hiking the price up to leather prices.

Plastic is NOT good for the environment or animals. The manufacturing of pleather is not environmentally friendly. And when we're done with our nasty plastic shoes and chuck em out, they're not going to biodegrade like leather would. And they're not as robust or hard wearing as real leather so we're chucking them out a lot faster.

Trying to find genuine leather in nice styles is now becoming the holy grail and I'm finding myself having to buy more and more plastic crap, and it's really pissing me off.

The whole eco/vegan/sustainable thing has gotten silly. It's a load of BS designed to make us all feel moral, and pay more, for wearing cheap nasty fabrics that contradicts the whole eco ethos. I don't understand how the fashion industry has managed to con us all with this nonsense.

www.leathernaturally.org/news-events/news/is-leather-environmentally-friendly/

Not to mention that we don't know how large of an impact on the environment and our health all the chemicals that are used in the production of plastics have, especially if they never degrade. We as humans have signed our own verdict if continue using so much plastic without being able to put it back into circulation and dumping it across various landfills.

Exactly. Yet we're all supposed to feel really good about ourselves because, you know, veganism.

This mass-scale pleather con totally mystifies me.

I have a relative who's turned vegan, goes on and on at family gatherings about the meat industry. Has taken to wearing plastic shoes and has now started making her own jewellery and homeware...out of plastic! Some she's given to me as a gift and it fell apart after wearing once, so had to go in the bin.

Yet she has the nerve to lecture me about eating a roast chicken, and going on about the animal that had to die for my shoes, but god forbid if I dare to argue about the detrimental impact her overly plastic lifestyle has on the environment and animals habitats, and the microplastics in our eco systems that we're all ingesting. She automatically wins the argument because she's vegan and no animal died...without understanding it's causing the slow death of whole ecosystems, and therefore the animals living within them.

It's gotten out of hand. I don't get how this has become so widely accepted as being good for the planet.

I think some people have forgotten that we are part of the food chain and it's completely natural for us to consume other animals. That's just the way our world works and has since the beginning of time. As long as there is a balance and we are not over consuming and thereby driving entire species to extinction and engaging in animal cruelty, there should be no issue. If we all had a 'less is more' mentality and quality came before quantity, trends and fashion in our decisions about how much and how often to purchase, then we wouldn't even be here debating this topic. The problem with fast fashion and plastics is that it's all encouraging a relentless cycle of overconsumption because of shit quality and a permanent dissatisfaction with what we've got, encouraging us to buy more and search for the next best thing. I've been recently taken with the idea of a capsule wardrobe, and I have been carefully collecting pieces that I know will go together, are from quality brands and are in natural fibers. I love my clothes and I don't have the urge to shop any longer. I can't remember the last time I even purchased anything from the high street. I don't have much hope for fashion, I think it's in a downward spiral, which will be very difficult to get out of at this stage.