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!

Let's hope so. It will mean buying much less.

I know everyone says they'd rather buy less and have higher quality, longer lasting garments that cost more, but sales don't bear this out.

29'' inside legs.
Can't bear it. I don't want to wear cropped trousers in the winter with weird knee high socks or tights underneath. I don't even have very long legs. I just want what used to be standard, 30'' or more.

I hate that a lot of clothing shops don't understand that short women can be fat. I'm a size 18-20 and 5ft but find it so difficult to find trousers/jeans/leggings that fit.

If you look at what a lot of young women are wearing, though… It’s that sports wear look. Smart clothes aren’t a thing anymore. In the Noughties I had gorgeous work clothes. Wool suits, silk blouses, lovely dresses. Leather shoes & handbags. All bought on the high street. My casual outfits were nice denim skirts, jeans, with shirts & tops. For going out, a fancy top with embroidery or sequins with jeans or a gorgeous dress.

All of the girls nowadays are wearing leggings & those puffy jackets. It looks awful. Women my age (47) are doing a posher version (Sweaty Betty) so maybe that’s what the shops think we want? I still have a lot of my old stuff, and I think it’s why Vinted is so popular too. Finding a nice wool winter coat is almost impossible. I’ve kept my good ones!

The appalling quality of even expensive clothes. I'm still wearing a Jaeger dress from the 1980's. It's a very fine wool fabric and fully lined. I can't remember when I saw a lined dress.

I have some old M&S bits and pieces and the quality is so much better than the things they sell now.

Also, I agree on hems. Bought a nice A-line longish denim skirt at Cos a couple of years ago that now seems to be in fashion. But no matter how carefully I iron the hem it ends up curling up and looking utterly shit by mid-afternoon.

If they hadn't been so cheap with the fabric (viz previous point about short trousers) it would have a bit more weight and hang properly.

LadyPoison, the Jaeger now just isn’t comparable.
But what annoys me the most is that M&S are selling it at premium prices, but in their Sale they lump everything into jumble sale racks. It really cheapens the brand IMO. I wish shops would present things nicely, but there’s no staff anymore…

Hahaa, Yes but clothes loose a layer of intricacy every 50 years or so. Think Edwardian to 40's . 40's to 90's. Now as you say its all leggings, trainers and puffas.

I expect in a few more years we'll be wearing bugger all and moaning how clothes were a thing.

Hearing aids come in different colours, not just beige.

I just can't be bothered with scrolling through the thousands of things in every section on every site, waiting for it to arrive, all the bloody packaging, half of it doesn't fit, sending it back, waiting and checking and waiting for the refund.

I just want good clothes shops in every town back again, sod it - and the bad one's for basics like vests and leggings.
Topshop - all is forgiven!

Trousers can’t find anything that
fits me
doesnf break on the second day around the tight area

Marchintospring, we’ll all be wearing the Kanye / Skims stuff in a few years, ha ha… I literally can’t believe it when I see young women wearing an over sized jacket with cycling shorts?!

Everything is just awful, and has been for the past few years. Terrible static-y, itchy, clingy man made fibres. Silly voluminous puffy sleeves that you can’t wear a cardigan or coat over, sludgy colours, unflattering high round necked tops and dresses. I’m also sick of seeing the clothes shown on models with absolutely no shape and no boobs, completely unrepresentative of the majority of body shapes, eg:

Jumpers that look nice, feel nice, are a nice colour, but when you pick them up to look closely, realise that they have enormous flappy sleeves voluminous sleeves. Why?!

Also, I traipsed all round the Trafford Centre looking for cotton v necked t-shirts for the gym (I can’t bear the polyester horrors posing as gym wear) and couldn’t believe it when I couldn’t find a single one! Ended up ordering some men’s ones online.

I still have a Next directory (catalogue) from the late 80s, and it has proper material swatches stuck on the pages so you could see and feel the quality and grade of the fabric. I miss those days 😔

I have a theory.

That really cotton and natural fibres aren’t that hard to produce at decent prices. But there’s more profit in polyester.

Arket, Cos, Seasalt all manage it. But no one else can. I’m not counting the likes of FF or WS. The quality is shite. And l don’t like them either!

Definitely the quality. I remember when M&S was fine but nowadays it's rubbish. I bought two next dresses and both had split up the back within 2months of wear (not tight fitting either). Fed up with it. I'm happy to save up but expensive doesn't equal quality at the moment.

BTW, not ragging on young people, just their style! I know we all wore mad stuff out clubbing etc… I’m just surprised at what passes for an actual outfit nowadays. I think the market for more mature women’s clothes needs to shift big time! Menswear is much better, even if it is just Chinos!

M and S seem incapable of producing a pure cotton sweatshirt for women atm. It’s all cotton ‘rich’

This is a brilliant thread. I 100 % agree with all
pp about fabric, polyester, high necks, frills, dull or neon colours and lack of quality. Also nothing for age 35-50.

As a size 20/22 multiply all this by 10 - I have yet to find a mid price range quality curve/plus size retailers in the UK. So we get the scraps left from the biggest sizes in M&S and Jaeger. I shop from US shops where I can.

Cropped trousers. It's January!
Sludgy colours
Acryclic/polyester knitwear
Clothes that shrink in the first wash
Inonsistent sizing

No exciting new styles. There isn't any distinctive look for this era.

Dreadful fabrics, awful colours and badly made, even luxury brands are now poor quality.

. . . and the awful printed materials. Just fucking awful.

Even the presenters on TV are all wearing ludicrous clothes I noticed today. Every single one of them. They all look so daft. They are all in polyester. What is going on? It's like fashion got ill and died.

Also, I don't trust the cotton things you can get now. I bought some 100% cotton jersey things recently, and even after a few washes, they still feel like they have a strange plasticky coating, as well as being thin and oddly stiff, not like the soft cotton jersey from a couple of decades ago. Even some tissues I bought from Sainsbury's seem to have the plastic coating!