Quality of clothing on high street

[Neverplayleapfrogwithmrpipes]

I am in my late 40s and I have pretty much worn the same clothes for the last 20 years, maybe adding in leggings and base items. I have recently lost 4 st and I have been shopping for clothes in the sales.

It’s really struck me in most of the high street shops, that lots of the clothes are quite poor quality, threads hanging, bobbling on jumpers, snags and pulls and bits hanging off. I know the sale items do get a little pawed over but it’s really not good for sustainability for items to be so short lasting.

Zara and new look seemed to be the worst.

I still own a top and a skirt I bought in new look in 1999 and they are still going strong.
Is it just me or are clothes poor quality nowadays?

Any suggestions for long lasting clothes are v welcome x

I look at men's jumpers, cardigans and coats in TK Maxx. The cuts are slim so can work (for me anyway as I'm tall) and the quality of men's stuff is so much better.

I live in a town with a plethora of charity shops and not much else so shop exclusively online, often recommended by this board. Today I received a jacket from Oliver Bonas which I have never had before and is bloody gorgeous, reduced to £35 in the sale. I hope the Hollister jeans that were recommended on here are as good when they arrive.

@ScribblingPixie thats a good tactic. I picked up a nice men’s John Smedley sea island cotton jumper in a charity shop, works really well with jeans or chinos.

Yes, what is it with lots of shoes. The soles disintegrate. Was walking along last summer in a pair of Clark’s shoes & I was leaving a trail of balls of “stuff” from the disintegrating soles! Checked some others, none very old, & when I flexed the sole they showed small slits across the bottom so clearly would go the same way.

I love John Smedley, such great colours, I've seen them in TK Maxx on occasion. And they have a factory outlet online here

Sounds like moth damage, especially if under the arms.

OP I feel your pain.

I'm really old and am shocked by the rubbish (and presumbly the associated dodgy environmental/human rights related) stuff on sale right now. It's scandalous to think that people work in conditions that we would not tolerate to mass produce short-lived tat that so many throw away.

When I was young (educated, academic but not rich), like most of my peers we bought, at the VERY most, a couple of winter outfits and a couple of summer outfits per year, from the best shops/companies that we could afford. And also secondhand, of course, or passed on from relatives. (That was really a thing.) Ditto what would be regarded as 'heritage' real-wool knits or evening frocks.

'Best' could mean the nicest quality or the most fashionable, according to taste. Plus underclothes, often, but not always, from M&S - when it was reliable, of course. (It still is on the whole, which is VASTLY to its credit.)

ALSO, what we took for granted was that the clothes we purchased/inherited would last for several years. Shamefully, the working conditions of the people who produced our garments were not available to us - and, also to our shame, we did not ask. But it was generally assumed, and correctly I think, that most of what we purchased would have been produced in countries with - at least - some basic workers' rights laws. I'm not saying that was the best possible; it simply was. We know better now.

I don't know how we can get back to the 'really good quality = less but more' attitude of mind. I can remember having to save up a lot to buy clothes, but then loving them for years. Is that still an issue or an option? I enjoy reading mumsnet threads such as 'dark academia'. But for hard-pressed hard-working ordinary families, I don't imagine that approach is practical.

So what do we do? Geninely?

I think we buy more nowadays because high street clothes look worn much more quickly.

It's a trap, it's not just that fast fashion companies encourage you to spend on things you don't really need, but the lack of quality means you need to keep spending to replace clothes.

Materials are flimsy, seams are not properly finished, clothes are rarely lined etc etc.

Shamefully, the working conditions of the people who produced our garments were not available to us - and, also to our shame, we did not ask.

When I was young we knew very well where they were made - in the factories all around us!

I have a M&S St Michael's pair of pink leather brogues, made in England and the leather is as good as new, with the soles the same, bought a long time ago, so not cheap, but long lasting! On the flip side, I have just had to throw away three pairs of Clarks, made in China, shoes. They were not cheap, but the leather lining was cracking, crumbling and sticky.

Sadly I live in London @ScribblingPixie and don’t own a car but the idea of a John Smedley factory outlet sounds like heaven! I’ll have a look in TKMaxx but I don’t imagine they crop up there very often.

I suppose it could be but there is no sign of moths in the house and I have about eight other wool jumpers and none of them have got holes and some are years older than this one. So annoying!

I regularly buy things on Vinted with the St Michael's label. They are fab quality. Thankfully my mum is a knitter so she makes me some lovely wool jumpers.

I’m exasperated with the poor quality of M&S knitwear nowadays. I used to buy all my knitwear from them, but no longer. The few items I’ve bought from them in recent years have all started pilling after just a few wears. I have cardigans and sweaters that are decades old but still look better than new ones I’ve only worn a few times.

I have a velvet and satin M&S dressing gown that’s 50 years old and still wearable.

But people want cheap and quantity over quality so.. raw materials have increased, energy, transport and the wages of the people making them so instead of doubling the price of whatever they use cheap fabric.

I used to work as a buyer for shoes in a well known high street store, most of our leather shoes were made in Europe and Brazil. Brazil became far too expensive and we started sourcing from China & Vietnam as Euro was heading that way, at first they could only do very basic styles as they didn’t have the expertise, over the years it improved but the quality just wasn’t there.

Sorry for getting grumpy before.

I'm quite old too and, maybe because of that, I'm suspicious of nostalgia. It's not that I don't enjoy it but I think too much of it gets unhealthy.

A lot of these threads hark back to the 90s and early noughties and yes, I quite agree, it was a time when the price of clothes was coming down but quality was still mostly holding up. The British high street was fabulous, or at least it was for shoppers. It wasn't so great for the British clothing industry which died. And it later turned out that at least half of the shops that appeared to be thriving were living off credit. We're now stuck with the results and I don't see any way out. I see no point in using that era as some kind of yardstick.

How about the 80s instead? My favourite decade for dressing in some ways and I still miss the creativity and the energy and the excitement. But hell there was a lot of crap too - well made crap perhaps but badly designed, uncomfortable (those itchy jumpers!) and very expensive. Also, if you weren't in a big city, the options could be very limited. I moan about online shopping but at least it means you can live in the UK's crappest town and have access to the same shops as someone in central London. In the 80s I spent most of my spare money (and I didn't have a lot) on clothes and a lot of my spare time travelling to find them. It was great fun and I don't regret it but I was young and had no kids. How many of us could do that now or even want to?

How about the 80s instead? A lot of us were babies then or not yet born so hard to talk about loved experiences. Love the look of it in photos & films though.

My point is that there is no golden age.

I think the problem is that stores now have to stock very large sizes which wasn’t the case before. A dress in a size 24 is obviously going to use a lot more fabric than the regular range 8-16/18. They know that they can’t have a corresponding range of prices which reflect this, so all stay the same price. The choice is either increase the cost of the whole range of sizes or lessen the quality. They’ve chosen the latter.

a couple of winter outfits and a couple of summer outfits per year, from the best shops/companies that we could afford.

@nameXname that takes me back to the late 60s through to mid 70s when my parents would make an annual trip to a grand clothes shop in London (name escapes me) for my mother to buy two or three perfect outfits. I used to love the Event-ness of that day, and loved even more seeing my mother wear those outfits over the next few years.

(Obviously those weren’t the only clothes she had, or our only trips to London - but they had such a distinct purpose.)

Towards the end of last year I decided to only buy clothes that were 95%+ natural fibres in a bid to try and get better quality clothes.

It is so, so difficult to do though. I naively thought that by spending more it would be easy to achieve, but most of the high street is expensive with high proportions of manmade fibres.

I’ve not been doing it long enough to tell whether it’s worth it yet but it has highlighted how cheaply made so many clothes must be, and how unsustainable they are when they’re made of plastic.

Where are you shopping, @hamsandyams?

(Presumably you now have a complete Community Clothing wardrobe?)

I’ve only bought a few things as I didn’t want to overhaul my whole wardrobe as I’ll just replace things as they wear out, so I’m just starting building up key pieces - but actually I’ve found H&M great as you can filter your search by fabric and they seem to have a real range available but I’ve so far bought a Harris Tweed wool blazer, some St Michael wool trousers from Vinted, Lucy & Yak cotton twill trousers and cotton corduroy dungarees and a blouse from LilySilk. I also have a wool mill near where I live and bought a few jumpers from their factory sale a few months ago. Oh and some Ambela jeans.

All my best clothes are things I've had for 20 years or vintage stuff I've picked up over the years. At least you can still get old items on vinted etc.
As modern brands go, I've been surprised by the quality of some Superdry things I've got. Nice lambswool mix jumpers.