As the sheer quantity of clothing available to the average American has grown over the past few decades, everything feels at least a little bit flimsier than it used to.
The most obvious indication of these changes is printed on a garment’s fiber-content tag. Knits used to be made entirely from natural fibers. These fibers usually came from shearing sheep, goats, alpacas, and other animals. Sometimes, plant-derived fibers such as cotton or linen were blended in. Now, according to Imran Islam, a textile-science professor and knit expert at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the overwhelming majority of yarn used in mass-market knitwear is blended with some type of plastic.
Knits made with synthetic fiber are cheaper to produce. They can be spun up in astronomical quantities to meet the sudden whims of clothing manufacturers—there’s no waiting for whole flocks of sheep to get fluffy enough to hand shear. They also usually can be tossed in your washing machine with everything else. But by virtually every measure, synthetic fabrics are far inferior. They pill quickly, sometimes look fake, shed microplastics, and don’t perform as well as wool when worn. Sweaters are functional garments, not just fashionable ones. Wool keeps its wearer warm without steaming them like a baked potato wrapped in foil. Its fibers are hygroscopic and hydrophobic, which means they draw moisture to their center and leave the surface dry. A wool sweater can absorb a lot of water from the air around it before it feels wet or cold to the touch
A significant amount of polyamide or acrylic is now common in sweaters with four-digit price tags. A $3,200 Gucci “wool cardigan,” for example, is actually half polyamide when you read the fine print. Cheaper materials have crept into the fashion industry’s output gradually, as more and more customers have become inured to them. In the beginning, these changes were motivated primarily by the price pressures of fast fashion, Islam said: As low-end brands have created global networks that pump out extremely cheap, disposable clothing, more premium brands have attempted to keep up with the frenetic pace while still maximizing profits, which means cutting costs and cutting corners. Islam estimates that a pound of sheep’s wool as a raw material might cost from $1.50 to $2. A pound of cashmere might cost anywhere from $10 to $15. A pound of acrylic, meanwhile, can be had for less than $1.
This race to the bottom had been going on for years, but it accelerated considerably in 2005, Sofi Thanhauser, the author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing, told me. That year was the end of the Multifiber Arrangement, a trade agreement that had for three decades capped imports of textile products and yarn into the United States, Canada, and the European Union from developing countries. Once Western retailers no longer had meaningful restrictions on where they could source their garments from, many of them went shopping for the cheapest inventory possible.
So much clothing, even poor quality clothing, gets discarded for newer clothing before it has even become worn down. Sure we could use better fibers, but even if clothing was more durable it would get discarded at about the same rates because people want something new and opt for a throw out and buy culture rather than an exchange culture. Also we shouldn’t turn back to animal fibers, unethical and its own environmental blight, especially if scaled up to supply the current apparel industry.
I thrift everything that’s not undergarments, and for those I invest in quality ones that don’t get destroyed within a few years.
I wear all my cloths until they have holes in them, then repair the holes and repeat the process until repairs become impossible. Then they become cleaning towels.
I grew up poor but can totally afford new cloths now, it is just an old habit and one that allows me to wring the most use out of a particular item. I can feel a bit less bad about buying cheap shirts from Old Navy (or equivalent) since I will wear it for YEARS.
Scott Aukerman is an absolute wreck over this news.
Knitting my own garments (sweaters, scarfs, etc) has made me appreciate how long it really takes to make actually good clothing that’s meant to last. Thankfully more and more people are getting on board with the idea of “slow fashion”, with a significant amount of younger people especially during the pandemic picking up knitting and crochet as well as seeing more of the value it possesses than before.
I’ve been making my own clothes for more than a decade now and I’ve dabbled in knitting and crocheting, but I’ll admit it’s a bit too much for me. I once made a dress where I didn’t have quite enough fabric so the skirt ended up too short and thought, oh, I’ll just a crotchet a nice 15 cm wide decorative border. Problem was it was a circle skirt so the hem was 4m long. Shit took me 15 damn hours lol. I respect people who have the patience for it or just find it fun but that’s not me.
They are also more durable when you make them for yourself.
You have clearly never seen my handiwork then!
Practice makes perfect :) If you’re sewing, try using a backstitch
I’ve been knitting for a decade but only made my first pair of socks during the pandemic. I bought some wool from a reputable seller in fun colors. It was so fun and they were so comfy, I made several more.
I almost never wear anything other than my knitted socks these days. They’re just so daggone comfy and they keep my feet warm yet they never feel sweaty, except on extremely hot days when I’m outdoors.
Wool socks are absolutely luxurious to me now. 10/10 recommend knitting socks if you haven’t already!
And “run” the heels and ball of the foot so they felt down and last longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKKLOUNOHU
@UrLogicFails Guess this should make me look into knitting
Here’s an excellent place to start: https://tincanknits.com/collection/the-simple-collection
@StringTheory thanks!
I’ve noticed this with every garment I’ve purchased since COVID. A lot.
I wish it was easier to find quality clothes. Nearly every piece of clothing I find has synthetics mixed in.
I would gladly pay a lot more for good, ethical, quality clothes.
Well, the problem not only lies in synthetics though. Cotton is certainly great and all, but it is hard to get fair trade and actually organic cotton. And wool is hardly ethical as you always have to keep animals and sheer them. Leather? Obviously not ethical. Maybe linen and other natural fibers, but they usually have very specific applications in clothes. But yes, I agree, I would definitely gladly pay for good, ethical, quality clothes, too!
Cotton is certainly great and all,
Cotton is a terrible material for winter clothing because it becomes dangerously useless for retaining heat when wet. Tons of people die hiking etc. because they expected cotton to keep them warm.
Cotton is awesome for autumn and the odd cold-ish summer day (…if we happen to get one of those ever again).
I’ve become of 2 minds about leather footwear & gloves:
The primary alternative to leather is plastic, which, when it breaks-down, sabotages the food-web, right?
Leather doesn’t do that.
I honestly don’t know what The Right Answer™ is, on that one, anymore.
I’m usually vegan, btw, not for ideological/religious reasons, but simply because doing otherwise blocks my ability to reach the meditations I need.
I do find butchering animal lives for a mere few-meals unethical, but refugee Buddhist monk Kelsang Gyatso pointed-out in one of his books, IF a person has anemia, THEN the right antidote is eating red meat.
He’s ordained, a Geshe, and he is recommending that right in his dharma.
Years-enduring clothing is a much less desolating consumption than needless meat-eating.
Exactly as that brilliant psychological truth in the Christian bible shows, naive truth, aka symbolic “truth”, is syrupy-sweet in one’s face/mouth, whereas digested & real, experience-induced-understanding Truth, is bitter.
See for yourself:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation 10%3A8-10&version=CJB
Leather is basically cellulose from animal skins
There are many other sources of cellulose from [mushrooms](Are Mushrooms the Future of Alternative Leather? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/business/leather-fake-mycelium-mushrooms-fashion.html) to cacti to even pineapple
These are still fairly young materials and aren’t super common. You’re starting to see them more often but usually in smaller runs of more expensive brands. I personally haven’t bought any of these alternative leathers but next time I need to buy shoes I’m going to look into them again
Looking forward to more better options coming. In the meantime, personally I think I’d rather buy a durable leather thing than a disposable plastic thing. Idk just been my line of thinking lately. Am not vegan or anything tho.
Leather is more ethical than plastic alternatives because leather is generally a byproduct. Cows generally aren’t raised just for their skins. The skins just happen to be product of meat processing. And if we wish to fully respect the life of the animal that we’ve raised for meat, then it’s important to use every part possible.
And like you mentioned, leather is significantly more durable, hardy, and longer lasting than plastic alternatives. So instead of having to buy a new fake-leather coat every couple years, you can keep the same one for decades.
Eh. I get you but. I don’t remember the details but I think the leather is a byproduct line of thinking doesn’t necessarily end up being true in the industrialized system unfortunately. Sorry haha. But yeah in general I’m all for things lasting longer and using all the parts of the thing 😊
There is so much to unpack here holy moly. Ignoring the religious stuff, there are lots of alternatives to the things you’re listing, if you’re concerned. You say truth is bitter, but overlook some glaring ones provided by the modern era: vitamin supplements and alternative leather made from plants.
Those things might have been true when the monk spoke them, but time marches on and modern advancements leave some pieces of wisdom behind in the past.
It’s just crappy that good, ethical, quality clothes do cost a lot more. I absolutely understand why, but man does it suck for the average consumer nowadays.
I’ve been slowly upgrading and updating my wardrobe over the last couple of years, and I’ve bought a lot second hand and then been trying to put my money towards the most sustainable/ethical choices that I can when I buy new stuff. (And I realize that being able to do that is a luxury, too.)
It’s not crappy and it doesn’t suck. Products should reflect living wage labor costs.
If you can only afford one ethical item instead of ten fast fashion ones, it’s a good thing. Value your stuff, learn to repair it, maybe help turn back this trend of wearing a new thing every day.
Oh, exactly. I’ve hit a point where I could buy nice clothes on occasion if I had a reason too, but with expensive clothes being just as quality errant as low end brands, I find myself having very little reason to upgrade my wardrobe.
If I could find a reliably quality brand, I’d certainly be more inclined to start changing out my closet.
As it stands right now: I can basically throw out any polyester clothes because I never wear them, even if I like the pattern.
I’ve been quite happy with https://www.american-giant.com/collections/cotton.
Quality “first world” labor and cotton. No slave labor, no bull shit. That’s the brand.
The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn’t cool when wet, regardless of whether it’s got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.
To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don’t get full of microplastics.
Everything is crap now.
Used to be you’d have cheap stuff and good stuff. Now it’s just cheap stuff, and cheap stuff with more markup.
The Discworld Vimes Boots theory doesn’t even work any more. We all get shafted, but some people have enough money to not care.
This is why most teens are more interested in thrifting for clothes instead of buying new clothes
There’s a chain of stores in the UK called “edinburgh woollen mill”. The one time I went in there I was shocked how everything they sold was just plastic.
wooln’t
The same thing is happening to every commodity and service – “enshittification” isn’t just an internet thing.
It all boils down to psychopathic greedy executives and boards squeezing every last cent from consumers (and workers) to make themselves richer. Prices and therefore corporate profits keep going up, pay keeps going down (because it’s not inflation-adjusted) and the quality of everything is going down the shitter, just to benefit the 1%
Don’t just blame execs, we need to blame ourselves. We have chosen price over quality for decades. Because things were cheap, we could get new things more often, and so we did. The appetite for keeping and using this one thing for most of our lives completely disappeared. Now, we don’t have a choice.
i mean yeah this is true for most well-off people, but there is a huge amount of people who simply cannot afford anything but the cheapest version.
True, but not what I meant. You see it all the time where people make it a point to buy cheap because they consider the thing disposable. Even when they can afford the quality brand, they opt for the junk line because they don’t care to keep it long term. We go through so much disposable clothing, for example, that even the counties we were shipping our donated goods too don’t want them any more.
Even when they can afford the quality brand
I am not sure I believe in quality brands any more. Frequently they name brand and the knockoff are made on the same assembly line/sweat shop. The Name version might be better quality but not by a large margin, and rarely enough to justify the price difference.
Yes, that’s the point of the article.
EDIT: To clarify, it didn’t use to be that way. There use to be a big difference between “top tier” and “bottom tier”. Now, not so much. If you want true top tier stuff, you often have to go custom and/or hand crafted.
But what choice do you really have if you need to constantly minmax your life as a poor person? It’s expensive to be poor.
It’s not the “fault” of amoral individuals, no. This is simply the system working as intended. A system where capital translates to political power will inevitably lead to capital accumulation. Corporations are only for generating more capital and more profits to their owners. Profits they can turn into more capital elsewhere.
It’s silly to expect a “good” version of this where the people at the top… don’t put their interests first? Like why would they ever do that? If someone at the top doesn’t fight for profit like a shark, they will lose their spot and risk becoming a worker, or dooming their family and future generations to become workers.
These people are just doing what’s best for them. And everybody around says “hey! that’s bad, you should put aside your self interest for our self interest!”.
Bro the problem is THE SYSTEM. As long as we have this system, we will always have the same people in power, the same problems, and the planet will die in 50 years. You can fight reality all you want, but that’s where we’re at.
Its not like they were dropped into the system and just made the best of their situation. The capital class created this system.
Its not like they’re trying to change it for the better, they’re willfully encouraging the enshittification of the systems they created.
I agree a 100%. It’s not about the individuals, we are all replaceable. It’s about the system, about capitalism. I think it weird how often people stumble over examples like this or enshitification while this is just how capitalism works. Reforms on a small scale and only for individual problems won’t work, we need to collectively decide to change the system that we live in. But people are too deep in their imagination of a system that usually works and just sometimes fails.
Ideology. The reason why people keep thinking the issue is “individuals”, or “croneyism”, or that small moral based reforms will fix things… it’s ideology.
People don’t look at reality in a materialistic way. They have ideas of how things should be and shape reality to fit that. If it doesn’t, the issue is reality and not the idea. So the fix is to “change reality” (through only propaganda, media and more ideology, reframing etc.) so it looks more like your idea.
Obviously, therefore, competing against the system of moneyarchy would be the only possible means of displacing its dominion on the world, so, …
… how come nobody’s doing it properly, or at-scale??
I’m talking about a competing economic-system, not competing against a few companies within moneyarchy’s regime.
: )
All this begs the question:
Why not learn crochet/knitting, & make one’s own, of whatever yarn one wants??
( that will happen, for me: I’m fed-up with things that never fit right, or are wrongly designed )
It’s not “moneyarchy”, it’s capitalism. And I mean, the system that properly competes against it, and was/is done at scale, is socialism.
Socialism or barbarism is becoming more and more true, and more like a cry for immediate choice instead of a future hypothetical.
Anybody who ignores the Financial Class, and how civilization’s laws are formed in concordance with money-lobby/authority, isn’t competent to be discussing what system we are living-in.
Capitalism without highjacking-of-the-system-of-laws is capitalism.
Once highjacking-of-the-system-of-laws is included, it changes to moneyarchy.
As it exists, it is a mixture of oligarchy & corporate-moneyarchy, but it definitely isn’t “just” an economic system, it is a world-governing regime.
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/5601062/oil-curse-explained
Perhaps you didn’t know that perjury is S.O.P. for tobacco companies, but, of course, prison-time for contempt-of-court can’t happen on a corporation, only on us…
Go look up The Panama Papers, & see if moneyarchy isn’t the correct term for what the evidence shows to be actuality…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
Moneyarchy is the correct & proper term.
As for socialism, whose concept of socialism are you claiming competes against moneyarchy?
Sweden’s seems insane: EVERYbody pays huge taxes AND gets welfare…
Don’t they understand that the more “recycling” of money per unit of result, the more lossy their economy becomes, the higher the “friction” or “viscosity” ( pick your metaphor ), and the smaller the percentage of their effort that actually produces results??
Which Socialism?
- codependency
- interdependency
- ideology-centered
- practicality-centered
- things I haven’t thought-of go here…
I’ve never seen a governmental version of Socialism that wasn’t the codependency-version or the ideology-religion one.
Meritocracy & Socialism … what is in the intersection between those, on the Venn diagram? Nothing?
“you can’t have any meritocracy with socialism” seems to be the belief, among many, but Sweden’s education system seems to get meritocracy right ( unless I’m remembering another Scandi country’s version ), where they simply don’t permit any bypassing of the national meritocratic education system…
Because of political-motivation, objectivity isn’t permitted in this world, and neither is practicality, from what I’ve seen…
And that kind of meta-rule wrecks everything else.
Hell, even gaslighting about “Representative” Republic being “democracy” is so normal I keep forgetting to put that back in viewable place…
As some have noted, the ones who rule make certain that people have things other than the actual issues in-view…
and that is 1 of the characteristics of the -archy regimes, where the population is just herd-animals, consumed by the powers that really run the world ( for-profit corporations parasitically feed-on the human-herd, manipulating humanity’s awareness to remain fed-upon, is one accurate metaphor )
The whole narcissism/machiavellianism of orienting government to the most-successful narcissist-machiavellian, and through “elections” making certain that competency & responsibility are punished, in the “game”, by giving authority to the narcissist-machiavellian ones, preferentially…
Reward-systems are feedback loops and have consequences…
Try convincing … anybody … that Boris Johnson is a thorougly-responsible person…
Highjacking of authority from responsibility and accountability … is sooo complete, now…
How come people can’t see that?
Anyways, I meant not national-level competing ( in a different country ), I meant:
IF you find moneyarchy in the US to be bad, then why don’t you create an alternative-to-moneyarchy economy within the US??
You want socialism, or barbarism, or maybe you equate the 2 ( from your phrasing I can’t know which ), so, why don’t you form socialism-competing-against-moneyarchy in the US?
Why don’t you & all the believers-in-socialism create socialism in the US?
Is there some law that prevents socialist businesses from existing??
Is there some law that prevents socialist groups of businesses from existing??
The fact that there simply doesn’t seem to be ANY such competing-economy IS EVIDENCE that either it isn’t permitted by government, or that it isn’t permitted by the moneyarchy regime, or that the socialists, themselves, aren’t competent to do it, or all 3 of them, simultaneously.
DECADES everybody has had to be producing alternative-economies within the US, and … where are they?
I just realized that I’m including perspective that is required, and not common.
“Slicing Pie Handbook” is a book on startup equity-slicing.
Without understanding how equity needs to be properly distributed, and … ah, yes, “Founder’s Dilemmas” is also required … when people who aren’t responsible gain authority, you CANNOT make the business/system/regime work… the ones who gained authority without responsibility effectively highjack the enterprise, holding it hostage to their whims/demand/extortion, and … if the contract that is in-place permits them that authority, the enterprise may need to die…
Remap that to country, and corporations, instead of an individual company with persons, and the same highjacking happens, especially when financially-emplaced political-parties ( and, through them, their financial backers ) are the highjackers.
Responsibilityarchy is the real requirement, but it’ll never be tolerated by any incumbent political power, left or right.
Not responsible AND accountable? break them from authority, then.
Have you got any idea how long that kind of idealism would be allowed to live?
1 week, maybe?
Socialists have the same ability to create businesses as anybody else, so why haven’t they created socialist businesses, & multiplied the things until 20% of the businesses in the US are socialist operations??
even 5%??
There is something fundamentally wrong with what the evidence is showing, and its showing that that apparently can’t evolve…
I don’t even know where to begin with all this… It’s like insane and ameribrained in a way I haven’t seen in a while…
Our current systems of law and government are an intrinsic part of capitalism. The modern state, with the separation of powers, representative democracy etc. literally was born, as in was created, by the bourgeoisie after their capitalist revolutions that overthrew the monarchies in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Capitalism can’t “hijack” the state or whatever. The state is an intrinsic tool of the capitalist system and of the capitalist class to be able to enforce capitalism in the first place.
Then, outside of the US, literally no one would ever say Sweden is socialist. That is completely absurd. Sweden is a capitalist country with a welfare state. Remember that the state is just a tool of the bourgeoisie to maintain control and enforce capitalism. A welfare state is just an idea of using the state to “ameliorate” (or some would say bribe) the working class in the capitalist core to support imperialism abroad and the exploitation of peoples in the global south.
Public healthcare and social security are not socialist or capitalist. But they usually exist in capitalist systems.
What I meant by socialism is China, the former USSR, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and the DPRK.
Socialism is when the means of production are collectively owned by the workers. Production is slowly directed towards use-value, eliminating commodity production.
Capitalism is when the means of production are privately owned by individuals and corporations. Production is directed towards trade-value, turning everything into a commodity.
I won’t go on because you wrote a huge wall of crazy bullshit. I just wanted to try to provide some clarity on the beginning of it at least.
China is a state capitalist regime lol.
The classic “non-western governments that are not lapdogs for imperialism are regimes”.
Aside from purchasing secondhand, I haven’t found a way to get away from “New
Cokeclothing” and I was wondering whether anyone had any recommendations on that front.There is a generation of little old ladies who are passionate about sewing, but have no-one to sew for. Their kids are grown, and their grandkids don’t want handmade clothes. Ask at a senior center or at a local (not chain) fabric shop, seek out one of these ladies and hire her to sew for you. Or barter: help her around the house or garden or drive her to appointments or to get groceries, and in exchange she sews clothes from fabrics and patterns you choose. Or tailors used clothes to make them fit you better, or mends your worn clothes, etc.
I honestly can’t figure out how I feel about the idea of requesting sewing/knitting from retired people. That said, I’d love anything I’d get from them. Handmade clothes are worth cherishing.
Provided you’re paying them, I can’t see why you would need to feel uncomfortable. Many of them would probably be overjoyed to collect some cash doing something they like doing anyway—seniors whose income was just enough pre-COVID are really struggling now.
They are a little more expensive than some places, but
is my go-to for higher quality and ethical clothes.
I try to stay off the coke myself to be honest
Tangential, but does anyone know if there are any open source CNC knitting machines? like a 3d printer but with wool.
https://mymodernmet.com/knitting-machine-george-barratt-jones/
The Cyclo-Knitter!
3 thousand dollars for synthetic knit? Jesus Christ we’ve lost our collective minds
I have no money. I will wear a plastic bag if it is cheaper.
Quality clothes (not to be confused with expensive brands which is something completely different and probably not quality) is usually much cheaper in the long term while providing more value.
Especially stuff like footwear can be “buy it for life” as long as you can find a quality product and take some care of it.
Unfortunately most people are also lazy and don’t really want the “hassle” of taking care of their stuff because it’s easier to just throw stuff away and buy new things.
