[HN Gopher] All clothing is handmade (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
All clothing is handmade (2022)
Author : panic
Score : 124 points
Date : 2025-03-23 02:43 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ruthtillman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ruthtillman.com)
| tialaramex wrote:
| I wonder how true this is. There's a lot of machine sewing, done
| by humans, to make more complicated articles of clothing (for
| example a dress, or a pair of trousers), and doubtless that won't
| be mechanised even though it could be because humans are cheaper
| to retrain. Your basic little black dress will be hand made,
| maybe by a person you know, maybe by near slave labour, but
| humans made that.
|
| But say socks, the actual garment manufacture is entirely
| mechanical, thread goes in, machine works, socks come out. There
| are a bunch of human processes we add, including a QA step (the
| machine doesn't care if it makes occasional non-socks, a QA can
| see that's not a sock and dispose of it or summon maintenance if
| the machine starts to do this a lot) but so far as I can see the
| socks are made by the machine.
| rvense wrote:
| Yes, socks, but nothing else is: underwear, t-shirts, jeans...
| all sewn by hand.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| My understanding is this is because the hardest problem in
| robotics is handling fabric, and we've yet to build robots
| that are any good at it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Fabric stretches. That makes it very hard to accurately
| handle. A size 6 dress needs to be the same size and fit as
| every other size 6 dress from your brand since if someone
| likes one they might buy more. (there is no need to be the
| same as someone else's size 6, but it needs to match your
| other size 6s)
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Right, it's like if paper was really stretchy and had
| tissue-paper like qualities of wanting to bunch up and
| fold, and you tried to make a printer. We all know how
| much of a struggle it can be to get paper to consistently
| feed _without_ it being stretchy or wanting to bunch
| up...
|
| But then also you need to make origami with it, not just
| print.
| WillAdams wrote:
| To some degree, paper does have those characteristics ---
| when one is folding it for binding, which is why books
| printed in signatures are more expensive, and actual sewn
| signatures even more so.
| somat wrote:
| No it's not, a major technological advancement was a machine
| that sews for you, there is very little hand sewing done any
| more. The second perhaps more important technological tour de
| force were the weaving machines, there is even less hand
| weaving than there is hand sewing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewing_machine
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom
|
| The problem with the term "hand-made" is how vague it is, you
| would not a call a car "hand made" even though most of the
| parts are put together by hand.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTZ3rJHHSik (Model T Ford
| Assembly Line) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQPFVouph-w
| (honda factory tour) here are two car assembly lines 100
| years apart notice how many people are still required to do
| final assembly.
|
| Personally I think the sewing machine was a trickier problem
| than the weaving machine, We take them for granted today but
| it took 100 years and a real stroke of genius to figure out
| how to invert the process in order to make it simple enough
| for a machine to do it. while weaving has always utilized
| complex machines to make it possible.
| rvense wrote:
| I obviously meant sewn by hand, using a sewing machine. Not
| by a robot. The fabric is cut and passed through a machine
| by a human.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Like your parent, I would consider that cars are, in the
| same sense, "hand made" both including the small runs of
| luxury cars (which are "hand made" in the sense where parts
| might not fit properly because the panel was made by Steve
| on Monday morning, and he got the measurements a bit wrong)
| and a generic mid-range SUV that Ford churned out in huge
| numbers where a "production line" still has humans working
| on every vehicle, even though they have machines to help
| them do a consistent job.
|
| We should distinguish two kinds of weaving machine,
| fortunately my sister is a textile artist so I have to hand
| exactly the best examples. A few minutes walk from her home
| is Saltaire, which today is a tourist attraction but was
| historically economically important. Titus Salt's mill, for
| which the village provides housing and so on, had the
| second kind of weaving machine. The Mill produced fabric
| much like you'd see today, yards and yards of identical
| material woven at incredible speed.
|
| But for centuries before such mills were built, the first
| kind of weaving machine had existed. You won't see many in
| use today, some kinds of University might show them to
| students, a few museums have one that can be demonstrated.
| But on the Outer Hebrides there are lots, and that's
| because Harris Tweed is specifically required to be made
| this way, on those islands, the same way Champagne has to
| be made in a specific way in a particular region of France.
|
| It is in principle possible for humans to literally weave
| fabrics by hand, but it's ridiculously laborious, so the
| first machine (the one used to make Harris Tweed) makes a
| lot of sense. But if we're going to (and ordinarily people
| do) insist this counts as Hand Weaving then it seems also
| reasonable to say that operating a sewing machine to make a
| pair of jeans is _also_ hand making clothes.
|
| [Edited to simplify + clarify last sentence]
| blululu wrote:
| The boundary between machine and hand is fundamentally
| nebulous. Saying that we add human process feels like a
| backwards framing here. People do QA on things done by hand.
| People feed yarn into their own needles. The current process
| for knitwear manufacturing is basically the same as it was 200
| years ago, but we have removed humans to the greatest extent
| possible. However with socks or yardage people are constantly
| operating on the machines. Someone needs to feed the yarn and
| patch it when it snaps. The boundary between hand and machine
| is just nebulous but every single step of the way has human
| hands.
| arijun wrote:
| The main thesis of the article is that workers in, say, Cambodia
| are not inherently worse at making clothes than workers in a
| first world country. Which seems to be countering some rhetoric I
| have never heard (despite being in pretty... mixed circles), as
| well as patently obvious.
|
| I'm not even sure what the point of the article is, given that
| someone racist enough to believe that rhetoric is probably not
| going to read it in the first place
| achenet wrote:
| I've actually heard a French fashion student opine that
| generally speaking, French made garments are better quality
| than those made in East/South-east/South Asia.
|
| Although she didn't say anything about _why_ this was the case,
| I imagine she 'd agree that it's more to do with French workers
| having better working conditions and aiming for the higher end
| of the market, which means they use better materials, rather
| than some innate superiority of the French that makes the
| uniquely well-suited to tailoring.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Probably the best single, lazy marker for "is this article of
| clothing decent-quality?" is whether it's made with
| developed-world labor, and the reason is simply that it
| doesn't make much sense to pay ultra-expensive labor to make
| pieces with poor construction and shitty materials, since
| you'll end up with not just crap, but _expensive_ crap.
|
| Good stuff's made almost everywhere, but it takes more
| diligence to find it from other sources.
| MITSardine wrote:
| I suppose there's the idea that companies outsource to the
| cheapest possible countries because they want to produce
| things as cheaply as possible on all counts (not just labor),
| which is generally contradictory with high quality.
|
| But this is not necessarily the case, at least not per some
| clothing companies' claims, see for instance "loom"
| https://la-mode-a-l-envers.loom.fr/, a French clothing
| company that produces in Portugal (considerably cheaper labor
| than France and a developed textile industry) despite their
| main selling point being quality and durability.
|
| It is perfectly conceivable that a company would try to cut
| costs on labor, while still attempting to produce high
| quality things. Perhaps not the most common, but not
| impossible.
| Cocorentin wrote:
| Yeah totally agree on this. And I think that's should be
| the example of good product.
| tiagod wrote:
| I'm Portuguese, and although we have a lot of high quality
| textiles being produced here and being used by high end
| designer brands, most Portuguese people are surprised when
| they see the label.
|
| It's usually a very B2B thing (outdated and vague corporate
| site, if any) but I've purchased very nice blanks from
| these factories for very good prices by contacting them
| directly.
|
| There's also a lot of shoe production, but for this there
| are well known consumer facing stores so people are more
| aware.
| klooney wrote:
| At least for made in the USA garments, the joke is always that
| the actual labor is still people from the third world, making
| less than minimum wage- they're just in LA instead of
| Guatemala.
| kbutler wrote:
| Yes, I've never considered worker skill (much less race) to be
| a factor in the low quality of mass-market items.
|
| The mass production process and target price point seem much
| more relevant.
|
| That said, mass production processes are also tailored (ahem)
| to allow specialization - it's doubtful that one person takes
| the garment from fabric bolts to completed garment as could
| happen in a bespoke, individual tailor context (though I'm sure
| custom garments are generally produced by teams of workers as
| well!)
|
| So individual workers are likely to be very highly skilled in
| their individual specialty step and equipment, but may not have
| the range of production and design skill of a master craftsman.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Same goes for electronics. Why is 'everything' made in
| Shenzhen/GBA/China? Skilled labor.
| Tempat wrote:
| I took it as more like, people might kinda think to themselves,
| "this shirt was made by my friend with time and love instead of
| just, you know, coming off the production line" as if mass
| produced clothing is just made by some big corporate machine.
| But of course someone somewhere is actually putting in work to
| make a shirt for you, always.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Somewhat related: has anyone done a study of inflation in terms
| of clothing _adjusted for quality_? This piece notes, for
| instance, that manufacturers have been reducing thread quality
| (having exhausted their ability to reduce fabric quality, I
| suppose) for decades, with major implications for clothing
| longevity.
|
| I've long suspected a lot of supposed economic progress since,
| especially, the 1970s, has just been goods getting worse.
|
| Go look at what it costs to get a chambray work shirt (where we
| got the term "blue collar", so, made for physical labor, not
| something fancy) made with similar-quality fabric and
| construction to a common 1940s or 1950s offering in a Sears
| catalog. Not the ones J Crew or whoever sells, those are fine for
| what they are but they're not built for work, the fabric's
| thinner and they lack extensive double- or triple-stitching and
| other reinforcement.
|
| If you find one under $150, please let me know.
|
| Similar story for jeans, sweatshirts... everything. Hell, even
| athletic socks were better-made decades ago.
|
| [edit] for reference, a 1930s Sears Hercules work shirt,
| basically an early model of what I'm writing about above, cost
| $0.79. Adjusted for official inflation figures? That's about $18.
| $18 shirts are almost all _terrible_ now. This is why I suspect
| there's some bullshit going on with the metrics, and it involves
| laundering (ha!) worse goods into alleged _improvements_ in the
| standard of living. This would also help explain (along with
| Baumol's) why some things so consistently outpace nominal
| inflation: because nominal inflation isn't capturing reality very
| well, so when it hits something that can't (for whatever reason)
| be made worse, that thing seems to "outpace" inflation.
| seper8 wrote:
| I am looking for the same. Some kind of consumer report for
| quality, threadcount, washing machine resistance, etc...
| intrasight wrote:
| Consumer Reports could conceivably do this. But not easily.
| api wrote:
| > I've long suspected a lot of supposed economic progress
| since, especially, the 1970s, has just been goods getting
| worse.
|
| My take is that for the most part the high quality stuff is,
| inflation adjusted, similarly priced, but the market is now
| saturated with an enormous amount of cheap stuff.
|
| The $5-$10 shirts you can buy off Amazon would be literal
| pennies back then. You couldn't get clothing for pennies in the
| 1970s.
| hgomersall wrote:
| The problem now is that paying a high price doesn't imply
| quality.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| How do you know they were better made back then?
|
| This is a place where you have to be extremely aware of
| survivor bias.
|
| You also have to be very careful about inflation adjusted
| dollars vs actual wealth values. For instance the median income
| in the US in 1933 was between $500 and $1000. Inflation
| adjusted that's between 15 and 30k but our median income now is
| much higher than that.
|
| Anecdotally my grandmother felt she was wealthy compared to her
| peers in the 1930s because her family could buy a dress per
| person per year from the Sears catalog.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| We have both real examples of specific common models, and
| depictions (photos, sales art) of same, and not just ones
| regarded as "high end" (which, we're talking outdoor workwear
| in an age when that wasn't remotely _fashionable_ like it
| would be after the 1950s, so there weren't really _fancy_
| versions of these) and the fabric is better, and the
| construction more involved and durable, than that in an $50+
| chambray shirt today. For a (supposedly) inflation-adjusted
| $18.
|
| Most of the examples I've found that approach the originals
| in quality are $200 or more. I want to know if anyone tracks
| one down for less than $150, because I'd likely own 2-3 of
| them before the year's out if they do. 8x the supposedly
| inflation-adjusted price of the original would be, from what
| I can tell, a _bargain_.
|
| Your note that a dress per year felt like a lot is exactly my
| point: if I had to pay $150 per blue-collar work shirt I'd
| feel like I was doing pretty great if I could responsibly buy
| a couple per year. IOW, buying similar quality goods, our
| alleged improvements in QOL are significantly diminished.
|
| [edit] if you look into what decently-constructed (not even
| finely-made! Just, like, not shit) dresses made with fabrics
| that aren't mostly or entirely plastic cost, they're hundreds
| of dollars today, even for fairly simple ones, especially
| midi-length or longer (as there's more fabric than in a mini)
| cratermoon wrote:
| > a dress per year
|
| Also keep in mind that the quality and durability of that
| dress, and similarly-priced clothing of the era, made it
| possible to not _need_ to buy new every season. That dress
| could be expected to last for years, longer with simple
| repairs.
|
| Also, shoes are even worse than clothing for declining
| price/decreasing quality.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| You're not kidding, I can't friggin' believe how bad $70
| sneakers can be these days. My shitty wal mart kids'
| shoes for $10 or whatever in the '90s held up way better
| than a lot of these.
|
| Oddly, the low end getting worse while prices also go up
| has made $200+ good leather shoes more attractive, LOL.
| Though I expect we're about to either see most of those
| companies go out of business, or hike prices $100 or so
| in a short period of time, given post-2021 labor price
| increases. They've got to be hurting for margin right
| now.
| vel0city wrote:
| I have two pairs of sneakers I wear for a lot of things.
| They get at least weekly use. Both are >4 years old. One
| was a pair of Sketchers I got for $40, the other was some
| pair that didn't even have a box I got for $9 at Walmart.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've been disappointed in my $150 shoes that were made in
| the US. I'm about ready to get some leather and make my
| own.
| jwagenet wrote:
| The desire to have a diverse and up to date wardrobe has
| changed whether someone is willing to only have one dress
| and if it is worth repairing. It's not that people need
| to buy new every season, they want to. This puts downward
| pressure on price and quality.
| bluGill wrote:
| People used to shop at goodwill or consignment shops. As
| a kid we went to church with a woman who never wore the
| same dress - it was affordable because she bought and
| sold on consignment most of the time - basically she was
| renting everything.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| People still do.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Vintage quality and style is back in, so there is a lot
| of clothing reuse in hip fashion. However, secondhand
| only works because people buy a surplus of clothing!
| bluGill wrote:
| Secondhand only works when people buy clothing quality
| enough to be worth going secondhand.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Here is an American made work shirt for $70
| https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/mens-long-
| sl... it's in khaki not blue and the cloth is twill vs
| chambray but thats because twill is a better fabric for the
| use case.
|
| And as a reminder blue collar work was _an improvement_
| over the default which was agricultural work. Most workers
| in the US could not afford to buy clothing from a catalog
| in the 1930s.
|
| The dress comparison was as opposed to her peer group who
| wore clothes made out of seed bags.
| pwndByDeath wrote:
| Perhaps the _true_ inflation tracks the price of equivalent
| shirts
| alabastervlog wrote:
| If you're saying there are equivalent shirts today that
| are as good but just in different styles and materials, I
| don't think there are, not at the inflation-adjusted
| ~$18. $50, and maybe you're getting somewhere. Maybe.
|
| I do get that the specific type I called out might have
| some functional equivalent that's simply a different
| style & material but is just as good, but _not_ that
| cheap, they don 't. Under $150, probably, sure. Under
| $50? No.
|
| This suggests that the cost of clothing has inflated at
| more like 3x the nominal inflation rate, despite the
| existence of $18 (or cheaper!) shirts--the inflation was
| eaten up by worsening quality, rather than showing up in
| prices, but _like for like_ , even with a generous
| "functional equivalent" accounting, the change was more
| like $0.79 -> $50+ than $0.79 -> ~$18--your "equivalent"
| dollar under the latter calculation in-fact buys less.
| pwndByDeath wrote:
| I'm curious what other things when compared for quality
| would have a higher than 'normal' inflation. Perhaps
| we've been suffering a higher inflation across many
| 'dimensions'. If CPI doesn't control for enshitification,
| we technically have more inflation than we believe
| kasey_junk wrote:
| You are talking about the hedonic adjustments which is a
| hugely studied part of inflation calculations. For any
| way to calculate broad inflation you'll find products
| that inflated more than the calculation (and less).
|
| Your own example is an interesting one because a) it's
| very hard to compare clothing by objective quality b)
| you're changing the goal posts. I've found a carhart
| product that nearly exactly matches your specification
| and msrp's for $40. I've seen discounters selling it for
| $25. Which is getting very close to your specific target.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This would still undercount the other hidden part of
| inflation, which is loss of quality _of services_. It 's
| sometimes subtle, but once you see it, you'll keep
| spotting it - the main service itself may not get worse,
| but _everything around it does_. Worse seating in the
| waiting rooms, magazines replaced with first-party ads,
| worse decor or lack of it, less complimentary items, dark
| patterns aimed at reducing usage of side offerings
| without eliminating them, adding complicated online
| processes, etc.
|
| My pet peeve is automated checkouts and ordering kiosks.
| These save stores and venues on labor costs _by making
| the customers do the work for the store_. For free, and
| disproportionally wasting customers ' time.
|
| (In many cases this applies to self-service in general.)
| palmotea wrote:
| >> I've long suspected a lot of supposed economic progress
| since, especially, the 1970s, has just been goods getting
| worse.
|
| > Go look at what it costs to get a chambray work shirt
| (where we got the term "blue collar", so, made for physical
| labor, not something fancy) made with similar-quality fabric
| and construction to a common 1940s or 1950s offering in a
| Sears catalog.
|
| > How do you know they were better made back then?
|
| I think it's pretty clear based on what I've read about
| purchasing behavior back then: people would own a relatively
| small quantity of clothes (compared to today), which they'd
| wear for a long time. That just wouldn't be a tenable
| strategy given modern quality.
|
| Also, historically, stuff in the Sears catalog wasn't super
| special high-end stuff. It was common mass market stuff.
| lesostep wrote:
| > would own a relatively small quantity of clothes
| (compared to today), which they'd wear for a long time.
| That just wouldn't be a tenable strategy given modern
| quality.
|
| one problem though. My clothing would also last noticeably
| longer if I was hand-washing it. How much longer I don't
| actually know, but some of the dresses that was passed to
| me from older generations have never seen the inside of a
| washing machine. I also can find similar fabric in some
| stores, so, theoretically, some clothes today would also
| live for decades.
|
| We have to adjust to washing machines and our washing
| habits. Some people I know wash their jeans every week.
| Every. Week. On a high speed. Yeah no shit they would fall
| apart in a year, that's like 20-30 washings in a year if
| they had 2 pairs.
| palmotea wrote:
| >> would own a relatively small quantity of clothes
| (compared to today), which they'd wear for a long time.
| That just wouldn't be a tenable strategy given modern
| quality.
|
| > one problem though. My clothing would also last
| noticeably longer if I was hand-washing it.
|
| While modern clothing might last longer if hand washed,
| the question is _how long_. Up-thread it was noted an old
| $18 (adjusted for inflation) work shirt has the quality
| features of a $200+ shirt today. I 'm under the
| impression that no amount of babying would allow many
| modern clothing items to last a long as people used to
| wear their clothes.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Sears tools were fabricated in American factories. Compare
| those to Harbor Freight.
|
| The sad thing is, if one wanted to buy tools of any sort
| that weren't Harbor Freight, you'd go to another store and
| get the exact same quality but with different colored
| plastic handles that just cost twice as much. And instead
| of tool steel, they're made out of whatever pot metal
| happened to be around that day.
|
| Furniture is now almost always made out of something like
| cardboard, compared to the real wood that it was
| constructed from in that era. It would amuse me as a child
| when I'd watch some old film and the people had all their
| worldly possessions piled up on top of the Model T or maybe
| even a cart, and I couldn't at the time understand why they
| were bothering to do that if they had to flee. Well,
| because I'd do the same if I could somehow afford dining
| room chairs that weren't cheap junk.
|
| Someone in another forum was complaining about Pyrex
| cookware, which is hardly some luxury good itself.
| Apparently they've not been made of the proper
| borosillicate glass in a long time, and so they're no
| longer really oven-safe.
| palmotea wrote:
| > It would amuse me as a child when I'd watch some old
| film and the people had all their worldly possessions
| piled up on top of the Model T or maybe even a cart, and
| I couldn't at the time understand why they were bothering
| to do that if they had to flee. Well, because I'd do the
| same if I could somehow afford dining room chairs that
| weren't cheap junk.
|
| I think it's a bit more than that: those possessions not
| only weren't cheap junk, they also probably consisted of
| a significant fraction of that family's total wealth.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > that family's total wealth
|
| It's a good example of the question: "where is your
| generational wealth stored up?"
|
| For homeowner types it's in your real property and the
| house sitting on top of it. A home and land are assets
| that also come with significant costs for maintenance and
| upkeep. And homeowners are in ridiculous situations of
| living childfree in a 4BR/6BA filling up with litter
| boxes, or their kids all flee the nest and don't want Mom
| and Dad's old place at all? Owning land, however, is a
| good way to ensure that a family invests in their local
| community and cares about the direction it takes, because
| they're not liable to pull up their stakes and go
| elsewhere.
|
| So a century ago, and probably for hundreds of years, if
| a family didn't own land, I can see furniture as the
| soundest investment for generational wealth. Because
| sturdy furniture can be used by anyone for a long time,
| and its maintenance costs can be minimal. So you sit in
| your great-grandfather's chair, and occasionally needing
| to move, hopefully find ways to take it all along with
| you. Sadly in an emergency, transportation costs and
| logistics can outstrip their value now. All the time I
| see people abandoning furniture because they didn't
| account for how unwieldy it becomes with time. But
| furniture and clothing are so replaceable,
| interchangeable, and nearly fungible, it's now a lousy
| way to store up wealth.
|
| So where's your generational wealth built? What will your
| great-grandchildren enjoy when the world's a different
| place? Your 401(k)? A McMansion? Your Prius?
| jrmg wrote:
| > people would own a relatively small quantity of clothes
| (compared to today), which they'd wear for a long time.
| That just wouldn't be a tenable strategy given modern
| quality.
|
| I think the point being made by the OP is that it might be
| a tenable strategy if you were to spend an equivalent
| portion of your income on said clothes - which would be
| 'very expensive' by modern standards.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Has cotton become more expensive in the last 90 years? What
| about labor? I'm sorry for being lazy, I don't have time right
| now to research. I just want to bring up the point that a lot
| can change in almost a century. So just doing an inflation-
| adjusted price comparison is not that helpful.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Oh, I don't think it's so much that: I think, rather, that
| improvements in economic productivity have been wildly
| overstated, especially since the 1970s, and instead we've
| been seeing a lot of our "improvements" in the form of goods
| getting worse. IOW inflation in terms of same-quality goods
| from the early or mid 20th century is a ton higher than our
| ordinary inflation rate, and much (not all!) of our
| "productivity improvements" are actually goods getting worse
| --inflation's only as low as it is because we're treating
| worse goods as comparable to better ones.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think this thread is conflating "quality going down" and
| "low-cost tier getting cheaper and more popular."
|
| Look at Ikea. They sell a wooden table _with four chairs_
| for $199 (Hagernas). $199 for a place for a family of four
| to eat on new furniture, and it looks all right! That is a
| remarkable amount of value. Even if that won 't last
| forever, high-quality stuff has always been expensive; like
| any dining set that anyone would consider "quality" would
| be at least $1000 new, or the cost of five of these Ikea
| sets.
|
| So I guess my point is that the Dust Bowl farmers who had
| nice furniture maybe only had that because they didn't have
| a choice; maybe they would have preferred to save that
| money or buy clothes or better food but they really had no
| low-end options. And having that choice for an Ikea table
| would have actually made them richer, not poorer.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Another factor is reluctance to repair. When a plastic
| laminated particle board breaks, virtually nobody wants
| to fix it. I don't personally know how, but it's not
| impossible. For whatever reason, simple repair skills
| have massively deteriorated in later generations.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > high-quality stuff has always been expensive
|
| The argument being made here is that, if you hold quality
| constant and adjust for inflation, many goods now cost a
| greater percentage of the median income than they did in
| the past.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I believe that real incomes, even under some expert
| analysis incorporating my vaguely-proposed adjustments
| and assuming I'm even right in the first place, are up! I
| haven't done the legwork to be prepared to argue against
| that, and anyway I very much _doubt_ it 's wrong. We
| _are_ better off, over all, I think, than in the early
| 20th century (say).
|
| I just also don't think we're _as much_ better off as
| some common metrics suggest. I especially worry that
| those kinds of measurements have been badly decoupled
| from reality over, in particular, the last ~50 years or
| so, such that experienced improvements in standard of
| living are far smaller than one might think from looking
| at the numbers, and I think that 's true not only because
| we see certain very-important things like housing,
| healthcare, and education costs outpacing inflation, but
| because of declines in the quality of many (not all!)
| goods at nominally-same (inflation adjusted) prices. In
| fact, I think this is part (in addition to the oft-blamed
| Baumol's cost disease) of why those important things are
| outpacing inflation so very much--they can't cut quality
| as readily or as much as other categories of goods have
| been able to, so only have _actual_ productivity
| increases to put downward pressure on their costs, and I
| think actual productivity increases have been... quite a
| bit smaller over the last five decades than some figures
| suggest they are.
|
| I think progress is far more _mixed_ --and that an awful
| lot of real progress has manifested due to regulation
| forcing quality above certain levels, in concert with
| improvements in industry & materials, not solely from
| productivity increases or better materials. This is a
| sharply different narrative than the common one,
| especially since Reagan in US popular culture, and in
| modern libertarian-influenced discourse that's now fairly
| influential.
|
| We have better ordinary, bottom-tier ready-made bread
| than in 1850 because it's illegal to mix in sawdust now,
| and not only is it illegal, there's a good-enough chance
| of getting caught and punished that it isn't really _a
| thing_ any more. We have better housing (to the degree
| that it _is_ better, which is a mixed bag but I would
| certainly concede leans overall better) due _both_ to
| improvements in how we build houses and to new materials,
| _and_ because legally-required minimum quality is way,
| way higher than it used to be in a variety of important
| ways. Cars are very safe mostly because of regulation
| (they 're more reliable largely due to international
| competition! Market pressure _does_ work, I 'm just
| extremely skeptical that they're as magically-effective,
| and certainly not as optimally-effective-when-minimally-
| regulated, as some suppose)
| adrr wrote:
| Online has made things more expensive. Returns cost a lot of
| money. Company is paying $10+ to return an item with returns
| at 20%. Factor in the exchange processing and shipping.
|
| Dyes make fabric fit differently. Dark shirt will have more
| weight and less stretch than a lighter colored shirt. If
| you're a big company, you have multiple manufacturers making
| the same line and the pieces will fit differently.
|
| Having a store, you can just try on everything.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| > If you find one under $150, please let me know.
|
| Gustin has a couple shirts that fit the profile, for instance
| this triple-stitched 11oz workshirt for $114
| https://www.weargustin.com/store/shirts-168-italy-dark-oak-w...
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Hahaha, I admit I posted in part to get the "HN is better
| than Google at finding things, as long as you claim it can't
| be done" effect :-)
|
| Not quite the fabric I had in mind, but those look damn good,
| really close style-wise, and are on the short-list for the
| next time I sit down to look over my next batch of clothing
| purchases. Thanks!
| WillAdams wrote:
| Crowd-funded, not available for direct order/purchase.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I doubt the sears catalog shirt was made by the thousands
| sitting on warehouse shelves.
| WillAdams wrote:
| The Five Brothers Shirt which I was gifted when I was
| down on my luck and just out of the service was made in a
| quantity which allowed a friend's aunt to purchase 4 of
| them as gifts for all the younger folks at her Christmas
| party that year, and there were quite a few on the sales
| floor at Sears when my folks took me school clothes
| shopping each year.
|
| They are still in business, but I wonder what changed
| when the last time I looked at their shirts, they were
| north of $150, and now they are quite competitive in
| price, and I worry about the quality as is being debated
| in this thread.
|
| Still have that shirt, four decades later, and still wear
| it around the house, though it's a bit frayed from rough
| work chopping and hauling firewood when I was younger.
| jwagenet wrote:
| OP mention shirts from the 30s-50s. I'm sure the
| operation warehoused more as the market changed, but I
| wouldn't be surprised if some of the garments 100 years
| ago were basically made to order for a mail order taking
| a week or more to deliver. I'd expect by the 80s this had
| entirely changed.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I generally assume crowd funded to mean "created by a
| quasi-outsider with not much industry knowledge who will
| make simple mistakes that drastically reduce the quality of
| the product"
| adregan wrote:
| Would a Filson[0] fit the bill ($145)? It's 5oz. material (what
| weight are you targeting?).
|
| Anecdotally, I wear a wool coat from Filson that is nearly 20
| years old. Halfway through its life they reconstructed the
| fraying cuffs for free.
|
| 0: https://www.filson.com/products/chambray-cpo-shirt-rinsed-
| in...
| devin wrote:
| Filson's quality has continued to decline over the years.
| devin wrote:
| Just to be clear: Filson is still "good" quality for the
| price IMO, but vintage Filson is built like a tank. My
| button down shirts from 15 years ago have never even needed
| a button replaced, whereas newer shirt construction from
| Bangladesh does not seem as strong to me. Material quality
| is better/heavier for my older shirts.
|
| I'm not sure if they scrapped it, but somewhat recently (a
| year ago?) I saw that they were trying to facilitate sales
| of vintage Filson through their site presumably because
| they see the people who care about quality buying vintage
| Filson on eBay instead of the newer stuff they're selling.
|
| Also, while it's certainly not the case that "made overseas
| = lesser quality", Filson's website has a prominently
| displayed filter/category for "Made in the USA". This is
| where you can get a really heavy knit sweater for $500 that
| IMO is worthy of the old Filson name.
| blululu wrote:
| This is a good question and this is definitely happening but
| it's not clear how big a percentage of purchased goods fall
| into this category. Many other sectors (Automobiles, Consumer
| Electronics, Chemicals), have radically improved in quality
| since the 70s.
| thechao wrote:
| My dad was privy to my grandfather complaining to my great-
| great grandfather about the bad quality of houses, tractors,
| and clothes in the 1950s -- that the stuff built in the 1910s
| and 1920s was so much better. Carl (in his thick southern
| German accent) made the point that all the cheap clothes they
| bought to keep them out of jail (public nudity) disintegrated
| in a year and the _only_ clothes that survived were the
| expensive ones, or the random ones that somehow survived the
| test of time. Apparently he 'd had the same argument with his
| grandfather back in the 1890s. Sooo... I dunno; maybe things
| have always gotten worse, and were always better in the past?
| That doesn't seem to jive with the way I live vs the literal
| log fucking cabin they lived in.
| jollyllama wrote:
| > that the stuff built in the 1910s and 1920s was so much
| better.
|
| Pre-war goods.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| > That doesn't seem to jive with the way I live vs the
| literal log fucking cabin they lived in.
|
| I propose that different goods have different trajectories.
| Lighting is better _and_ cheaper than 100 years ago. Boots
| maybe aren 't.
| amoshebb wrote:
| Maybe, but boots for sure are better and cheaper than 100
| years ago. I think the only thing that makes this slightly
| confusing is that what were old mass-produced workwear have
| become limited-run fashion items, so looking at things like
| M1918 boots or cowboy boots and comparing to modern Red
| Wings or Luccheses it's tempting to say "Oh how much more
| expensive leather-soled brass-hardware hand-tanned full-
| grain leather boots are now", ignoring that Modern soldiers
| wear lightweight goretex running shoe-boots and farmers
| wear cozy neoprene pull-ons with anti-slip soles and carbon
| fibre toes, both of which cost half of inflation-adjusted
| prices of the objectively inferior boots of 1925.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Go look up the origin of the word "shoddy" as it relates to
| the crappy field uniforms unscrupulous vendors sold to the
| Federal government during the Civil War.
| bluGill wrote:
| What people think is quality and what is are not always the
| same.
|
| Modern building codes make the cheapest houses much better
| than the best houses from 100 years ago. Nobody knows how to
| see insulation so they don't count it. Old houses often
| overbuild some obvious beam and so that part of the house is
| very strong, but some other beam wasn't strong. Yes old
| houses had access to old growth trees that were stronger, but
| that doesn't make up for good engineering.
| thechao wrote:
| The old family farm, in Indiana, had all these short
| "barns". Because they were from Germany, they couldn't
| figure out how to build properly footed foundations, in the
| Indiana wilderness. The result was the bottom logs of the
| houses kept rotting out. So, every 10-or-so years, they'd
| just build a new log cabin. The old log cabin was the new
| barn. And, yeah, the old growth logs meant most of the
| cabins were only 4 logs high, since each log was 3' thick,
| after they were squared up. By the time the cabin rotted
| out the second log, the last logs were dry enough they'd
| stop rotting. The farm had a number of these weird, short,
| log cabin barns.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Insulation used to be a ton less important--wood and gas
| heating were cheap, and nobody had air conditioning because
| it didn't exist yet.
|
| What was more important was the layout of the house, the
| windows, and the ceiling heights, all being thoughtfully
| arranged to allow the right kinds of airflow in the right
| seasons.
|
| Most modern houses in climates like seen in most of the US
| turn into an unbearable mold-farm of a wet oven if the AC
| is turned off over the Summer--they _depend_ on AC or they
| start kinda decaying in place within a year, aside from
| being unbearable to enter on a hot day. A 1900-construction
| house that hasn 't been updated to something like modern
| standards is far more comfortable to live in, in those
| circumstances.
|
| (your broader point that some things in modern houses are
| better due to e.g. improving materials or engineering even
| as other things like framing have gotten worse due to
| worsening materials, I don't dispute, but modern house
| design as far as airtightness and insulation is very much a
| trade-off that leaves them dependent on AC in many--and, as
| the Earth warms, ever-more--climates, _not_ strictly an
| improvement)
| bluGill wrote:
| > wood and gas heating were cheap, and nobody had air
| conditioning because it didn't exist yet.
|
| Gas heating in an old house for just one month uses more
| energy than all HVAC loads for a year in a similar sized
| new house. Where I live you must heat during that month
| of the pipes freeze/break so there is no getting around.
| dann0 wrote:
| There's a huge survivorship bias in the overall
| conversation about old things being better than new things.
|
| The poorly made houses from 100 years ago just aren't there
| anymore.
|
| The junk clothing from 50 years ago was thrown out.
| bmacho wrote:
| Is this _true_ tho? It feels like a made-up reply and
| gaslighting. You demonstrated that you can say the opposite
| of what OP experiences. Now what?
| Tempat wrote:
| Your point about inflation is such a clear observation that it
| seems self-evident, and yet I don't think I've ever seen
| decline in product quality linked explicitly to causing skewed
| inflation numbers (and even skewed productivity numbers)
| before. Would be fun to see a same-quality inflation index, as
| tricky as that would be.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I'm not sure why, but the inflation estimate felt off and
| inflation calculators get less accurate the further back you
| go, so I looked up some figures for the 1930s. Turns out that
| $18 is a decent estimate.
|
| You can absolutely make a thick, hard-wearing shirt for $18 - I
| am sure someone does indeed make this shirt; most people just
| want different things. Today's consumer wants clothes that fit
| nicely, something in fashion, with soft materials and trendy
| colors and comforting advertising.
|
| I can't point you to a $18 hard-wearing work shirt, but I can
| point you to something even better: regular Wrangler Rustler
| jeans from Walmart, $13.98. 100% cotton, thick solid denim, and
| they look and fit the same as $100 Levis. Even better, for the
| denim nerds there is a raw denim version, only available online
| in a boot cut; select the color "rigid" [3].
|
| In another category of heavyweight cloth objects, I can also
| recommend the "Rothco" canvas duffle bag, $30 [4]. Brand in
| quotation marks because it seems to be generic Indian military
| surplus sold under other names as well. The stitching is a bit
| on the weak side for extreme use but it generally holds up
| well. If anyone here knows of an even sturdier alternative I
| would love to hear it.
|
| My checklist: 1) material - must be all natural fiber, 2)
| weight of material, 3) strength of stitching, 4) type of
| stitch, 5) reviews that mention serious long-term use. One
| review by a mechanic/firefighter/etc is worth ten million
| generic reviews.
|
| Anyone else have tips on quality, long-lasting clothes?
|
| -------------------
|
| I used this very useful site [0] to find a paper discussing
| household income in 1930 [1] which estimates the mean at around
| $2900/yr and the median around $2500/yr per "family." 2023
| household income is 114.5k/year mean and 80.6k/year median.
| That is, household income has increased by a factor of 32.2x.
|
| That said, household size has declined from 4.1 to 2.5 from
| 1930 to 2025, so that is 0.61x the size in 1930, so median
| individual income is really up by 19.6x. So your $0.79 shirt is
| today $15 (by median individual income) or $24 (by mean
| individual income.)
|
| [0] https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1930-1939
|
| [1]
| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89043221407&seq=31...
|
| [2]
| https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-2...
|
| -------------------
|
| [3] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wrangler-Rustler-Men-s-and-Big-
| Me...
|
| [4] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XNW1UI
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There's been a lot of discussion in recent years about how
| fashion has stabilized over the past couple of decades whereas
| it used to be that fashion was in constant flux. Can we notice
| much difference between the typical street clothes of today
| versus those of a decade or even two decades ago? The clothing
| styles of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s are all quite
| different. Perhaps the lower quality means the industry now has
| a way to guarantee constant product sales so they're no longer
| pushing fashion trends as hard as they used to.
|
| Trends certainly do still come and go, especially for young
| women, but overall society seems to have settled into a state
| of low energy for fashion change.
| cvarjas wrote:
| Le Laboureur work shirts can be under $150 at some stores. They
| are a different style though and have been difficult to find in
| stock online.
|
| I only recently ordered some so have no direct experience. The
| durability of the fabric and quality of construction are
| substantial from everything I've read.
| achenet wrote:
| Being unable to find underwear that properly suited me, I tried
| making my own clothes a while back.
|
| The experience was hugely humbling, and completely robbed me of
| any belief I had in the idea that "hard work pays off" - the
| person who made my pants probably works 12 hours a day, 6 days in
| a week in an awful sweatshop, producing garments of a quality I
| couldn't hope to approximate, and is paid a few dollars a day,
| while I have a cushy, well paid dev job where I work a fraction
| of those hours and get paid a few orders of magnitude more.
|
| A friend did (correctly) remark that this was due to programming
| skills being rarer and more valuable than sewing skills, and this
| is true, but I remain highly suspicious of anyone suggesting that
| "work harder" is a route to riches.
| delichon wrote:
| Work isn't the only argument to the success function, luck and
| smarts are in there too. But without the work you need a shit
| ton more luck and smarts.
| bluGill wrote:
| Work hard is one element of success. It is not the only one,
| but it is very important.
|
| What you work on matters. The proverbial poor starving artist
| works very hard - but not on something society values and so
| they don't make much money. Many great jobs require working
| very hard in school but once you graduate you can coast along
| doing much less hard work. Even if you work equally hard in
| school as someone else, different areas of study mean you can
| expect to earn different amounts.
|
| Luck is also a factor but you cannot control that.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > Luck is also a factor but you cannot control that.
|
| I agree, but making choices which increase exposure to
| opportunity is often lumped-in with "luck".
| dekleinewolf wrote:
| Agree. As a programmer that likes to sew in her free time; I do
| think it is significantly easier to pick 10 random people of
| the street and make them into excellent sewists within a year
| than to make them into good programmers.
|
| Programming is harder and more specialized, but it's not harder
| work.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It's a sigmoid. If you are rich, hard work is unnecessary, if
| you are broke, hard work is insufficient. In the middle, work
| ethic has some gradient to it.
| joostdecock wrote:
| Kudos for trying to make clothes for yourself. I feel everyone
| should do that at some point.
| Apocalypse_666 wrote:
| I suggest looking into a phenomenon called "unequal exchange".
| Turns out that officially ending colonialism and actually
| ending it are two very different things. Your programming
| skills aren't just paid more because they are rarer, it is
| because we exploit the global South on a large scale.
|
| The most blatant example of this I came across recently was
| this website, Asket, who sell clothing but are also fully
| transparent about their pricing. This is admirable, but also
| completely turned me off of buying anything from them: it costs
| them 43 dollars to create and import a pair of jeans, which
| they then sell for 170. Their value-add in this chain is a
| website and instagram ads, while the company who actually
| created the garment gets 29$.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| It stuns me that anyone ever believed in that myth.
| andrewvc wrote:
| A few years ago I got into the hobby of handmade leather goods,
| like wallets.
|
| One thing that struck me as I learned more about the process was
| that I could with little training, make a higher quality, hand
| sewn wallet than even most luxury brands for less money by simply
| buying more expensive material. Indeed, the wallets I've made are
| still going strong.
|
| What was also apparent was that I certainly had far less skill
| than the people constructing those mass market wallets. To be
| able to operate an industrial sewing machine at speed takes far
| more skill than learning to saddle stitch by hand. When you
| stitch by hand you can go quite slowly, and taking the time is
| the point of a hobby anyway. A sewing machine is slightly worse
| in quality (but not by a lot) but also scales way better.
|
| If you watch videos of skilled folks sewing together shoes on
| youtube it's insanely impressive how precise and practiced those
| folks are!
|
| Back to wallets, most hobbyists will take a very high end and
| thick piece of leather, cut out the pattern with an exacto knife,
| skive the parts that need it, hand stitch it with a saddle
| stitch, then finish the edges. Whereas a mass-produced wallet
| will often use a blend of leather, synthetic fabric for pocket
| liners, and be machine stitched, with some other machines used
| along the way. The hobbyist design is simple and robust, it's
| just layers of leather thicker than you'd find in a normal
| wallet.
|
| A mass manufactured wallet, even many luxury ones use thinner
| pieces of leather and synthetic material and construction methods
| that are less robust. It's not all about cheapness though, some
| of these things require extra work. I think a lot of it is about
| producing a product that looks a specific way, even if it is less
| durable. For instance some luxury products will use a delicate
| finish (like a paint) that will look awesome, but just won't last
| as long as a thick piece of vegetable tan. A thin turned edge can
| certainly be a failure point as well, and that takes more effort
| to make! I also have to wonder if these brands intentionally want
| their items to wear out to encourage people to buy more. I
| imagine the sort of person who buys a Gucci wallet sees it more
| as a seasonal status symbol than as an investment.
| intrasight wrote:
| Fashion over function is most definitely a thing.
|
| But there's also status signaling in having something that you
| can pass down to your descendants. Of course that signal only
| transfers to those in the know.
|
| Edit: My childhood friend inherited from her parents (who
| inherited from their parents) a badge making company that made
| leather badges for first responders. They went out of business
| last year and sold off all their leather stock.
| verbify wrote:
| > Indeed, the wallets I've made are still going strong
|
| I'm confused - I purchase a new leather wallet from a
| department store (a UK one that has a reputation for quality)
| about once every ten years. How old are your wallets? Or how
| quickly did your other wallets wear out?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Wife bought a Saddleback Leather wallet for me. I suspect a
| grandson will inherit it. I wish I could afford other
| products of theirs. The leather is thick enough that even if
| a stitch came out, I figure it'd be worth having repaired.
|
| A wallet that only lasts 10 years seems disposable at this
| point.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| My question is; Why even have a "wallet" at this point?
|
| My teens use these little things that attach to their
| phones to hold gym key, debit card and ID.
|
| I use a traditional "wallet" or billfold as my abuelo used
| to call them, but I am positively a dinosaur using one.
| Also, the darn thing hurts my back if I leave it in my back
| pocket while driving/sitting.
|
| Heck, I have been eyeing those crossbody bags or saccoche
| to hold the things that are in my wallet.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Also, the darn thing hurts my back if I leave it in my
| back pocket while driving/sitting.
|
| Not that anyone has ever had to worry about pickpockets
| in my generation (even criminals aren't as skilled as
| they were in eras past, I guess), but I've always carried
| it in a front pocket. I'd lose it a dozen times a month
| otherwise.
|
| >My question is; Why even have a "wallet" at this point?
|
| There are things I keep in it I need. It's been a long
| while since anyone mistook me for a teenager.
| wiredfool wrote:
| I bought a Saddleback wallet at least 14 years ago, and
| it's still in pretty good shape. There are a couple of
| stitches that have broken on the fold, but it's generally
| ok. Has a nice patina.
|
| Though, it's thick. Really thick. And the card pocket edges
| are thick enough that they will destroy a credit card in 3
| years or so. (Except for the top one on each side, and the
| hidden slot behind the visible cards.)
|
| I was expecting to use it forever, but between the
| thickness and just not using nearly as many cards/cash any
| more, I'll probably give up on it and make a thinner one
| that's specific to the 3 or 4 cards I use and a stashed
| bill or two.
|
| (Make because we now have way too much leather because my
| wife has started making barefoot shoes, and hey stash. Have
| a really nice leather laptop sleeve now too.)
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Same, I've got a few Saddleback pieces including a wallet
| and it's seen some abuse over the past decade but it's
| supple and strong with no signs of wearing down anytime
| soon.
|
| Who knows if their claim of "They'll fight over it when
| you're dead" is true or not, but can confirm the quality
| will easily outlast 10 years with no problem.
| andrewvc wrote:
| The oldest are maybe old 5-6 years, but they still look
| great!
|
| That said depending on how you store it ymmv. If you keep it
| in the same pocket as your keys you'll have a different
| outcome from keeping it in a separate pocket of a bag or just
| even in its own pocket in your pants.
| 1970-1-1 wrote:
| few things are more enervating to an engineer than buying
| clothing or food. Everything is a scam to hide what you are
| actually buying. In the USA you can even advertise acrylic as
| "silk".
| cratermoon wrote:
| "Mass-produced clothing is low quality when someone overseeing
| the project decided to make it low quality. Mass-produced
| clothing is high quality when someone overseeing the project
| decided to make it high quality."
|
| Now change "Mass-produced clothing" to "commercial software".
| infecto wrote:
| It's not entirely inaccurate, but it's an unfair comparison to
| equate a highly engineered product with one that isn't. In
| shirt manufacturing, inputs and their impact on output quality
| are well understood, unlike in highly engineered products that
| involve many contributors.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Are you saying a piece of clothing designed to be mass-
| produced is _not_ highly engineered and doesn 't involve many
| contributors?
| infecto wrote:
| By the usual definitions of highly engineered, nope, it's
| not. In today's term it is a low-complexity
| commodity/consumer good. Sure, multiple hands may touch it
| during the manufacturing process but its low complexity
| even with machines involved. Each step can be measured and
| the combined product does not have multiple workflows going
| into it.
|
| A highly engineered good would a jet engine, an MRI machine
| or similar. Multiple teams, steps that may be hard to
| measure and perhaps quality output that may not be fully
| measured until the end product is put together.
|
| Not sure why _you_ would think otherwise.
|
| It is not a disagreement with the idea but its definitely
| not a good apples to apples comparison. I guess it fits
| well with certain narratives people love.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I worked at a well-known multi-national sportswear
| manufacturer, programming on their product lifecycle
| management interfacing with logistics, manufacturing,
| design, marketing, the whole works.
|
| Please believe me when I say these items are _highly
| engineered_ , from start to finish.
|
| To address your specific assertion, "the combined product
| does not have multiple workflows going into it", not a
| single piece of clothing comes off the assembly line
| without having multiple teams globally coordinating every
| step along the way.
| infecto wrote:
| I think we might be talking past each other due to
| different definitions of "highly engineered." I've got
| some touch in this space too, family in textile
| manufacturing, and I've seen firsthand what goes into
| setting up and running these operations.
|
| Yes, there are many teams involved: design, sourcing,
| logistics, etc., and coordination is non-trivial. But
| when I say "not highly engineered," I'm speaking in
| relative terms-compared to something like a jet engine,
| semiconductor fab, or an MRI machine, where you have
| interlocking systems, deep R&D, and layers of complex
| subsystems that are difficult to validate in isolation.
|
| Textiles are complex in a logistical and operational
| sense, but not in the same way. With some capital, a
| motivated team can spin up a factory making garments.
| That's just not possible with truly high engineering
| products.
|
| So I don't disagree that a lot of work goes into it, just
| that the comparison feels off. We're evaluating
| "complexity" on different planes. Software is not an
| semiconductor fab but its almost not a textile plant.
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| Industrial knitting machines can make entire garments without
| human involvement, but a person will probably still fold it and
| sew a label onto it.
| blululu wrote:
| In theory yes but very few patterns can be made like this and
| the cost of such machines is not favorable. Often a linking
| machine or a cut and sew stage is needed and this is far more
| hand powered than anything else.
| zombot wrote:
| Regardless, no mass-produced clothing ever fits me. If I had the
| money, I'd have my stuff tailor-made.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| You can take off-the-shelf clothes to your local tailor to have
| it tailored to your body. It cost ~$10-15 per garment. A lot
| less expensive then tailor-making an entire garment.
| cge wrote:
| >You can take off-the-shelf clothes to your local tailor to
| have it tailored to your body. It cost ~$10-15 per garment.
|
| Unless you're referring to historical prices, I'm not sure
| where those numbers are coming from. For US/UK prices, good
| tailoring of something RTW, if it can be done at all, would
| cost at least 10 times that amount; even something as simple
| as hemming trousers could cost more that that. And some
| things are not usually altered, eg, even bespoke shirtmakers
| usually make new shirts with adjustments after doing fittings
| rather than altering ones they have made.
| bluGill wrote:
| My dad was sent to some developing country on a business trip.
| While there he bought a tailor made suit for fairly cheap - he
| wore that suit every day for several decades. It was more
| comfortable than the jeans/t-shirt most people wear.
|
| I don't remember which country, but I'm pretty sure we would
| call it a developed country today so probably not worth going
| there today. Still if you get an opportunity to travel you can
| find tailors in some countries that do great work for cheap.
| (and also rip offs that do terrible work for high prices)
| fifticon wrote:
| Something I have noticed over the last 20 years: Male underwear.
| The stuff I used to buy in the 1990's would function until it
| fell apart because of holes worn in the actual cloth. The stuff I
| buy now (boxer shorts) appears designed to fall apart. Mainly,
| the rubber stuff making them elastic breaks down faster than
| anything else, so in about 12 months, they are horrible to use,
| because the broken rubber makes them slide off me, in a way that
| is more impractical than sexy. Given that this was not a problem
| in the early 2000s, I conclude that some MBA must have optimized
| them in the meantime. There is probably some brand that costs 4x
| as much where this isn't a problem - but those I used to buy in
| the nineties, didn't cost 4 times as much.
| johnisgood wrote:
| What if you handwash them? Do you think it would last longer?
| As in, do you think it has to do with the washing machine (and
| quality)?
| reaperman wrote:
| Wouldn't that only be relevant if the old ones weren't also
| machine-washed? Also, what % of people in developed countries
| are handwashing their underpants? The only semi-widespread
| handwashing I'm aware of in developed nations are for wool
| sweaters and sometimes women's bras.
| jrmg wrote:
| Lots of the modern world still line-dries laundry, but this
| is exceedingly uncommon in the USA.
| reaperman wrote:
| Line-drying is very different from "hand-washing".
|
| I "line-dry" (drying rack) a lot of my clothes (pretty
| much all my dress pants, dress shirts, anything that I
| don't want shrinking in a hot dryer). But I don't use a
| bucket or tub to handwash and handwring my clothes; I
| still machine-wash on delicate with cold water even if I
| line dry. I've never met anyone who hand washes, in any
| country (though I know it's popular in many less-
| developed nations, I haven't met anyone who does).
|
| I have occasionally handwashed very expensive wool
| sweaters, but I prefer dry-cleaning them, not only
| because of the labor but also because if I let them soak
| even just a little too long the wool fibers start
| separating and permanently changes the sweater.
| bluGill wrote:
| Line drying was not common in the 1990s (in the US) when
| the claim is underwear lasted. Washing machines have
| switch to low water use versions, so that might be a
| factor (I doubt it, but it the only other thing I can
| think of)
| thehappypm wrote:
| Anecdotally I still have some of my high-school underwear and
| it seems to be outlasting any new underwear I buy!
| brabel wrote:
| I always buy underwear in Brazil when I visit. My aunt knows
| where to get the good stuff, those things last for 10 years,
| easily. I don't even know how much they cost as she makes a
| point to not let me pay for them :D but they're probably very
| cheap compared to most places/brands.
|
| I see ZR on it, so I think it's this brand:
| https://www.zeerucci.com.br/cueca-boxer-sem-cost-3439?srslti...
|
| The ones I get in Europe and Australia literally have holes in
| them after two or three usages, even more expensive ones, it's
| just a joke. Same thing with jeans... how can they not last
| longer than a few months???? My old Brazilian jeans from the
| 1990's still look in perfect shape, if only I could wear them
| without looking like outdated by 30 years. I still keep them
| anyway, waiting for the very-lose-jeans fit to come back one
| day!
| imp0cat wrote:
| Most modern jeans include a percentage of elastane (lycra),
| which makes them both more comfortable and more susceptible
| to wear damage.
| amelius wrote:
| Another annoyance: some underwear brands put a booklet of long
| labels exactly between the cheeks.
| hooverd wrote:
| Weirdly, American Eagle, yes the teenager brand, makes really
| good boxer shorts.
| jibbit wrote:
| there was an 'arms race' in detergent strength throughout the
| 2000s. modern detergent contains more specialised enzymes, is
| more concentrated, and is more effective - but is (reportedly)
| much harder on the lifespan of garments
| squeedles wrote:
| About ten years ago, I started garment sewing because it was a
| superpower. I could create something that hit two previously
| exclusive conditions: It fit me properly (tall, long arms) and it
| was interesting (not the one bland pattern available in my fit).
|
| It gave me a respite from the computer, a nice creative outlet,
| and was very satisfying. I've made about 140 shirts for myself
| and others since then, and every one is unique, with wild fabrics
| not found in any commercial garment. I very much recommend making
| things for yourself.
|
| The interesting thing is that almost everyone I talk to about it
| says "you should sell them". Thing is, it takes me about 2-3
| afternoons to make a shirt, plus consumables costs (retail
| $30-40, wholesale would obviously be lower), and scaling the
| process basically requires scaling the number of people doing it.
|
| So I always respond that I just do it for the benefit of myself,
| family, and friends, but I have a keen understanding of how much
| the manufacturers are squeezing costs through labor, materials,
| and construction techniques to hit that $18 shirt that falls
| apart in a couple months.
| samvher wrote:
| How did you go about learning this? It's something that I've
| been thinking I might be interested in picking up.
| squeedles wrote:
| Just start. Most shirt construction is based on a two-piece
| collar, a yoke, and button front. I started with a cheap
| pattern (McCalls 2447) that covered those aspects, and
| started modifying from there, but any dress or sport shirt
| pattern will give you the same basic construction.
|
| Any machine will do. I had borrowed a cheapo Singer Simple
| machine from my father in law to make some pillows. Reverse
| lever broke on my second shirt, made a new one with some
| D-shaft and coupler from Mcmaster-Carr and still using it.
|
| First shirt was recognizable as a shirt and sort of fit,
| second shirt was better, and by the third I had mostly dialed
| things in. Like any skill, practice makes perfect. Mostly
| sewn woven fabric, except for some TOS tunics with the velour
| knits. Made a pair of pants that I wasn't happy with and
| intend to loop back to that one of these days. Thing is, wild
| fabric is more appropriate for shirts than pants, so that is
| where I have focused.
|
| My various works https://dave.org/sewing/
| whartung wrote:
| Also, don't know about your area, but my local library will
| let you checkout a sewing machine.
| adrr wrote:
| Two people in equation. The brand and the factory. Brand will
| get bids from the factories. No one owns their factories any
| more. Factories are always trying to get shit past the brands
| and brands have QA people at the factories ensure it meets
| specs.
|
| Cost for a dress cotton shirt with standard fabric(eg: not
| organic or brand name) will be less than $10. Labor is not that
| expensive compared to fabric/hardware.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| So you are able to create better and more lasting clothes
| because they fit your body better and you likely do better
| cutting and stitching than commercial products.
|
| How do you ensure that the fabric is high quality enough? Where
| are you sourcing it from?
| squeedles wrote:
| Well, that's an interesting question. Most fabric is of
| sufficient quality, so I select for style and look for bold
| color. Summer shirts are mostly light cotton, and there are a
| million places to get that. Quilters and garment sewers are
| the textile equivalent of Star Wars/Star Trek fandoms and
| don't cross paths much, but any store catering to quilters is
| a good place to look for summer shirt fabric.
|
| For winter shirts, I like flannel, and Joann was the best for
| that, particularly when they would put it on sale for
| $2.50/yd. I'll miss walking the aisles, scanning a hundred
| patterns all at once, but will figure something out.
|
| There are plenty of web stores, but it gets tiresome going
| through patterns one at a time instead of seeing a row of
| bolts in one glance, but that's where we are at now.
| Fabric.com used to be the best web store, but amazon bought
| and destroyed them a couple years ago.
|
| Having favorite designers helps narrow the search a bit.
| Alexander Henry Fabrics was my absolute first choice for
| patterns. They did magnificent work, but Marc DeLeon, who was
| the lead, passed away a few months back and his kids are
| shutting down the company. Robert Kaufman fabrics and Michael
| Miller fabrics are two others that have some very fun prints.
|
| One place where quality was an issue was Hobby Lobby. Stopped
| in to check out their selection when Joanns imploded. They
| had a nice selection of patterns, but the fabric felt like
| sandpaper. They also only sold house brand thread rather than
| Coats or Gutterman. Michael's seems to be expanding their
| fabric selection in response to recent events as well, so I'm
| sure the local options will eventually rebound.
| blululu wrote:
| I really appreciate the sentiment of the article. I am always
| annoyed when colleagues say that clothing is made by robots or
| something like that. To the extent that textiles can b automated
| they have been automated. A wool sweater has a lot of steps each
| of which involve a mixture of advanced power tools and human
| hands. A few things to add to the author's points: the 70s-90s
| mark the big change in clothing with the phasing in of the multi-
| fiber agreement
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Fibre_Arrangement). This
| basically opened the door for outsourcing of garment manufacture
| from 1st world to 3rd world countries. It also meant the end of
| the first world textiles industry, and a serious drop in quality.
| To a certain extent this might have been an inevitable measure,
| but that also feels like a cop out for the ability of the most
| influential group of people in history to make policy decisions.
|
| Something that kind of annoys me about the author's take is that
| while they profess a lot of empathy for the third world workers
| who are being (heavily) exploited in textile manufacturing (which
| is terrible), they don't mention their first world neighbors who
| were also put out of a job by such outsourcing arrangements. The
| author is correct that people elsewhere are just as capable as
| people here, but there is more too it than that. Outsourcing
| is/was inspired by a desire for lower costs and higher margins,
| but it is a very anti-social way to achieve these goals. The
| problem with outsourcing arrangements is that the decision makers
| cared about cost more than anything else and they had a lot of
| contempt for the people doing the actual work. Naturally these
| forces combine to lower the quality. It is easy for the modern
| left in America to see this contempt for labor as racism when it
| happens in foreign countries, but they don't seem to see that
| this same animosity is applied to their neighbors. This feels a
| bit callous and I think this misses the bigger point that when we
| devalue work and when we devalue craftsmanship we get lousy
| outcomes.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I'm in a state of rather abject panic about clothing.
|
| I used to be content with a very limited wardrobe of old pants,
| concert tees, and thrift store scores. One of the best ways to
| pretend that I wasn't unmarried, homeless and mentally ill was
| having impeccable hygiene and knowing how to put together an
| outfit.
|
| I've been purchasing at retail (new clothes aren't doused in
| perfume, starts with less damage, and you get that freedom of
| choice) but it's appalling how bad the quality is, and are they
| truly designed to fall apart at a touch? I go for
| outdoors/athletic type fashion and honestly wouldn't want to work
| out, play a sport, or go on a nature hike with these flimsy rags,
| but the sticker shock is real!
|
| Mom always warned me to choose low-maintenance clothes but now
| I'm beholden to Wash & Fold services, because of several reasons.
| And I now understand the hysterical reviews that say they ruined
| garments, because it is not always accidental. And when I
| presented garments for repair to the same place, they contrived a
| way to perform the repair accurately, earning their fees, and
| also completely ruin the garment in the process.
|
| So I need to consider my clothing like my electronics and
| computers: repair is typically impossible and replacement is the
| only sane option. Also, never trust a commercial outfit for
| maintenance of your things and keep it personal, because there's
| no sucker quite like the guy who doesn't know how to fix his
| computers or wash his clothes.
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