I find often when talking to people about fashion the question of quality price relationship to come up. Most people I talk with tend to find that the pricing for some pieces of clothing that they find to be rather simple (a sweater or a white shirt, for instance) to be excessively high at certain stores and labels. Often I hear things like “a white shirt shouldn’t cost $100, mine cost $30!” While I can understand the feeling that paying $100 for a shirt seems high when all you are used to buying (or all that is marketed towards you or any of us these days) is $30 shirts, your $30 shirt is wildly unsustainable.
A white shirt here refers to a standard white dress shirt one commonly sees worn with a suit or skirt (like this one here).
The quality of a cheaper shirt is noticeable in comparison to a more expensive shirt. There are of course stragglers (Daniel Wellington types), but I can better explain with an example. I have owned two different types of white dress shirts before, one from Express (generally around $60) and one from Charles Tyrwhitt (generally around $120).
The first time I put on the Charles Tyrwhitt shirt, I was genuinely surprised by how good it felt and how much nicer it was. Firstly, standard dress shirts are meant to be tucked into trousers. However, the majority of dress shirts sold at fast fashion establishments are very short, far too short to be comfortably tucked into trousers. My Express shirts tend to get untucked at some angle if I stretch my arms out fully above my head (but are clearly made to be tucked in, the hem isn’t straight around the waist but rather has tails). The Charles Tyrwhitt shirt is noticeably longer, and clearly made to be tucked in.
Also noticeable are the cuffs and sleeves. The Express cuffs are incredibly small and the sleeves themselves fit about exact, but are extremely slim and close to your arms. This is quite unbreathable and gets rather uncomfortable fast. Charles Tyrwhitt sleeves are long and wide enough to be breathable. The cuffs are also of an ample length, and comfortably lie under a suit jacket with plenty of show.
The collar of the Express shirt is also on the smaller side, and flies around a lot, whereas the Tyrwhitt collar is large and stays in place.
Regardless, there are many, many comparisons I can make on quality here, but they all lead to the same place. You are (generally) seeing a greater level of quality at higher prices. I say generally, because there are companies that market themselves as being “of high quality”, but sell clothing comparable to fast fashion. You can imagine Daniel Wellington but for clothing more generally if that is in your purview. Additionally, there are brands of good quality who sell at cheaper prices. Yes Friends is a fantastic example of this; Uniqlo used to be a good example, but I can’t really vouch for it anymore.
Uniqlo is rather interesting here actually, because it started as a company with fantastic fabrics that brought quality and technical clothing to a wider audience thanks to its cheaper price (while still having fairly decent quality). Their denim was exceptional as well. However, various revelations about Uniqlo and its business practices have come to light that put the company in a rather different picture. This letter to Uniqlo is a fascinating read. I would also like to be able to read “The Glory and Disgrace of Uniqlo” (“ユニクロ帝国の光と影 “), by Masuo Yokata, but sadly no translation for it exists as of yet.
Even beyond that, Express really isn’t the worst example I could use in comparison, and Charles Tyrwhitt isn’t the best example I could give. They’re just the ones that I am the most used to. If I can defer to the experts for a moment, the Charles Tyrwhitt shirt that was $120 could still be considered middle tier (or even entry tier depending on your own purview). Bonneguelle uses the following generalized ideas as a guide for the quality of clothing
Entry Level listed at 40€ - 100€, with brands like Suitsupply and Uniqlo
I really love Husbands Paris, like immensely so, and have never gotten the chance to talk about it. But the textures, silhouettes, styling, everything is just immactulate and fantastic and beautiful. The founder, Nicolas Gabbard, additionally, has immaculate style and is always dressed incredibly.
I still know people who would say things like “My $30 shirt has lasted me 4 years!!!”, but I still find the argument fairly negligible. The average garment is work seven to ten times before it is thrown out, and regardless, most of these arguments come from confirmation bias. Someone sees an item they own lasting them a while and so feels the need to ignore the more typical fast fashion experience.
The average piece of clothing from a fast fashion organization is designed by some poor designer who is worked to the absolute bone sketching out designs at a breakneck pace. The very pace by which these people have to exist in their working lives does not allow for time to genuinely reflect on a design and incorporate detailing to a significant structure.
You might claim that Asos, H&M, and Shein all have designs comprable to high end or middle tier fashion brands (by stealing the original designs). And while you might be right at first glance, the second you start to compare the texture, material, and smaller detailing on these pieces of clothing, the chasm is quite vast. A classic example would be a fast fashion blazer. The sleeves of a blazer have (generally) four buttons on the cuff. These buttons are completely unfunctional on most fast fashion blazers. This is not always true, but tends to be the case. A higher quality garment would actually have functional design elements that exist for a reason. Those buttons being actually buttonable isn’t even that difficult of a thing to do, it would just be an additional cost to an item that is made to be looked at and not lived in.
And that’s really what my feelings about fast fashion garments boil down to. They are items that are made to look nice at a quick glance, but are not items that you could live in, they are not items that will get their own sheen or feel or story, but an item that will be thrown out after a year of wear. I feel like the act of getting through the use of clothing so quickly, and wearing clothes that have less meaning on a body than on a metal wire rack, just loses a lot of the love and charm that goes into fashion and the act of wearing clothes. It can be so much more meaningful if the clothes that we wear have something to them beyond a pretty face.
NYC street style from instagram; clothes that appear to have developed their own style through wear
The average cheaper piece of clothing is almost certainly abusing labor at at least one point in its production timeline. A discussion of labor when it comes to fashion is incredibly overdone by this point, but it’s still notable. There is still an immense amount of child labor involved in the production of clothing, and, in general, there is a very large amount of abuse that occurs in factories that produce clothing and abuse that occurs at the fashion companies themselves. This all completely ignore the terrible salaries and even wage theft that occurs at these factories and by these companies. How else would the average t-shirt you buy at a fast fashion store manage to cost so cheap?
I can spend forever just spouting out various costs of fashion to the environment, but there are many many people out there who are good authorities on the subject that I would extend you to.
I quite enjoyed Climate Town’s videos on fast fashion and merch for this particular subject.
I can understand the basic reasoning behind someone complaining about costly shirting and finding such things absurd. It’s really the fault of companies for shoving cheap things down our throats over many many many years, with the addition of a genuinely concerning amount of marketing and commercials. Yet, fast fashion is not worth it, it’s damage is immense, and it really is not worth the value. Buying quality pieces of clothing from quality manufacturers and producers not only allows you to get a nicer piece of clothing but also allows for the humanity inherent in the system of clothes-making. Quality is worth it.
