Increasingly, I'm seeing it as yet another form of market manipulation to try to squeeze ever so much more money out of citizen's wallets.
Used to be I could identify a brand or style of clothing, find items which fit, and return reliably to the same vendor repeatedly. This was my habit in my teens, it remains my preferred mode in my 40s. And while I'm rarely accused of being highly fashion conscious, I'm also not a slob (it really doesn't take much to have a sense of style).
The first time I encountered a wholesale change in fashion was when the Gap discontinued a line of jeans in the late 1980s. Being naturally gifted with large thighs, an aviator cut worked exceptionally well for me (and yes, I also miss parachute pants and Zoot Suits, thanks for asking).
After a bit of casting around, I turned up another store which carried a consistent cut of jeans and wore those through the 1990s and most of the 2000s. For casual office wear, I'd discovered a few department and men's clothing stores which carried reliable fits.
I had a line of black t-shirts with a nice cotton fabric and a subtly off-black color which became a fave. Much as Steve Jobs bought a lifetime supply of black mock-turtlenecks, I'd found my shirt for life (but failed to secure a lifetime supply of them at the time, an error in judgment).
Pretty much all of that came to a crashing end in 2010. Numerous vendors changed their sizes -- same brand and size which had previously fit (as evidenced by what was in my wardrobe) now didn't, and in ridiculous fashion. Virtually everything suddenly went "skinny", which is to say, less fabric, and fabrics became very noticeably cheaper.
I first discovered this on one of my grab-and-dash shopping visits: walk into store, pick up a few pair of jeans and shirts of proven reliable fit, pay, head home (I'm pretty much the antithesis of a recreational shopper, malls are torture palaces).
Pulling on the new duds for work the next morning I discovered I couldn't breath. Everything felt 2-3 sizes too small. I double-checked sizes, they corresponded with what I'd bought in the past, pulled existing clothes out of the closet, and returned to the store with my purchases for a full refund as they no longer produced items which fit me.
It took over a dozen stops to find jeans and shirts which fit.
And given the "fast fashion" fad, I've got absolutely no assurance that I'll be able to rely on those vendors in future.
Oh, and for those of you suggesting online shopping: SRSLY? For clothes, which you wear next to your skin, for which fit, cut, finish, and feel are absolutely crucial? Thanks, but no. Worse, with present levels of quality control (and I suspect: highly variable producer sourcing), it's not even sufficient to find a style which fits and order a count of those: you've got to individually try on and examine every last damned item.
The result is I've gone from being a reliable customer happy to return to a store repeatedly to one who treats every encounter as a hostile and frustrating experience for which I'm not likely to achieve anything remotely resembling satisfaction.
I've considered custom tailoring, though I've not gone that route yet, for shirts and slacks. Though as I mostly wear t-shirts and jeans, the additional cost is tremendous. It's actually not so bad for some tailors I've explored, though the one I'd earmarked for future items appears to have gone out of business, and of course, I'd have needed to first see what they'd produce (with ~6 weeks turnaround) rather than simply buying something off the rack and having it altered (which has worked in the past).
What I don't understand is why with all the supposed advances in personalization, there isn't an affordable and readily accessible, brick-and-mortar service by which people can specify the clothes they want, have measurements taken, and receive (with a satisfaction guarantee) clothes which actually fit. There've been some noises about this in past, and there are "made to measure" (which is not the same as bespoke) "pop-up" tailors such as Indochino -- the one time I'd found them in real life it was an absolute zoo with ~60 minute wait simply to get into the storefront for measurement.
I'm not sure this is "ripe for disruption", but it's certainly rife with disappointment.
I guess I'm lucky that the shirts from Uniqlo, one of the fast fashion giants, fit me quite well (though I have to go to Japan to buy them since I've heard that the US sizes differ from the Japan sizes, naturally).
That being said, I had large thighs from my soccer days, so I get to experience the bad side of the situation as well. I still don't have a very good solution for jeans :(
I have a feeling that if you and I were to go to the same party we could end up being in the same clothes...
+1 for Uniqlo - they are in the UK too and you can go in there and get things you already own, as in shirts exactly like the ones in your wardrobe back home but not as faded.
However they did change their jeans sizes a couple of years ago so the waistline area is no longer quite right and the thighs are a bit tight.
Although there is this thing called fast fashion, it really is for women who want others to think 'what is she wearing?' on a daily basis. It is an entirely separate market to 'predictable'. 'Predictable' is well catered for in the UK, there is the likes of Uniqlo, and, for an even older generation, there is Marks and Spencer.
Maybe such a retailer needs to invest some effort into 'slow fashion', where fit and finish is guaranteed, you can get 'replacement parts' for your wardrobe and maybe even get emailed every year or two to be reminded that it is time to refurbish the sock collection etc. With everything done online and sizes determined by initial purchases the 'hell' of the High Street could be avoided.
>Maybe such a retailer needs to invest some effort into 'slow fashion', where fit and finish is guaranteed, you can get 'replacement parts' for your wardrobe and maybe even get emailed every year or two to be reminded that it is time to refurbish the sock collection etc. With everything done online and sizes determined by initial purchases the 'hell' of the High Street could be avoided.
What immediately came to mind was high end leather shoes, where you can replace the soles, maintain the leather, and have them last for 10+ years. It's the polar opposite of fast fashion.
I would love a fashion brand such as Patagonia is for the outdoor style... Very high quality, consistent, and they even still carry some of their styles from the 70's and 80's nearly unchanged.
Something that hasn't been said is that this fast fashion is absolutely unsustainable from an environmental and energy perspective. Low quality clothing that is designed to literally not last more than a couple wears; versus a Patagonia jacket that not only is made well enough to last a decade, but also carries a lifetime warranty and a recycling guarantee... I'll take the latter, please.
There were a few such stores I'd shopped at, but between multiple take-overs and fashion changes, they ultimately stopped carrying old styles and cuts.
There is L.L. Bean and Lands' End, both of which have been very consistent over time, though I've found quality and finish of their clothing to be somewhat variable in recent years as well. The fact that it's mail order/online also makes sizing an issue.
I don't want to come off wrong here, but have you seen jeans cuts from the 90s? There's a reason people don't wear them anymore. It's a fashion statement in itself to do so, because it looks, you know, dated.
Of course you can't sell the some five or even ten year old cut because no one in their right mind would buy it. It would be complete doom for your company if you tried to. Tastes change, and they do so in complicated ways that's not at all trivial to model. They change in accordance to other changes in society, in music, and in the political climate. It's all interconnected.
I am pretty much a jeans-n-tshirt slob, but even I wouldn't want to wear the same clothes for a decade. Feel free to stock up on that lifetime supply of shirts, but don't expect any reasonable economic agent to cater to it. It's just not something anyone can blame fast fashion for. I mean, the DEC 21064 Alpha was a beautiful architecture, but it wouldn't have made sense to expect it to sell in 2005.
Some items are timeless though, such as certain coats, hats and boots, but jeans and shirts are not. Those things will work ten years on, but street fashion never will.
Yes, I've seen them -- there may still be a pair or so in my closet.
Here's a tip, kid: if you stay well back off the bleeding edge of fashion, styles are remarkably durable. Blue-jeans are little changed from the 1940s and 1950s, in basic styles, as are t-shirts, cardigans, cable-knit sweaters, flannel shirts, and a whole mess of clothing that's geared principally for comfort rather than style. And those are precisely the same looks which are renowned for being timeless.
It's the extreme cuts, fabrics, and finishes which date and age quickly.
As I said: Jobs had his signature look. Hemmingway's sweater is timeless. James Dean's leather jacket. Albert Einstein had the same suit (and no socks).
Sometimes simplifying your life in one area allows you to optimize others.
And when the entire fashion industry conspires to create clothes I literally can not wear, I owe it nothing.
While it's true that some basic styles remain over time, such as the Chuck Taylors or Doc Martens, it is also true that some things that used to be style aren't anymore and it's likely we'll never see it again. Take for example the fat hair of the 70s and 80s (yes, I'm that old) or the high cut jeans of the 80s and early 90s.
If you believe the classic blue jeans are unchanged since the 40s you just haven't looked close enough. The cut change slowly over time. Look at the seams from that old pair from the 40s and you'll see it's not even cut from the same parts! Check out the inseam and it's completely different. That's because technology change, the sourcing of materials change, and finally tastes change.
Neither a jacket nor a suit is an example of street fashion. Those trends works very differently. But even a suit is cut different today. If someone walked in in an 80s suit you'd notice straight away, I promise. That may be something you desire, especially if you have the slighest bit of an hipster inside, but it's not something you could base your company on.
I'm probably the last person to understand these things. My clothes keep me warm, basically. What I like or dislike is neither here nor there. I'm just saying it's not true that jeans haven't changed in 50 years, and it wouldn't make economic sense to sell things that people don't want to buy. That was my only point. I don't think you personally owe anyone anything.
"I've considered custom tailoring, though I've not gone that route yet...the additional cost is tremendous."
Outside the US (S. America, and in Med. Europe), you can more easily and cheaply buy something that's larger than you'd normally wear and then bring it to a seamstress, having it fit to your size for cheap ($20 or less). The younger people in this kind of business charge US prices but older people with more experience will do it for cheap.
The problem that I'm increasingly encountering is that everything (up to XXXL) in shirts is too small for me. There's nothing that can be tailored to fit.
Jeans simply don't tailor well on account of seams and other factors. Slacks can be, but again, you've got to have the material to start with, and today's "skinny" styles don't.
Incidentally: I mentioned Zoot Suits above. They were actually strongly discouraged in the US by the War Production Board, for being overly wasteful of fabric. Wikipedia has a good history of the suit and the Zoot Suit Riots.
> The problem that I'm increasingly encountering is that everything (up to XXXL) in shirts is too small for me. There's nothing that can be tailored to fit.
> Jeans simply don't tailor well on account of seams and other factors. Slacks can be, but again, you've got to have the material to start with, and today's "skinny" styles don't.
I'm curious. What are the types of stores you shop at? Although I'm sure styles have been slimmed down across the board, there are plenty of stores I see with regular fitting clothes.
and FWIW, jeans tailor fine usually, you just need a tailor that knows what they're doing and obviously cost may not be worth it.
I prefer not to state for a number of reasons, but multiple large national chains, both department stores and clothing stores, ranging from discount to upscale. I finally found a menswear store which carried shirts that fit, mid-market, as well as dress slacks. Jeans turned up at a large retailer.
I also confirmed the sizing changes with multiple store managers at multiple retailers. It's possible they were lying, but comparisons with identically-sized earlier purchases showed that the sizes had been modified.
It's also become rather evident that numerous large retailers are in all sorts of hurt. Ironically it's the ones which are furthest behind the fashion curve which tend to have sizes that fit, but the in-store organization, stock, and staffing are abysmal at many of these.
Wow, I'm 185 cm tall and weigh 100kg give or take and XL/XXL is usually ok. I do need to order jeans with inside leg 35 inches if I want turnups, otherwise the commonly stocked 33 inches is OK (yes, in UK we do metric sometimes and imperial other times).
Are there no 'High and Mighty' shops where you live?
A big & tall store was one of the few where I found a few items which fit, but even there it was pretty iffy.
My body shape is athletic, not sedentary. This creates all world of problems.
The sizing was referring to shirts -- for slacks going up in waist size to allow for thigh fit eventually works. In shirts I simply run out of larger sizes to take in elsewhere.
Sounds like you could use version controlled clothes. "Yeah, I usually wear Black t-shirt 0.2.1 .. I'm going to skip 0.2.2 and try again when 0.2.3 rolls around."
SKUs and other product codes should provide just that, but my inquiries to clothing manufactures ("hey, loved your shirt, product code XYZ, where can I get more") have gone unanswered.
I've had varying levels of success w/ other communications, though the tailoring route (for business wear at least) is probably where I'm headed.
> I'd found my shirt for life (but failed to secure a lifetime supply of them at the time, an error in judgment).
It has to be said that I do this too. Last year I found a nice fitted t-shirt which look good, and fit wonderfully. The next day I went back and bought ten more.
I have varied clothing, but things that are really good - in this case small black calvin klein t-shirts - I just make sure I buy lots.
Increasingly, I'm seeing it as yet another form of market manipulation to try to squeeze ever so much more money out of citizen's wallets.
Used to be I could identify a brand or style of clothing, find items which fit, and return reliably to the same vendor repeatedly. This was my habit in my teens, it remains my preferred mode in my 40s. And while I'm rarely accused of being highly fashion conscious, I'm also not a slob (it really doesn't take much to have a sense of style).
The first time I encountered a wholesale change in fashion was when the Gap discontinued a line of jeans in the late 1980s. Being naturally gifted with large thighs, an aviator cut worked exceptionally well for me (and yes, I also miss parachute pants and Zoot Suits, thanks for asking).
After a bit of casting around, I turned up another store which carried a consistent cut of jeans and wore those through the 1990s and most of the 2000s. For casual office wear, I'd discovered a few department and men's clothing stores which carried reliable fits.
I had a line of black t-shirts with a nice cotton fabric and a subtly off-black color which became a fave. Much as Steve Jobs bought a lifetime supply of black mock-turtlenecks, I'd found my shirt for life (but failed to secure a lifetime supply of them at the time, an error in judgment).
Pretty much all of that came to a crashing end in 2010. Numerous vendors changed their sizes -- same brand and size which had previously fit (as evidenced by what was in my wardrobe) now didn't, and in ridiculous fashion. Virtually everything suddenly went "skinny", which is to say, less fabric, and fabrics became very noticeably cheaper.
I first discovered this on one of my grab-and-dash shopping visits: walk into store, pick up a few pair of jeans and shirts of proven reliable fit, pay, head home (I'm pretty much the antithesis of a recreational shopper, malls are torture palaces).
Pulling on the new duds for work the next morning I discovered I couldn't breath. Everything felt 2-3 sizes too small. I double-checked sizes, they corresponded with what I'd bought in the past, pulled existing clothes out of the closet, and returned to the store with my purchases for a full refund as they no longer produced items which fit me.
It took over a dozen stops to find jeans and shirts which fit.
And given the "fast fashion" fad, I've got absolutely no assurance that I'll be able to rely on those vendors in future.
Oh, and for those of you suggesting online shopping: SRSLY? For clothes, which you wear next to your skin, for which fit, cut, finish, and feel are absolutely crucial? Thanks, but no. Worse, with present levels of quality control (and I suspect: highly variable producer sourcing), it's not even sufficient to find a style which fits and order a count of those: you've got to individually try on and examine every last damned item.
The result is I've gone from being a reliable customer happy to return to a store repeatedly to one who treats every encounter as a hostile and frustrating experience for which I'm not likely to achieve anything remotely resembling satisfaction.
I've considered custom tailoring, though I've not gone that route yet, for shirts and slacks. Though as I mostly wear t-shirts and jeans, the additional cost is tremendous. It's actually not so bad for some tailors I've explored, though the one I'd earmarked for future items appears to have gone out of business, and of course, I'd have needed to first see what they'd produce (with ~6 weeks turnaround) rather than simply buying something off the rack and having it altered (which has worked in the past).
What I don't understand is why with all the supposed advances in personalization, there isn't an affordable and readily accessible, brick-and-mortar service by which people can specify the clothes they want, have measurements taken, and receive (with a satisfaction guarantee) clothes which actually fit. There've been some noises about this in past, and there are "made to measure" (which is not the same as bespoke) "pop-up" tailors such as Indochino -- the one time I'd found them in real life it was an absolute zoo with ~60 minute wait simply to get into the storefront for measurement.
I'm not sure this is "ripe for disruption", but it's certainly rife with disappointment.