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goobster  ·  1798 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 24, 2019

I get the tongue-in-cheek nature of your comment, but there is more interesting stuff to unpack here.

Up until the 50's, people had Clothes. They wore clothing. They went out, bought things that lasted, and wore it - and repaired it or handed it down - until it no longer functioned as clothing, and was turned into rags. Think Levi's.

There was everyday wear, formal wear, and high-fashion.

Then one designer - can't remember who it was, but someone whose name you'd recognize, like Chanel - introduced the idea of Seasonal Lines.

Now you suddenly needed FOUR TIMES the amount of clothing you had before! And remember, this is post-WWII America, where industry is booming, and factories are making shit, and the economy is going crazy, and the Suburbs are invented and Shopping Malls are invented. So now you have NEW STUFF YOU HAVE TO BUY, with your NEW MONEY, when your drive your NEW CAR, to the new - air conditioned! - SHOPPING MALL...

That was Phase One of the change in clothing worldwide.

Phase two began when you needed someone who bought last year's spring fashions, to shell out more money THIS year, because now you had this factory and employees and pensions and OSHA and Insurance and 40-hour workweeks, to support.

And there was all this oil we made for the War Effort, and it was still coming out of the ground, so the government funded DuPont and others to invent new things to do with this oil.

And stretch materials were invented. And water-repellent materials. And materials that didn't need ironing. Etc.

So you had the seasonality of a garment, then you made it with less resilient materials.

The final step was to cut prices so EVERYONE could afford "fashion". And you did that by moving production overseas, and reducing the resiliency of the design to cut down on costs - material cost, material use, construction time, etc. - which also reduced the lifespan of the product.

So now you have bespoke jeans.

Now you have niche manufacturers literally using 150-year old machinery - that still works great, thankyouverymuch - buying quality materials (selvedge denim), and using the sewing techniques used early last century that created the ruggedness of an original pair of Levi's, etc.

Full circle, man.