BPL Esq
Senior Member
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2013
- Messages
- 299
- Reaction score
- 384
In most cases, if you look, you can probably find CM-type clothing items of similar or perhaps better quality than have been available over the past 100 years or so, but you will likely have to pay a good bit for them or have them made bespoke. The overall "decline in quality" is probably less related to poorer raw materials in many cases and more related to cost-cutting by offshoring production and cutting corners, the trend toward "fast fashion" and clothing intended to be in style for a few months and then be discarded, etc.
Some of the decline in quality is a result of people trying to improve their margins, but some of it is certainly a consequence of this:
As the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has decreased since its peak in 1913, fewer and fewer people are able to comfortably purchase well-made items at the prices they command. Having virtually everything made for us in East Asia by people who are barely paid at all, using very low quality materials and cutting all possible corners, is what allows more or less everyone in the US to have access to all sorts of things via Walmart or wherever that they could never hope to afford if made in the US. Manufacturers know that the vast majority of people just want something that's OK for as cheap as possible, so they make stuff that's just passable and keep the price down.
Among SF members, it is well-known that you generally aren't going to find good quality shoes or a good quality suit/sport coat below certain price points that seem outrageous to the average consumer. A secretary at a former workplace of mine asked for my advice about where she and her son should look for his first suit, as he had just graduated and become an engineer. At the time, I suggested a pretty basic navy suit in the $400-something range from SuitSupply, and she was aghast. I was told that the suggestion was ridiculous when there are suits at JCPenney for $100 (not sure why my advice was solicited then). If the dollar had the same purchasing power now as it did in 1913, roughly 25x more, that $100 might have gotten her son a suit we'd pay $2500 for under present circumstances. Throughout the 1930s-60s, more people (at least in the US) are likely to have had the purchasing power necessary to justify the widespread production of quality garments. Once that was no longer the case, the rational economic decision if you wanted to keep selling things to Americans was to figure out how to produce them much more inexpensively.
Similarly, you might sometimes see an old restaurant ad or menu and think, "Wow, I could get a steak dinner with two sides for only $3 in 1955." But that ignores that $3 then is approximately $30 now, and a huge portion of the population thinks that $30 for one person's dinner is crazy when entrees at somewhere like Applebee's or Olive Garden might be $8-10. Less purchasing power now, and changed attitudes as a result.
Some of the decline in quality is a result of people trying to improve their margins, but some of it is certainly a consequence of this:
As the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has decreased since its peak in 1913, fewer and fewer people are able to comfortably purchase well-made items at the prices they command. Having virtually everything made for us in East Asia by people who are barely paid at all, using very low quality materials and cutting all possible corners, is what allows more or less everyone in the US to have access to all sorts of things via Walmart or wherever that they could never hope to afford if made in the US. Manufacturers know that the vast majority of people just want something that's OK for as cheap as possible, so they make stuff that's just passable and keep the price down.
Among SF members, it is well-known that you generally aren't going to find good quality shoes or a good quality suit/sport coat below certain price points that seem outrageous to the average consumer. A secretary at a former workplace of mine asked for my advice about where she and her son should look for his first suit, as he had just graduated and become an engineer. At the time, I suggested a pretty basic navy suit in the $400-something range from SuitSupply, and she was aghast. I was told that the suggestion was ridiculous when there are suits at JCPenney for $100 (not sure why my advice was solicited then). If the dollar had the same purchasing power now as it did in 1913, roughly 25x more, that $100 might have gotten her son a suit we'd pay $2500 for under present circumstances. Throughout the 1930s-60s, more people (at least in the US) are likely to have had the purchasing power necessary to justify the widespread production of quality garments. Once that was no longer the case, the rational economic decision if you wanted to keep selling things to Americans was to figure out how to produce them much more inexpensively.
Similarly, you might sometimes see an old restaurant ad or menu and think, "Wow, I could get a steak dinner with two sides for only $3 in 1955." But that ignores that $3 then is approximately $30 now, and a huge portion of the population thinks that $30 for one person's dinner is crazy when entrees at somewhere like Applebee's or Olive Garden might be $8-10. Less purchasing power now, and changed attitudes as a result.
Last edited: