As the sheer quantity of clothing available to the average American has grown over the past few decades, everything feels at least a little bit flimsier than it used to.
The most obvious indication of these changes is printed on a garment’s fiber-content tag. Knits used to be made entirely from natural fibers. These fibers usually came from shearing sheep, goats, alpacas, and other animals. Sometimes, plant-derived fibers such as cotton or linen were blended in. Now, according to Imran Islam, a textile-science professor and knit expert at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the overwhelming majority of yarn used in mass-market knitwear is blended with some type of plastic.
Knits made with synthetic fiber are cheaper to produce. They can be spun up in astronomical quantities to meet the sudden whims of clothing manufacturers—there’s no waiting for whole flocks of sheep to get fluffy enough to hand shear. They also usually can be tossed in your washing machine with everything else. But by virtually every measure, synthetic fabrics are far inferior. They pill quickly, sometimes look fake, shed microplastics, and don’t perform as well as wool when worn. Sweaters are functional garments, not just fashionable ones. Wool keeps its wearer warm without steaming them like a baked potato wrapped in foil. Its fibers are hygroscopic and hydrophobic, which means they draw moisture to their center and leave the surface dry. A wool sweater can absorb a lot of water from the air around it before it feels wet or cold to the touch
A significant amount of polyamide or acrylic is now common in sweaters with four-digit price tags. A $3,200 Gucci “wool cardigan,” for example, is actually half polyamide when you read the fine print. Cheaper materials have crept into the fashion industry’s output gradually, as more and more customers have become inured to them. In the beginning, these changes were motivated primarily by the price pressures of fast fashion, Islam said: As low-end brands have created global networks that pump out extremely cheap, disposable clothing, more premium brands have attempted to keep up with the frenetic pace while still maximizing profits, which means cutting costs and cutting corners. Islam estimates that a pound of sheep’s wool as a raw material might cost from $1.50 to $2. A pound of cashmere might cost anywhere from $10 to $15. A pound of acrylic, meanwhile, can be had for less than $1.
This race to the bottom had been going on for years, but it accelerated considerably in 2005, Sofi Thanhauser, the author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing, told me. That year was the end of the Multifiber Arrangement, a trade agreement that had for three decades capped imports of textile products and yarn into the United States, Canada, and the European Union from developing countries. Once Western retailers no longer had meaningful restrictions on where they could source their garments from, many of them went shopping for the cheapest inventory possible.
There is no better example of this that I can think of than the clothes sold under the Ralph Lauren labels. If you browse through their website you will see a plethora of labels all meant to cater to a certain price point, from Collection level down to retail store. A former work colleague who has enough money to buy collection wear, told me this year that after dropping over 5K on a supposedly 100% cashmere sweater and vest set (labeled as such on the site) when they received it they discovered blended materials listed on the inner tag of the garments, let alone that they began to pill and unravel after one wear. One.
Mind you I would never spend that kind of money on clothes so I don’t have too much sympathy, but share the story to say that Lauren is typical of a ton of “designer” labels now, throwing out tons of promotion for their supposedly high quality garments that are all just as crappy construction as Walmart clothes seem to be. It’s insane.
As a kid, my family always went to tailors for our clothes. We bought fabrics we liked, they measured us, made the garments, done deal. Same with knits. Suits always fit exactly, dressed were a snap, pants all flattered in all the right places. This was not considered “chique” or whatever. Everyone we knew did this. We did not pay a fortune. Buying clothes at department stores was considered far more expensive and a somewhat strange thing to do at the time.
I wish that the idea of supporting and nurturing real artisanship at the local level in all communities were more of a thing. Where I do find them, there seems to be way too much hipster/exploitation vibes around it which is completely counter to the idea of honing a craft and sharing that skill for not just a living but the betterment of people around you.
Maybe some effort at finding where these people still exist and supporting them would be a good way to turn some of the fast fashion (trash fashion) mindset and practices around.