Your experience is very common, I have a fake nike sweatshirt I bought more than a decade ago from a random street seller (emergency on a trip) which still outlasts current brand clothes.
Consumers' ignorance is not the problem, it used to be generally true that the more expensive item was better. Every brand has seemingly decided to burn their furniture to heat the house though, and what we experience is not as much consumer ignorance as it is a lack of names deserving trust.
I tried to be a good boy and wrote to the company asking for zipper parts to fix it and they told me to buy another jacket.
So I looked for companies that advertise repairability and found Patagonia made the most believable claims. Quite reasonable now that I'm old and rich, but I wouldn't have had the choice when young and poor.
In either case I have lengthened the time between manufacturing and landfill and had the enjoyment of clothes that I would otherwise not have been able to afford along the way.
So I'm extremely happy with a Land's End quarter zip that I picked up recently, and I hope that's a well-made piece that will last a while, but overall I completely agree that mass-produced clothing is a market for lemons; no one can tell what the good stuff is, so it's all assumed to be garbage and priced accordingly.
tf.
That’s clearly you looking for a specific fashion or intending to pay as much as you can.
Triple Aught Design jeans are $150 to $250 and I am skeptical you have anything that is outlasting them. Others brands surely as well. Seems to me you are still stuck in the “if it costs more…” line of thinking.
I'm pretty disciplined about wearing a bib in the kitchen these days, but you can still get a glass of wine on it at the dinner table, or sparks from a campfire, or a cycling wipeout. Those are annoying at the best of times, but particularly if it ends a garment that you paid 3-5x normal price for specifically so you could have it forever.
I bought a really good-looking dark blue fedora; I received a really good-looking black fedora a size-and-a-1/2 too big. I had to fight them at the credit card level, because they offered me half off at best for a hat I can't wear.
What is inconsistent: only some of them are fraudulent fronts. I'd guess about 25-50% right now, based on my recent shopping experiences. But not all: I ordered some expensive gloves; their advertised fit was wrong; we settled on 50% off (I /can/ wear them, but it's not ideal, and their return policy clearly required me to ship back). That firm had shite measurement guides, but honest merchant fronting.
I've ordered super-cool button-front shirts that ended up being tissue-like fabric. Grrr...
Speaking of fabric... Amazon folded Fabric.com into their Borg cube, and you CANNOT buy fabric by weight online - for some goddamn reason. I want to buy 100% white cotton for a play costume, and need it thicker - between sheeting and terrycloth; closer to the latter; Nothing else really matters to me about it. But can I determine the cloth thickness/weight? Nope.
So: 50% swindlers; 75% idiots; buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.
Of course they aren't the latest fashion but clothes that last are by definition out of fashion for most of their existence.
Ah, very relatable…
>buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.
That’s reasonable.