Are Clothes Actually Worse Now? An Investigation

The other day, I went shopping. It did not go well. After entering one of our nation's most storied department stores on a hot summer day, the AC blasting my face as I rode the escalator like a lazy river, I was greeted by a bounty of wares in various shapes, colors, and materials. Or so it appeared. In reality, each successive floor was more dispiriting than the last, delivering what felt less like an abundance of choice and more like a trash island in a sea of sameness arranged by price point.

On the first floor—clearly the affordable, "youthful" section—a cacophony of dresses only a TikTok-sick brain could love. Designs were either spiritually beige or psychotically trendmaxxed. Buttons hung onto their thread for dear life, despite never having been used. I didn't fare much better on the floor above. The higher "quality" contemporary brands love a poly blend as much as their less pricey peers. You might find rayon, if you're lucky, or a linen blend if you're really, really lucky. Generally speaking, the offering wasn't an improvement—it was just three times more expensive.

Finally, I reached the designer floor. Here , I thought, I must be able to find something to get the dopamine flowing…wallet be damned . Next to a few exorbitantly priced poly blends, there were more natural fibers and fewer corny microtrends. But almost everything was some version of a suit, and nothing was for a woman willing to bare her arms, neck, or décolletage.

Across every section, clothing tags were infuriatingly vague, hidden strategically under armpits and along skirt seams for not-so-easy access. One dress proclaimed it was made from "reforme satin;" research revealed that means 51-percent recycled polyester, 49-percent unrecycled polyester. Others boasted 100-percent cotton shells, lined with…polyester. Because, obviously, the part that touches your body should be full of microplastics.

You might be thinking, That was just one particularly bad shopping trip, right? Surely, our only choices aren't polyester for $250 or cotton with poly lining for $3,000? The direct-to-consumer e-commerce revolution promised us more choice. Shouldn't our clothes be better now, not worse? Unfortunately, the answer is they should, but they aren't.

"It's the race to the bottom," says Dana Thomas, author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes . "It's much easier to go low than it is to go high. And it's much easier to compromise or sacrifice your integrity than it is to maintain it. And it's much easier to cut quality than it is to insist upon it. So, you know, shortcuts. Shortcuts are easier, and fast fashion is full of shortcuts. It's one giant shortcut basically."

Fast fashion has infected the entire industry, creating an unspoken mandate in which everyone—from the highest-end luxury brands to the lowest-priced drop-shipping enterprise—must compete on cost, turnaround, and algorithmically generated designs intended to attract the highest number of people with the least amount of risk. Shoppers are starting to notice. It's not conspiratorial to connect the rise of "quiet luxury" and the increasing demand for genuinely well-made clothes. That this impulse was sublimated into beige sweaters in imitation mohair for $70 and influencers hawking "old money" Amazon shopping lists doesn't mean that the impulse wasn't justified.

The enshittification of everything—from comment sections to cashmere—has become one of the defining forces of our time. It's why videos titled " Does This Brand Think We're Dumb? (Answer: Yes )" and " 90 Yr Old Nan Can't Stand Today's Dresses " reliably go viral. It's why the first-look production photos of Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy for FX's Love Story , wearing what could generously be called Zara knockoffs of CBK's designer originals, incited such backlash that Executive Producer Ryan Murphy decided to regroup (read: hire a new costume team) and reshoot. (It's telling that the way costume designer Rudy Mance fixed the problem was by sourcing vintage and archival pieces, rather than rely on today's facsimiles of '90s chic.)

Before affiliate links were little more than a twinkle in a technocrat's eye, the invention of ready-to-wear birthed the modern garment industry. One-hundred years ago, the American wardrobe looked very different. Most importantly, it was far less full. "In the 1920s, if you opened somebody's closet, a man might have three or four suits and some shirts. A woman might have five or six dresses, one or two coats, and maybe an evening outfit," explains Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of fashion and material culture at the Brooklyn Museum.

People shopped (and bought) far less. Clothes were custom-made at an incredibly high price or sewn at home. That started to change when couturier Lucien Lelong, a pioneer of the ready-to-wear model, began offering what Yokobosky calls "multiples"—as in, multiple sizes—for his Robes d'Edition collection in 1934. The development meant that clothing was no longer exclusively bespoke, and set fashion business models for the next century.

Then came WWII, and with it, innovations in man-made fabrics. Nylon, a thermoplastic polymer patented by DuPont in 1935, allowed for the extra strength and elasticity ideal for both military gear and pantyhose. In 1941, British scientists created the filament used to make polyester, a plastic-spun fabric, which would enter commercial production in the '50s and transform fashion in the '60s and '70s, thanks to its wrinkle-resistant properties and cheap production costs. The synthetic revolution had begun.

"The majority of clothes in our world today are polyester, but we've been through periods when it's been rayon…nylon during World War II, and all these different kinds of [synthetics and semi-synthetics:] Lycra and Tencel and Modal," says Yokobosky. "Going back to the 1920s, the quality was different because the fabrics were different"—wool, silk, cotton, linen, and other natural fibers—"the structure of how your clothes were made was different…including canvas interlinings, hand-finished seams, and generous seam allowances that helped them hold their shape over time. Because clothes were designed to be altered, repaired, and maintained by tailors or seamstresses, they were viewed as long-term investments."

It might be hard to believe in today's "drop"-centric fashion ecosystem, but until about 20 years ago, fashion brands only released new items four times a year. Fall and Spring, the biggest collections in the sartorial cycle, debuted in March and September, coinciding with the heftiest glossies to guide shoppers on what to buy. "Now, you know, there's a new collection every time you blink," jokes Thomas, who's been covering the industry since the '90s, "even at a luxury company." In 2019, Jonathan Anderson (then of Loewe, now of Dior) famously told T Magazine he creates 18 collections a year .

When Zara began its global expansion at the end of the 20th century, it would upend retail forever. "The fast fashion industry reset the pace of the entire fashion business. Zara proved that if you put out clothes, you did drops more often, people came to your store more often to see what was in there," says Thomas. The more new product you created, she adds, the more foot traffic you attracted, leading to higher sales and profits. Eventually, "companies that maybe weren't fast fashion brands to begin with, now operate that way."

A new generation of even faster fashion brands turned the dial up to 11. Shein became the world's largest clothing manufacturer in 2022, thanks to novel business practices that combine all the hellish aspects of the post-COVID internet age. The company operates on a "test and repeat" model, in which it manufactures small batches of thousands of new items a day , tracking clicks, adds to cart, and other user metrics to assess each item's success. The ones that perform get another product run, this time at a higher volume. Or a tweak and then another spin on the merry-go-round. Basically, an amalgam of everyone's taste is being regurgitated back to you as "new" designs, then produced at scale every time you shop.

"Shopping" at Shein is only possible online, as the brand has no physical stores. Instead, to determine your garment's viability, you're asked to rely on (often) AI-generated images—sometimes, inexplicably, of Luigi Mangione —and popular "haul" videos from influencers who are incentivized to get you to click. Plus, the entire experience is gamified with points and rewards ( in a way the EU has alleged is "addictive" ), combining the horrors of online betting with the thrills of online shopping.

This new model churns out products so quickly, it makes Zara and H&M look like sloths. And while speed, in itself, isn't a crime, the process isn't exactly optimized for quality. What I Ordered vs. What I Got videos skewering Shein haul letdowns have become something of a TikTok subgenre : Fit is a literal joke , colorways arrive light-years darker, lighter, or cooler , and fabric finishes disappoint time after time. When you make clothing that quickly, there are bound to be cut corners along the way.

What do we talk about when we talk about "quality"? According to fashion's Instagram quality detective, Roni Brunn (a.k.a. @fond.losangeles), a designer and content creator with a background in economics, "fabric comes first." She cites the ubiquity of synthetic fabrics as a direct result of the market pressure on brands to lower prices. Per the U.S. Treasury , apparel is one of the few necessities, along with electronics and cars, that has either fallen in price or risen by less than the median weekly earnings of young workers compared to their parents' generation. In short, clothes are cheaper.

"They're so much cheaper, and they feel nice," Brunn says. "Polyester lining is going to feel nice when you put it on. You just slide right in. You feel great. That's the dirty secret. They look nice, and they feel good…until it's 90 degrees."

Thomas agrees: "The thing with fast fashion is…it never looks as good as the first time you wear it. The second time you wear it, it looks like junk. And the third time it's falling apart."

Approximately 67 percent of clothing materials are derived from synthetic fibers; polyester remains the most-produced fiber globally, accounting for 57 percent of total fiber production, according to the Textile Exchange's Materials Market Report 2024. That means clothing is largely made of plastic—and that can negatively impact your comfort, the environment, even your health . Surprisingly, though, it's not just at the "cheap" end of the spectrum.

To prove it, I did a little online browsing of the new arrivals sections of a few well-known lines. In my fabric survey of 12 brands across four general categories (fast-fashion giants, mall brands, contemporary lines, and luxury houses), the offenders weren't necessarily those you'd expect. Of course, on the websites of the three fast fashion brands included, 93 percent of the tops and jackets were made from synthetic fibers. This was far and away the worst average, as expected. But the contemporary brands weren't far behind: 80 percent of their products were made from synthetic or synthetic blends. That's far more than the mall brands' 67 percent.

Defined by its high-but-not-quite-the-highest price point, advanced contemporary brands usually run in the $300 to $800 range for tops. Purportedly, these lines are meant to fill the hole between attainable fashion (something you might pick up at J.Crew, COS, or Gap for less than $200) and aspirational luxury (the stores with Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive addresses). You'd think the fabrics would follow suit.

"In terms of hand feel, in terms of composition, there isn't anything outstanding," Brunn says. "A lot of them, if you go on Poshmark and you look up their cashmere from last year, it's going to be pilled like crazy; it doesn't hold up either."

On the high end of the price spectrum, there were more natural fibers. Only 40 percent of the items featured among luxury brands were made of synthetics, and most favored a blend approach (ex: 92-percent cotton, 8-percent elastane). That's fine; not all synthetics are created equal. Blends can improve durability and shape retention. And there are certain scenarios in which a man-made fabric makes sense. After all, there is no stretch, glitter, or shine without synthetic materials, and most of the luxury designers used these fabrics with intention.

Clothing tags are required by law to act as a source of truth, but previous markers of quality and craftsmanship have all but disappeared. "You saw a lot more things that said, 'Made in USA,' 'Made in America,'" 30 years ago, says Yokobosky. It "reflected a highly skilled domestic manufacturing industry with rigorous standards for patternmaking, cutting, sewing, and finishing often supported by strong regional textile mills and domestic supply chains. While exceptional clothing has always been produced around the world, American-made garments [had] earned a reputation for dependable craftsmanship, durable materials, and careful quality control." He tells me about the ILGWU (International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union). "That was a big label that you looked for inside, because in women's garments that meant that it was made by American women, and it was really well-made."

Despite the fact that the current administration's tariff policy is meant to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association , 97 percent of all clothes, shoes, and accessories sold in the United States are imported. International doesn't inherently equal bad—there are rich local fabric traditions across every continent that are worth preserving and celebrating. But the trend does point to a loss of expertise in our own country and an emphasis on reducing labor costs .

Even once-reliable indicators like "100-percent cashmere" and "100-percent linen" don't necessarily mean what they used to. I like to think of today's "luxury" natural fibers as the clothing equivalent of imitation crab. Sure, they're technically what the tag says they are, but they don't necessarily look, feel, or age the same way. Budget cashmere, for example, is made with shorter fibers that are prone to pilling. Similarly, quality linen is made from long flax fibers that get softer with every wash; cheaper linens are made from short, coarser fibers coated in softeners. Sadly, investing in a 100-percent cashmere sweater or 100-percent linen caftan isn't necessarily the wardrobe coup de grâce you might think it is.

"I find today I look more at where it's grown and made," says Yokobosky. Much like wine varietals, fabric quality depends heavily on terroir. This is as true for leather—the hide of cows raised in China will not feel the same as cows raised in Italy, even if they're the same breed—as it is for cotton. "Sometimes you buy a pair of socks that say Sea Island cotton," says the museum curator, referring to the islands off South Carolina and Georgia, where it was originally grown. "That's a special type of cotton. Its silky feel and beautiful knit are an example of what we now describe as 'quiet luxury.'" He namechecks several other respected regional textiles concerned shoppers would be smart to seek out: Supima (short for superior pima) cotton from California or the Southwest; selvage cotton denim from Cone Denim in North Carolina; Pendleton wool from Oregon or Woolrich from Pennsylvania; and shell cordovan from Chicago's Horween Leather Company.

"There is always a worldwide shortage…of nice tops," says creator @lil.puj in a viral TikTok video from last summer with more than 450,000 likes. The top commenters agree: "There's only 5 left on earth," replies one, which itself garnered 50,400 likes. "I'm glad it's not just me struggling to find nice tops 😭 where the clothes at" adds another; 21,000 people liked that comment.

To claim there are no tops—in the age of late-stage capitalism, no less—and have this many people relate exemplifies a current fashion marketplace contradiction. According to the U.N. , clothing production has doubled in the last 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of times a garment is worn before being discarded has decreased by 36 percent. Why, if companies are making more clothes and customers are buying more items more often, are shoppers so uninspired by what's on offer?

The disconnect is at least partially due to the flattening of the design process as a result of data-driven business insights. E-commerce metrics and increased computing power mean that consumer behavior has been analyzed and re-analyzed. Trend forecasting has become a cottage industry (both online with consumers and at an enterprise level with the likes of WGSN and McKinsey). There is no click of the mouse or stop of the scroll that hasn't been documented and decoded in an effort to understand what people will buy.

"It is an algorithm," says Eugene Ree, a fashion design professor at FIT who's worked for retailers like Gap and Banana Republic. "You will have the merchandisers who hold the finance part of it, the planners, all of them, and they will tell the designer, 'This is what sells based on previous data.' So in turn, [the retailers] will only buy or ask a designer to design those things," he explains. "It's a catch-22."

With such a reliance on KPIs, most fashion design revolves around conforming to consumer tastes rather than setting them. It's about making the least offensive, most appealing garment for the largest number of people at the lowest possible cost. "Certain retailers are smarter; they will maybe hold 5 percent experimental SKUs to put in stores and test," says Ree. Most outlets, however, play it safe, he adds, only producing pieces that have been proven in previous seasons to move.

Any romantic notions one might have of fashion design—like Alexander McQueen finding inspiration in Jack the Ripper and selling his bizarre and wonderful first collection in its entirety to the stylist Isabella Blow—are exactly that: a bygone fantasy. Today's brands, from the most rapacious fast fashion company to the most elevated European luxury house, are ruled with an iron fist by efficiency and risk assessment. Gone are the days of a genius designer barking orders and inventing the next It item. Instead, marketing, merchandising, and buying teams set the agenda.

What's lost in all that optimization, of course, is the good stuff. The weird stuff. The stuff meant to be collected and cherished for a lifetime. Because one can't know they want something if they haven't seen it yet.

"Every [brand] just wants to be accessible or wants to be palatable in a way that's really, really boring," says Brandon Veloria Giordano, co-founder and co-owner of the legendary New York vintage boutique James Veloria. "We've had our business for almost 12 years, and I do feel like the flattening started happening then. People were really starting to be like, 'I want to find something interesting.'''

According to a recent report from ThredUp , the secondhand market grew nearly four times faster than the overall apparel market last year. Foot traffic is also on the rise, as visits to thrift stores have far outpaced growth in the broader clothing industry, per Placer.ai . It's the "no cute tops" effect in action—shoppers are buying old clothes as a new way to get what they want: unique, quality clothing at a not-totally-outrageous price point.

Macy Eleni, a 33-year-old digital personality and author of Second Chances: The Ultimate Guide to Thrifting, Sustainable Style, and Expressing Your Most Authentic Self , who's been shopping vintage since middle school says mall brands, current fast-fashion villains, and even Walmart used to make better clothing. She's found 100-percent silk blouses from Forever 21; expertly boned corsets from Victoria's Secret; and 100-percent cotton, single-stitch ringer T-shirts from Walmart's in-house brand on her Y2K thrift store adventures. (Single stitching is an IYKYK vintage indicator, Eleni notes. The construction method, which hasn't been widely used since the '90s, allowed fabrics to drape in a way that today's more rigid double stitching does not.) It's true: My quick scroll on Depop served up a 100-percent silk dress for $30 and a 100-percent silk cami for $13 , originally created by Victoria's Secret and Forever 21 respectively. While reporting this story, my editor texted me a picture of a flowy top she's owned for at least 15 years. On the tag? Both "100-percent silk" and "Forever 21."

"People obviously had this very classist idea of secondhand garments and thrifting for so long. And it still exists," says Eleni. But people are coming around to the idea that vintage isn't only about saving money. "Leather and denim are two things I personally never buy new. The attention to detail when it comes to vintage denim is unmatched," she says, referencing embellishments, pocket details, cut, and, especially, durability. "Most modern pairs of jeans tend to lose their color or shape the more you wash them, [whereas] vintage denim gets better with every wash, mostly due to a higher cotton blend versus the more stretch fabric used today." Leather makers previously utilized thicker hides and slower tanning processes. "I really do believe a lot of this just comes down to brands and designers needing to cut corners to meet fast fashion demands. It's just crazy—belts that were even sold at the mall were 100-percent leather. I have a Charlotte Russe belt that's 100-percent leather," Eleni adds.

Brunn offers similar insights for her followers shopping new : Not all leather is created equal; vegan leather usually denotes a plastic byproduct, she says. (There are a few exceptions, like mushroom leather, for example). As for that "Italian leather" moniker, remember that just because something is produced in Italy doesn't make it high-end. Tanneries produce all grades and shades, so pay attention to how the material acts. As Brunn describes it, "full grain folds look organic (see: Hermès anything), while coated and/or synthetic-backed leather bends like plastic."

It's not just materials; there are a host of sewing techniques and design best practices that brands have abandoned. Giordano cites the French seam—which he defines as a time-intensive hidden seam process that requires "rolling, stitching, rolling, stitching," ultimately looking cleaner and creating less bulk—as something he can only find on vintage items. "It's very confusing as to why am I paying this amount," Giordano says of shopping current designs.

Throughout my in-store gum-shoeing, I also clocked a shortage of truly tailored pieces. Instead of traditional waistbands in a range of numerical sizes that correspond to the shape and dimensions of your waist, brands are adding elastic to the back of pants and shirring to the back of dresses. Manufacturing alpha sizes (S, M, L, and so on) is cheaper; you simply make fewer options. A medium with an elastic waistband will likely "fit" a woman who typically wears a 8, as well as her friends who are 6s or 10s.

The problem with this shift is that the clothing looks worse. And, I know, some people like an oversized style—that's fine! But to have no other choices at an affordable price point is indicative of a shortcut. "Our fashion now is so oversized, and we have drawstring pants. Drawstring pants look about the same no matter your body. So, that cuts back on [fashion brands'] risk," explains Brunn, citing larger armholes as another design feature that ensures a more universal fit but looks "slovenly."

Even pattern matching is a thing of the past, points out Ree, the FIT professor. "When you're in design school, you're meant to match the plaid at the seaming," he says. But as a designer in the early 2010s, Ree noticed a new directive that, in order to save time and money on production, prints no longer had to align. It looks better, but it creates fabric waste, so away the practice went.

It isn't just craftsmanship that's degrading. Eleni says that, when browsing new releases, she often thinks to herself, " That's not a complete piece of clothing . …[I can] tell there wasn't a 360-degree idea of: Why [are we] making this, who's wearing this, where are they wearing it, are they going to wear it throughout their life? That's something I see in a vintage piece."

The real question is, how do these brands get away with it? One would think retailers would see profits fall and foot (or online) traffic disappear if it's worse product they're pumping out. Isn't that, like, the rules of capitalism?

"Seventy-five percent of the consumers don't see the difference," says Ree of, for example, the increase in polyester. "They just like the silky feel. They like the touch… So as long as the hand-feel is soft or silky or slick, they don't really see the difference."

Now before we go blaming the victim here, it's worth reiterating that brands have made everything from fabric disclosures to labor practices incredibly opaque. There are less opportunities to shop for clothes in person, and online sales make the quality grift even easier. Combine AI imagery, savvy styling, and retouching, and clothes can look very different in, say, a recent Mango ad campaign , than they do when they arrive at your doorstep.

What's more, quality is no longer as simple as a "Made in America" or "100-percent linen." In the age of influence, views and likes have become more important to customers than facts and figures. Twenty years ago, fashion critics and editors spent their days seeing fashion (not just designer, but contemporary and mall brands, too) in person—touching it, examining it up close, judging its design in the context of the broader market, then deciding whether it was worth promoting to American shoppers via the limited pages of their magazine or newspaper. Today, our splintered information economy means that anyone with a tripod and a ring light can jump on TikTok and portray themself as an authority on the subject. Many are often paid by brands to do so, positively of course.

This faux fashion knowledge is something Giordano has witnessed on his feeds. "There are so many [posts] that I see that I'm like, This is not the collection you're saying it's from. This actually wasn't made by Alexander McQueen. It was Sarah Burton. And why are you speaking with such authority about this? And you have hundreds of thousands of followers who are just agreeing. " While there are certainly independent fashion journalists and creators serving up inspiration and intel, the noise of the algorithm makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chafe. If shoppers have nowhere to learn what good looks like, how could they possibly demand it?

"It's a lack of expertise," agrees Brunn. "What does fashion mean anymore? What is a good fit? People don't know. It's a vibe. If you see something done everywhere"—whether good or bad—"it becomes contagious," she says, pointing out that "we're social beings."

Many clothes for young people seem stuck in the Sardine/Tomato/Coquette Girl microtrend loop for the same reason. "They exist in an echo chamber on TikTok for one week, and then all these brands make these hyper-specific things for a certain aesthetic…because everyone's posting about it," says Eleni. "But then everyone moves on the next week."

Fashion quality is more than just fabrics, seams, and techniques. It's also about intentional design and, well, beauty. Creating for short-term Internet trends inevitably creates sillier, less sophisticated clothing that doesn't fit into your life long-term. And isn't meant to.

Shopping today can feel overwhelming, confusing, and, frankly, depressing, especially if you're looking for something special at a reasonable price point. The middle of the market has bottomed out. There simply aren't any new, fashion-forward 100-percent silk tops for less than $300, according to my research.

So, what does one look for to ensure the best product possible? First, avoid plastic add-ons. Buttons, zippers, and other metal hardware should be just that—metal. There's a reason the plastic fastener on your least favorite pants always snags: It's not well made. Second, pay attention to seams. If there are loose threads when you buy it, rest assured more are on the way. And check if the print matches up on each side. Third, keep an eye on patterns, embellishments, and other details. Do they exist only on the front or extend to the back? Do they randomly stop halfway down a pant leg? If so, don't bother. Part of what makes something look expensive is its cohesion. If a brand can't take the time to affix lace details to the front and back of a shirt, that probably means they didn't spend much time designing it to begin with.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. In some cases, they still do make 'em like they used to. The mall brands are sort of killing it—at least compared to their fast-fashion competitors—in terms of fabric. "There are amazing finds still at the mall," says Brunn, citing J.Crew's 100-percent linen offerings and Gap's 100-percent cotton denim as standouts.

If you're in the market for something special that won't leave you twinning with every wannabe influencer at your local coffee shop, buy secondhand. You can try an online marketplace like The RealReal or Depop if you know the brands, colors, and silhouettes that work for you. Eleni swears by the live shopping market WhatNot for the best vintage deals. And if you want an exciting in-person experience, vintage shops like James Veloria are truly the new boutique. Unbeholden to our broken supply chain, brick-and-mortar resale operations use curation to differentiate themselves.

"It's always been about our own personal taste. Obviously, we're a business, and we have to sell things, but to be a good business and to last, you have to do what you like and then hope that your customers join you on that journey," says Giordano.

Decoding labels and restyling what you already own takes more work (and provides less of a dopamine boost) than blindly adding to cart, but giving into your lizard brain is exactly what the polyester hawkers want. Don't take the easy (or cheap) way out. As Thomas puts it: "I have a rule that if it's cheaper to replace the item than it is to dry clean it—and they all require dry cleaning because the material's such junk—then you didn't pay enough for it."