We’re in the Golden Age of Garbage Clothing

T he closest thing I have to a family heirloom is a black miniskirt. It’s perfect—above the knee but not too short. The pleating and A-line shape give it a modish look without being too era specific. My mother bought it for herself sometime in the 1970s. She passed it along to a younger cousin. My older sister had it next, before I appropriated it in my teens. The label reads “Gaytown Sportswear, Toronto.”

Though it hasn’t fit me for years, the skirt still hangs in my closet in honour of its years of service. It shares space with less worthy pieces: a green sweater that’s gone through one winter but is already starting to pill, a blue shirt that wrinkles if you so much as look at it.

As the $100 billion fast fashion industry has flooded the world with cheap, trendy items, shopping has become a crapshoot. Across social media, you’ll see frustrations over garments’ meagre lifespans. Studies have backed up my irritation with increasingly flimsy T-shirts: University of Kentucky textile researchers have found that they’ve become thinner over the years, as have fabrics. Denim, known for its hard-wearing history, hasn’t fared much better. Experts point to a decline in quality when comparing jeans made in the past five years or so to their counterparts from, say, the ’80s.

Mid-market shops, once a bastion of higher standards, have become hit or miss. Complaints are easy to find on Reddit: “Aritzia is starting to feel like that boyfriend that was once good to us and the letting go process has been difficult to accept.” J. Crew comes up often, with one user grumbling that a $125-plus cashmere sweater “just got a hole in it after one single year of use.” Buyers on YouTube lament the deteriorating craftsmanship in luxury brands too, hoisting up $1,000 bags that come up short. One study found that recently made designer jeans were less durable than a new pair from Walmart. It’s starting to feel like quality has become price and label agnostic.

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