alt Hacker NewsI've always been struck by how outrageously exploitative and anti-consumer the textile industry is in so many ways, and how people just normalize it and don't even discuss it.
Not just in sizing, which is also a problem — my polo shirt and dress shirt sizes vary between M and XXL depending on the brand, and even my shoe size can vary up to 3 numbers, it shouldn't be rocket science to establish some quantitative standards.
There's also the issue of buying a polo shirt and having it bleed because they've decided to save a few cents on the color-blocking product, and in the first wash, it ruins not only the shirt itself but the entire laundry load.
And the fact that a cotton garment may or may not shrink, and it's a complete lottery how much it will shrink, so sometimes even trying it on in person is useless.
And then there's the fact that someone up there decides that this year a certain trend is "coming" (let's say, pants with buttons instead of zippers) and that's all they sell. If you like zippers and you need to buy pants that year, tough luck.
And all of this is compounded by the fact that even buying expensive doesn't guarantee you'll get spared from all this nonsense... I'm not a cheapskate at all, I don't mind paying if I know a garment will be reliable and durable, but sometimes you buy a designer item and the quality is absolute garbage.
All of this, by the way, is much worse in Europe than in the US (I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because in the US you always use a dryer, so they have no choice but to make clothes a bit more robust for that market).
If other industries did these things, consumers would be up in arms. If any other product seemed to behave well when you superficially check it on the store, but then completely failed on very first use (like a shirt that shrinks or bleeds), you would return it. But in clothing all of this is normalized.
It also amuses me when people complain about the carbon footprint of AI: if they saw the footprint of the textile industry (compared to the actual usefulness of clothes designed to last for one season and be replaced...).
I wash new clothes by themselves for the first time for this reason, it's a good enough solution.
I once had jeans with buttons and first I thought it was terrible, but after 2-3 uses I got used to it, so it's not a big deal I guess.
And about quality there is a youtube channel where they cut shoes in half and rate the quality of the build, and based on the couple of shoes I've checked out, the price and brand rarely correlates with good quality.
As with everything else, when buying expensive longterm items (like a leather boot), it is worth doing some research into which option is the best.