High Street clothing has definitely dropped in quality

bcl999

Hermia wrote: »

Exactly. Price is everything. I remember being a teenager in the late 1980s. My friends and I were from a working class background, but we did expect to pay the equivalent of £30ish for a pair of trousers. But we didn't shop so often and did expect clothes to last for a while (and we were trendy!). A lot of people have now grown up expecting to buy cheap clothes every Saturday or when they pop into the supermarket.

I think the big difference in high street clothes now is how they are constructed. I found some boxes of my old high street clothes in my mum's attic. What surprised me is how well the seams/hems were sewn and also the fact that darts etc had been used to shape the garments. Many high street shops now don't seem to make any effort to shape clothes to fit the human body. Presumably because it takes longer to sew and would therefore be more expensive to make.

I recently sorted through a load of men's shirts from the 1990s, mostly M&S, and found the opposite to be true. The details in the modern stuff are far better than the old ones e.g better finishing like the small buttons on the sleeve-opening above the cuff, double cuff holes, better constructed collars and back yokes. I put this down to the fact that most are now made in places where labour is cheap rather than in the UK, where even in the 90s, labour was a large part of the toala cost of an item. I did find though that, generally, the actual cloth used was of a better quality in the old shirts.

chuckley

err why r u reluctant to take it back?! get a refund and buy sum elsewhere!

anyway, ive found NEXT to b the worst... although they've gradually got worse over the last 3 years. last year u truely saw the bad quality of their stuff right down to the bags. and they said the've risen their prices 8% for 2011... which is beyond shocking since their clothing is beyond tripe. It's the same level as New Look clothes. so ur better off buying in NL as it's cheaper and will last the same amount of time as NEXT.

I noticed a lot of NEXT clothes started to 'bobble' on first wear!!! Also Next are aware of 'problem' clothes but will NEVER recall them. shady shady shady!!!!!!