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I have started buying clothes from USA _because_ they are of higher quality. Even though they are made in my India, they are usually not available for sale here

I have started buying clothes from USA _because_ they are of higher quality. Even though they are made in my India, they are usually not available for sale here. The quality and variety available for exports is drastically different from what is available for the local market. Mine have lasted at least 2-3 years before I buy a new set of clothes. I wonder why there is a huge churn in USA to keep buying new clothes. Is it just more affordable/cheaper to buy than to mend your clothes? Easier access that makes it binge buy quickly? Too many special occasions? I am confused cos I feel they haven't seen inferior quality of clothing that they don't keep their belongings longer.

wccrawford 5y ago
I'm an American that doesn't buy new clothes often, but I want to provide my view. My clothes last a lot longer than 2-3 years. To get to the point that they're ragged or faded takes a long time for most of them. (The very cheapest t-shirts from online sites are the exception. I don't buy those any more.) On the other hand, my wife gets great pleasure from getting new clothing. She has a lot more than I do, and still she buys more. She is genuinely excited about wearing and showing off the new clothes she bought. When she gets a compliment about them, she is very, very happy. Strangers aren't likely to give those compliments, and friends aren't going to compliment the same clothes again. To get those feelings, she needs new clothes. All that said, she doesn't buy as many clothes as many of the vapid women/girls that I've met over the years. She's responsible with her money and doesn't buy excessively. But watching her emotions about the ones she does buy informs me a lot about the less responsible women out there. I don't know any men like that, but I have seen them on TV (especially "reality" shows), so I'm sure they exist, too.
- telesilla 5y ago
  In case she is open to discussing this, it's a fairly common problem. It can be resolved by finding another source of praise, for example volunteer work or teaching, or exceeding in extra activities in her field. She is not needing new clothes but attention, and there are healthy ways to achieve that. Experience: my own (as a woman) and various friends over the years.
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    I don't think she has a "problem" per se. I think her clothes buying is entirely within reason, and she makes wise decisions about when to buy or retire clothes. I was mainly extrapolating her feelings for new clothes to others who spend a lot more on clothes.
  - 8589934591 5y ago
    Hey please have a look at my reply above. My wife would definitely love to make better friends to talk about something other than clothes/earrings. As a woman how do you handle such situations when your self worth is evaluated by the newer clothes/things you wear as opposed to talking about your success in your career?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - telesilla 5y ago
      I should have added "attention and validation" as these are normal social things that we all need. Wanting these are not bad, it's just how we get them that can sometimes be unhealthy. Is it possible your wife has lower self-esteem? It becomes a vicious circle, as you seek ways to increase it using the best ways you know, until you become self-aware enough to step out of the pattern. Does she have opportunities to be praised by other women for non-material or visual qualities? We all need this.
- 8589934591 5y ago
  Thank you for your reply. > On the other hand, my wife gets great pleasure from getting new clothing. She has a lot more than I do, and still she buys more. She is genuinely excited about wearing and showing off the new clothes she bought. When she gets a compliment about them, she is very, very happy. My wife feels the same way. We both have discussed this and have a hypothesis that the compliments for her new clothes is received more often from women (and men sometimes) who belong to the previous generations. We feel this is partially because during their lives buying clothes was more of a luxury than an everyday thing, mainly due to scarcity. Traditionally new clothes have been bought for festivals and kept and cherished for the years to come. This came to around 5-10 new clothes per year. But now we can just buy whatever whenever. > friends aren't going to compliment the same clothes again. To get those feelings, she needs new clothes. Another observation we have is that we have been groomed by the previous generation to like newer clothes that we arent able to appreciate the other things in our lives. My wife has a successful business which she started at the start of the pandemic, but this gets a lot less discussion than what she wears or what plants she grows at home. We feel this is also reflected by how the previous generation might have defined self worth for a woman.
pasabagi 5y ago
> Is it just more affordable/cheaper to buy than to mend your clothes? I'm not from the US (EU instead) but mending clothes is almost never cost-effective for me, because it's hard to do well, and would cost more than most garments (either in time, or in paying somebody to do it). I still sometimes mend my clothes for fun.
- 8589934591 5y ago
  I agree with you. I think I should have been clearer. By mending I meant small tears or threads coming off. Not full blown tears which can just be used to clean your table.
rootsudo 5y ago
Depends, buying is cheap, so why not - meanwhile also having so much clothes can be annoying. Easier to get rid of them, then sell them and such.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>so why not The 'why not' only matters if you care about the planet, buying and replacing things that don't need to be purchased in the first place is horrible for the planet in every conceivable way. I recycle things when I can, but I am a firm believer that not buying things that won't last or that you don't need - is much much better than separating your plastic and cardboard in the recycling bins - most of which just ends up in the landfill anyway.
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    I agree, but consumerism/shopping is a hobby in the USA. You can choose to buy quality, but it will not be the same price point. Shoes from H&M vs LL Bean are a huge difference in price and quality.
sgtnoodle 5y ago
Having had my sleep interrupted by a toddler bed wetting situation, I just spent 2 hours typing a novel about the human condition on my phone rather than sleeping, and then slipped and accidently swiped "refresh". Long story short, the reason why Americans buy excessive amounts of consumer goods is because they can and have for 3 or 4 generations and it's culturally normal. There's fleeting happiness from the small reward of dopamine in your brain from spending money, and an economy optimized for it built on top of unprecedented abundance since the late 1940's. A lot of Americans are uninformed about quality, and are well enough off not to need to be. As an extreme example, a few weeks ago my young nephews were really excited because a "$400" drone was "on sale" for only $100 in limited quantities! "Daaaadddd we HAVE to buy it. We'll use our own money!" Luckily I was there and, as their uncle, have no problem crushing their hopes and dreams. I work on autonomous aircraft professionally, so it was pretty easy to explain thoroughly and painfully (for them) why it was junk. I made it a point for them to understand that despite the fact that they had the money, they couldn't really afford to buy it. If they did, they would have fun for about 90 seconds until it crashed and broke, and then they would have a pile of e-waste and no money. Adults are generally wiser than children, but still frequently irrational (not to imply that that's a bad thing). My wife orders and returns clothes often times as a way to cope with stress and anxiety. It's several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than therapy (which is a rather unfortunate state for our society), and her experiences as a child led to her developing a scarcity mindset. She also hates clutter, and will tend to either pack things away never to be seen again or readily throw things away on a daily basis. I'm fairly opposite. I rarely buy clothes; the average age of any item of clothing I own is probably 10 years. I'll hand sew holes to keep my favorite shorts on life support. My experiences as a child lead to developing an abundance mindset. I appreciate order but don't mind clutter, and like to know I can find something within 10 minutes of looking, even if it's been a few years, because it's exactly where I left it. I don't throw things away without some premeditation, because I bought it with some premeditation. We have fun together!
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  > I don't throw things away without some premeditation, because I bought it with some premeditation. I like this. Lately I've been thinking about what I own. I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to own something, I want it to be good, and I want to have made a deliberate decision to own it. But I also have a bit of a minimalist side to me and can't stand clutter, so to me the decision to buy something is a big one, because I feel like I need to consider the whole lifecycle of that object first (Where will I keep it? Can I easily bring it with me? And how will I eventually dispose of it?).

wccrawford 5y ago

I'm an American that doesn't buy new clothes often, but I want to provide my view. My clothes last a lot longer than 2-3 years. To get to the point that they're ragged or faded takes a long time for most of them. (The very cheapest t-shirts from online sites are the exception. I don't buy those any more.) On the other hand, my wife gets great pleasure from getting new clothing. She has a lot more than I do, and still she buys more. She is genuinely excited about wearing and showing off the new clothes she bought. When she gets a compliment about them, she is very, very happy. Strangers aren't likely to give those compliments, and friends aren't going to compliment the same clothes again. To get those feelings, she needs new clothes. All that said, she doesn't buy as many clothes as many of the vapid women/girls that I've met over the years. She's responsible with her money and doesn't buy excessively. But watching her emotions about the ones she does buy informs me a lot about the less responsible women out there. I don't know any men like that, but I have seen them on TV (especially "reality" shows), so I'm sure they exist, too.

telesilla 5y ago
In case she is open to discussing this, it's a fairly common problem. It can be resolved by finding another source of praise, for example volunteer work or teaching, or exceeding in extra activities in her field. She is not needing new clothes but attention, and there are healthy ways to achieve that. Experience: my own (as a woman) and various friends over the years.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  I don't think she has a "problem" per se. I think her clothes buying is entirely within reason, and she makes wise decisions about when to buy or retire clothes. I was mainly extrapolating her feelings for new clothes to others who spend a lot more on clothes.
- 8589934591 5y ago
  Hey please have a look at my reply above. My wife would definitely love to make better friends to talk about something other than clothes/earrings. As a woman how do you handle such situations when your self worth is evaluated by the newer clothes/things you wear as opposed to talking about your success in your career?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - telesilla 5y ago
    I should have added "attention and validation" as these are normal social things that we all need. Wanting these are not bad, it's just how we get them that can sometimes be unhealthy. Is it possible your wife has lower self-esteem? It becomes a vicious circle, as you seek ways to increase it using the best ways you know, until you become self-aware enough to step out of the pattern. Does she have opportunities to be praised by other women for non-material or visual qualities? We all need this.
8589934591 5y ago
Thank you for your reply. > On the other hand, my wife gets great pleasure from getting new clothing. She has a lot more than I do, and still she buys more. She is genuinely excited about wearing and showing off the new clothes she bought. When she gets a compliment about them, she is very, very happy. My wife feels the same way. We both have discussed this and have a hypothesis that the compliments for her new clothes is received more often from women (and men sometimes) who belong to the previous generations. We feel this is partially because during their lives buying clothes was more of a luxury than an everyday thing, mainly due to scarcity. Traditionally new clothes have been bought for festivals and kept and cherished for the years to come. This came to around 5-10 new clothes per year. But now we can just buy whatever whenever. > friends aren't going to compliment the same clothes again. To get those feelings, she needs new clothes. Another observation we have is that we have been groomed by the previous generation to like newer clothes that we arent able to appreciate the other things in our lives. My wife has a successful business which she started at the start of the pandemic, but this gets a lot less discussion than what she wears or what plants she grows at home. We feel this is also reflected by how the previous generation might have defined self worth for a woman.

pasabagi 5y ago

> Is it just more affordable/cheaper to buy than to mend your clothes? I'm not from the US (EU instead) but mending clothes is almost never cost-effective for me, because it's hard to do well, and would cost more than most garments (either in time, or in paying somebody to do it). I still sometimes mend my clothes for fun.

8589934591 5y ago
I agree with you. I think I should have been clearer. By mending I meant small tears or threads coming off. Not full blown tears which can just be used to clean your table.

rootsudo 5y ago

Depends, buying is cheap, so why not - meanwhile also having so much clothes can be annoying. Easier to get rid of them, then sell them and such.

ejb999 5y ago
>>so why not The 'why not' only matters if you care about the planet, buying and replacing things that don't need to be purchased in the first place is horrible for the planet in every conceivable way. I recycle things when I can, but I am a firm believer that not buying things that won't last or that you don't need - is much much better than separating your plastic and cardboard in the recycling bins - most of which just ends up in the landfill anyway.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  I agree, but consumerism/shopping is a hobby in the USA. You can choose to buy quality, but it will not be the same price point. Shoes from H&M vs LL Bean are a huge difference in price and quality.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

Having had my sleep interrupted by a toddler bed wetting situation, I just spent 2 hours typing a novel about the human condition on my phone rather than sleeping, and then slipped and accidently swiped "refresh". Long story short, the reason why Americans buy excessive amounts of consumer goods is because they can and have for 3 or 4 generations and it's culturally normal. There's fleeting happiness from the small reward of dopamine in your brain from spending money, and an economy optimized for it built on top of unprecedented abundance since the late 1940's. A lot of Americans are uninformed about quality, and are well enough off not to need to be. As an extreme example, a few weeks ago my young nephews were really excited because a "$400" drone was "on sale" for only $100 in limited quantities! "Daaaadddd we HAVE to buy it. We'll use our own money!" Luckily I was there and, as their uncle, have no problem crushing their hopes and dreams. I work on autonomous aircraft professionally, so it was pretty easy to explain thoroughly and painfully (for them) why it was junk. I made it a point for them to understand that despite the fact that they had the money, they couldn't really afford to buy it. If they did, they would have fun for about 90 seconds until it crashed and broke, and then they would have a pile of e-waste and no money. Adults are generally wiser than children, but still frequently irrational (not to imply that that's a bad thing). My wife orders and returns clothes often times as a way to cope with stress and anxiety. It's several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than therapy (which is a rather unfortunate state for our society), and her experiences as a child led to her developing a scarcity mindset. She also hates clutter, and will tend to either pack things away never to be seen again or readily throw things away on a daily basis. I'm fairly opposite. I rarely buy clothes; the average age of any item of clothing I own is probably 10 years. I'll hand sew holes to keep my favorite shorts on life support. My experiences as a child lead to developing an abundance mindset. I appreciate order but don't mind clutter, and like to know I can find something within 10 minutes of looking, even if it's been a few years, because it's exactly where I left it. I don't throw things away without some premeditation, because I bought it with some premeditation. We have fun together!

frosted-flakes 5y ago
> I don't throw things away without some premeditation, because I bought it with some premeditation. I like this. Lately I've been thinking about what I own. I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to own something, I want it to be good, and I want to have made a deliberate decision to own it. But I also have a bit of a minimalist side to me and can't stand clutter, so to me the decision to buy something is a big one, because I feel like I need to consider the whole lifecycle of that object first (Where will I keep it? Can I easily bring it with me? And how will I eventually dispose of it?).