4 ms·
20 to 25 uses for an undershirt seems terrible. Once per week for church and it is worn out in 6 months. Heaven forbid you dress formally for work and it is gon
by deathanatos 2y ago
20 to 25 uses for an undershirt seems terrible. Once per week for church and it is worn out in 6 months. Heaven forbid you dress formally for work and it is gone after a month of use…? (spread out by the other shirts in the inventory, but still.)
An average of 102 USD for a pair of shorts¹ is something else though, and like other people in the thread note, … Larry, I'm on DuckTales. (171 USD, real / pair of shoes.) (Board member/CEO/VP/etc., if you're curious what profession gets one such a lifestyle.)
I … I struggle to find enough time in my life to keep the fuel efficiency spreadsheet for my car up to date. (Though even that did reveal some findings: we get better fuel economy when the bike rack isn't attached. Not a terribly surprising conclusion, and the difference really wasn't that great.) I'd like to have this for some things in my life, … but it's never clear whether it's worth it.
Especially for clothing. This tells you post facto whether a purchasing decision was good, or not. What good does that do me…? Unless it is something I'll purchase again, but I feel like for clothing that is rare to begin with, and even where I do, it's dominated by more mundane filters like "is there even another supplier that I know of in this area?" Shoes³ are a good example: most stores' stock is so utterly pathetic that the answer is "the store has exactly 1 pair in your size" (and it's hideous, or doesn't actually fit, etc.) (Same problem with dress shirts, jeans. I have gotten the impression that this is mostly a me problem — my build is suffering reverse economies of scale as most of America outweighs me substantially.)
At purchase time is when I need the data … and there, reviews are terrible. I'd truly love to ban reviewers who fail to give me the trifecta of "what size are you, what size did you purchase, and how did it fit?", esp. on Amazon. "It fits" does little good if I have no idea what size you are. Did you buy "your typical size" or did you buy based on your measurements? Etc. Lots of reviews, but next to no data. Compound with false advertising (e.g., "Silk" items made of polyester: my top hit on "silk pajamas²" is 95%/5% poly/span, i.e., 0% silk, and has silk in the title; multiple material listings that contradict each other etc.)
¹7 shorts at an inventory value of 535 EUR. 535/7 = 76.42 EUR. 76.42 EUR to USD (at today's exchange rates; this is a bit wrong I know) => 85.31 USD. Adjust for inflation (the article is (2021)) => 102.66 USD
²I choose silk as, given its luxuriousness, it is more susceptible to this. If you ask for polyester, I'm pretty sure you'll get true to the word there. With silk in particular, there's also a lot of preying on consumers probably not understanding the difference between silk and satin.
³Ironically one of my most recent shoe purchases was via Amazon, and a real risk given how low the price was. Astoundingly they fit not too bad (not perfect) but the low cost means they definitely have a low CPW, and they've seen a fair bit of use with little degradation. The old adage about the better pair of boots … IDK. I'll pay up for shoes, but that pair is providing a stark counter-example to "you get what you pay for". But, I have a mid-range pair from Amazon too that degraded after a few wears. (I repaired it, but still. It was much too young, and it was basically that the lining was not well attached. But it makes me still wary that the good pair was one-off stroke of luck that I can't replicate.)
- ZephyrBlu 2y agoThis is why I put a lot of energy into finding brands that are transparent with their materials and that I can trust for quality. Once you find these brands you can buy stuff without worrying about whether it’s going to suck. For dress shirts, definitely do Made-To-Measure (MTM). There are a bunch of brands that do good MTM shirts. Look on styleforum.net. I like Proper Cloth, but have heard good things about Luxuire and Collaro as well. Kamakura as well, but I don’t think they do MTM. Proper Cloth actually does MTM jeans as well.
- deathanatos 2y agoAnd perhaps that's the problem: they're 4 to 6 times more expensive than decent stores (Old Navy runs ~$40, on jeans, for example, vs. the $200-$300 base price on Proper Cloth), which themselves are a few times more expensive than the drop-shipped junk bin of Amazon. There's not enough "slack" in a (normal? middle class?) person's budget to support that. (There's no slack, really / I don't think I can justify living at such a price point.)
- ZephyrBlu 2y agoI feel like MTM jeans are pretty rare, and $200-300 isn’t actually that much for nice denim. I don’t think price is the main problem though. Most people could probably spend that if they wanted, they just don’t care about clothes enough to do so, which is completely fair. Unfortunately it seems like people balk at even spending $100 on a piece of clothing. Also, Old Navy is a Gap brand. I would consider it fast fashion. Nudie and Naked & Famous are a couple of denim brands I would consider good.