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More good stuff from Europe that I hope will radically change markets.

Quality is a huge issue. It's changed my shopping habits because it's often better to simply go without than to buy cheap rubbish that lasts a week and causes you more inconvenience than if you'd never had it. I mostly buy vintage things that can be repaired now.

In the UK brands like Marks and Spencer used to make clothes that lasted. Now they sell the same appallingly made sweatshop stuff. They still have their famous returns policy, and honour it, but I'd rather have something that lasts than something I can take back when it breaks. Guess they have a procurement issue because quality is uniformly low. Same with cheap electronic goods; pointless locked-down IoT cruft that cannot be repurposed or fixed and is landfill fodder straight after unboxing.

We're drowning in cheap manufactured goods whose short lifespan and overhead (transport and disposal) dwarfs its functional utility.

This is all part of a larger phenomenon I like to call the "Amazon syndrome".

The quality standard for products seems to be incredibly low nowadays. I see people happily buying whatever cheap Chinese junk Amazon dropshippers sell, for a "low" price that's usually 4-5x the price of the exact same item on AliExpress. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive because most people don't care about actual specs or functionality and give 5 stars as long as it's cheap and it works, even when the product is marked up by the dropshipper and leaves a lot to be desired.

Reputable brands that used to make quality products now need to compete on price in a sea of "good enough" garbage, and many of them choose to do so by outsourcing manufacturing to the same Chinese factories that make the no-name stuff. Midrange products disappeared entirely and now the choice is between disposable landfill and ridiculously expensive high-end items.

As someonce in a Reddit thread (?) once said: "The product that retails for $500 costs $5 more to manufacture than the low-end equivalent that sells for $20. If you try to find a middle ground and spend $100, you end up with the $20 product in a nice box."

There are smaller brands that try to be and are a lot better. They deserve attention.

Trippen shoes from Germany make comfortable shoes that aren’t exactly main stream, but are repairable and used to offer a very reasonable refurbishment price (haven’t refurbished any for a bit). I have several pairs of 20+ years old shoes from them.

https://en.trippen.com/t/men

Nudie jeans offer free repairs at their shops and 10+% discount for new jeans if they are not repairable, as trade-in. If you trade in, and they are usable, they sell as second hand.

https://www.nudiejeans.com/repair-spots/#stores

The trend I have seen with clothing brands is most often once they become popular, become a recognized "brand name" - often because of their high quality, good design, and relative affordability. Then the economies of scale "engineers" of business folks start to scale it by reducing costs (less quality control, lower quality materials, etc) to maximize profit per unit sold - milking the brand as quickly as possible to extract as much as they can as soon as they can. This leads towards killing the brand or where it just becomes at par with whatever the status quo ecosystem allows based on environmental costs like mall rental space, etc.

Executives seem to know or are making the bet that brands may not stay popular for long as it may be fad buying and not a sustainable trend, or they simply know they can make more money individually/selfishly if they use these tactics - and hire people who use these tactics; why make $15+ million over 20 years when you maybe could milk a brand to death and get $10+ million in 5 years?

What I wonder is though are there potential pitfalls of this for consumers?

Have they or anyone done a study on cost changes, e.g. will costs increase substantially in short-term but perhaps that is more than made up on the tail end with the durability?

Did they publish a list of known poor quality textiles, I imagine that would include such things as low thread count for the textile and perhaps for stitching as well?

Does this impact certain styles of clothing that say due to their sheer nature?

There are a few excellent UK-made brands out there, although it's on the expensive side it's definitely quality stuff that lasts : Mackintosh, Drake's, Barbour (depending on the price range), Sunspel, Private White V.C., John Smedley, Colhay's etc. I'm personally a huge fan of S.E.H Kelly.

And of course there are still the venerable shoe makers of Northampshire which in my opinion remain the best industrial ready-to-wear shoemaking in the world (with a few exceptions, namely Carmina and J.M. Weston) : Edward Green, Crockett & Jones, Cheaney, Church's, Grenson etc. I'm myself a regular Crockett & Jones customer as they make the only size + width combination I've found in ready-to-wear that matches my feet really well.

Of course it's a rather militant way of looking at clothing and it's all pretty expensive stuff but :

- Frankly it's affordable if you've got an engineer's comp.

- It keeps its value well on the second-hand market.

In the UK I still think Marks and Spencer (M&S) offer quality clothing at reasonable prices. They don't compete fully with 'fast fashion' prices but they have been affected by competition from other fast fashion retailers by offering their own 'value' lines.

If you avoid the cheapest clothing lines at M&S, their mid-priced clothing is generally of longer-lasting and better quality.

For example, you can buy organic cotton chinos and jeans in the price range £25-35 (approximately $35-45/€30-40). These are reasonable prices given the premium typically charged for organic clothing.

The trouble is not only finding quality goods now, its that once you do they are way more expensive than they used to be since they now serve a smaller market. Not only are they trying to stay afloat with a smaller customer base, they're losing some of the economies of scale, so prices go up or quality goes down.
This is a trade-off like for everything else.

Fashion changes fast and therefore does it make sense to sell more expensive clothes that last? Many people want what is fashionable this season, not wear the same things for years.

In terms of environmental impact and use of resources I suspect that there is a sweet spot between not lasting at all and very long lasting (like there probably is for appliances and about everything else that people will replace after x months/years anyway) Likewise, "fixable" may incur overheads that actually negate the a priori benefit.

I once went to a cloth repair shop and asked what brand was better for long term. “None”, they said, “all of them are equally bad nowadays“. So no chance much to make it work over the market it seems.
I’ve noticed this even with “nice” clothing brands like Banana Republic. I bough a shirt, and within two months it was ready for the garbage pile.

I’ve since switched over to the even more expensive Lululemon, which seems vastly better. Time will tell.

I’d rather have three very expensive shirts that fit great and last a decade than a tidal wave of garbage that costs the same in the end.

As much as I share your sentiment, my daughters disagree.

They buy quality handbags, jewellery and jackets, but everything else is a consumable. They do share their clothing amongst each other and a couple of close friends, but otherwise will hardly wear a combination more than once (outside that is).

Here I am, buying all my cloths in 5 fold, since I do not like matching different items.

If I was making policies I would oblige manufacturers of anything to take back and recycle their product at the end of life. This would make sure products/packagings are made to be recyclable and/or biodegradable.

This should be applied not only to clothing, but really everything. I would expect the first result would be no single use plastics anywhere.

Obviously the cost of the change would be transferred to consumers on the purchase price. However we are already paying it in a deferred manner with the degradation of the natural world.

I provided ecommerce services for a wide variety of U.K. and European fashion brands from 2006-2016, and one thing that always stood out was that about 10% of the customers of each brand would make up >50% of the revenue - be it shoes, garments, or accessories. This applied across other verticals, too, but in fashion the concentration was far more pronounced.

The reason these customers had a higher per capita revenue was that they bought something pretty much every week of the year.

The thing is, this kind of behaviour is akin to addiction - I recall in more than a few cases concerned partners or parents requesting intervention, and blocking or limiting of accounts - it was up to the retailer how they handled that - we just heard about the ones where they wanted us to do something.

So - clamping down on fast fashion is no bad thing, however it addresses a symptom rather than a root cause, which is principally addictive shopping behaviours bought about by saturated and predatory marketing and depressed populations seeking solace in that momentary rush of dopamine when they hit purchase, waiting for a parcel to arrive like an addict waiting for a fix.

I mean, hell, I’ve lived the behaviour. Never to the extremes that I’ve seen, but compulsive consumption is an easy if temporary quick fix for a hole in the soul. Fashion is the pinnacle of this, as it gives you not just the purchase rush, but the potential esteem boost from wearing your new garments.

The problem remains elsewhere, and more fundamental.

Somebody should setup the uncool and reliable brand of male clothing. I want the Toyota Corolla of male clothing. I do not care about fashion. I want to wear timeless long lasting clothes. Don't care about branding either. Just somebody please setup a shop where I do not have to worry about quality, but is also not a shop that pretends that every item of clothing is hand tailored by an Italian craftsman and costs half a thousand euros.
As a side-effect this will also increase the prices of the cheapest clothes available on the market, and as such would in effect be a regressive tax.
Fast fashion sucks but this is an odd thing to prioritize given the situation Europe now finds itself in. With a massive energy shortfall, Europe is likely entering the worst economic period since WWII. I am proud of them for sticking to their principles, I just think they should be focused on the existential threats they are currently facing.
I feel like the biggest hole, companies operating bins claiming that they will recycle clothes while they will send them to third-world country to be landfilled or burned, isn’t addressed in that law.
Firstly, Europe leading the way as ever in legislation and regulations on ESG. Secondly, fast fashion has severe social and compliance impacts and that is often overlooked (the environmental and climate piece is well understood). Whats needed is a more homogeneous way to measure climate and labor impact especially in fashion. Newer, sustainable-focussed brands are taking charge and measuring and publishing their impacts.
There's a big part of me that agrees with this. I am a bit worried though that we're making it harder and harder for new people coming into the world to make new startups, with more and more rules like this imposing a higher entry cost. Feels like we're just going to have massive companies in the future who are able to navigate all this, and too high a barrier of entry for new companies.
Fast fashion isn’t the only type of clothing that exists today. I think it’s shortsighted to deride fast fashion without understanding why it’s so popular.

Every consumer in the EU, today, has the choice to pay for higher quality and more sustainable clothing. Fashion is unsustainable because the average consumer doesn’t care about the sustainability. They want cheap clothes. That’s it. We can choose to shift the negative externalities back to the consumer or manufacturer, but let’s not forget that people already have the choice to vote with their wallets and they’re resoundingly voting for fast fashion.

How do they define fast fashion?

What makes it different than a budget T-shirt that you wear multiple times?

Fast fashion is more about how clothes are marketed than the inherent properties of the clothing itself.

Unless substantial price increase, I don't see this changing behavior much. Third world landfills will have slightly more durable textiles with better stitching.
Nice. I’ve been trying to only buy my clothes from brands that are sustainable. The quality of clothes has been great too.

https://www.fairify.io/en/brands/ has been a great help finding sustainable brands. A bit sad Levi’s is only a C though, I like their jeans.

Why don't let customers decide? Just require manufacturers to be more transparent. I've argued long time that most regulations could be replaced with mandatory transparency. Manufacturers should be open about their quality and lifetime of their products. No one buys a bad product if they know about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_Jeans

A satisfied customer

I'm always glad to learn that I was very moral all along about something. In this case, my 10 year old, falling-apart sweatshirt that I wear every day is real, real virtuous. (I kind of suspected it all along, to be sure.)

easier to repair

Yeah, put down your phones and pick up your needle and thread, ladies. Good luck with that. Maybe the 19th century wasn't so bad.

I suspect that this bifurcation of expensive, high quality goods and cheap crud at the bottom in price sensitive markets is due to income inequality. People on the high end can afford the higher quality goods, and cheap items become cheap enough to cut out the middle market.
I highly recommend the book "Worn: A People's History of Clothing" by Sofi Thanhauser, for those interested in learning more about environmental impacts of the clothing/textile industry and its history.
I’m able to find good quality shoes and boots, jackets, watches, and bags. I can’t for the life of me find quality chinos, polos, t-shirts, sweaters, and other basic articles of clothing.

I’m fine with Levi jeans, but all other clothing items seem to be crappy cotton/spandex blends of poor quality fabric, no matter if you spend $15 or $150 on a garment. It’s very frustrating, I’d rather just buy quality stuff that lasts, but I’m unable to find any quality clothing. Hopefully this legislation encourages clothing manufacturers to use quality fabrics and construction again.

In my life this is a complete non-problem honestly. A friend just remarked how I have been wearing the same few t-shirts for years. They don't look worn or damaged either. Not any particularly fancy brand either. I just went to some store and picked a t-shirt that felt comfy and bought a dozen of em.

For this reason I don't like these rules. Any rule has an administrative cost, and therefore rules should only be made as a last resort. I don't want some independent tailors or etsy creators wasting time checking boxes.

I just hope this doesn't have any (un)intended consequences that will replace natural materials like wool and cotton with synthetic fabrics or something equally ridiculous.
Two months ago I bought two jeans trousers from a local shop here in Italy. No big chain of stores, they have a pair of clothes stores in the area. Surely trousers were indeed cheap, no branded, made in Asia, but they both last 5 weeks, tearing apart in the same exact point in the same exact way after only a few uses. Never happened to me, not even with clothes bought from cheap clothes italian chain of stores like OVS.
I feel like for fast fashion specifically, this is a move in entirely the wrong direction.

Fashion trends change quickly, a lot of people buy clothes with full intentions of wearing them for a couple weeks until they’re out of style and then just throw them away. Making fast fashion to last years is putting more valuable materials in the dump. Without a major change in peoples buying habits, it’s just making things worse.

"eco-friendly and hard-wearing"

These two can run opposed. I had two t-shirts stained, one brand new and one a decade old) and used the same product on both. The brand new completely discolored while the decade old didn't. Both are cotton so I guess the eco-friendly dye is to blame. Not so sustainable when I have to throw it in the trash with only a few uses.

For the last ten years I have been anticipating that Europe would become the Switzerland of the world, at a larger scale. For the worth and better. Sustainability is a big part of it and this kind of move as well as the platforms regulation give me hope.
The "Planned Obsolescence" documentary is (infuriatingly) great on how goods have degraded in quality over the years.

https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y

We could abolish face masks. Every person uses couple every day. Most masks are not recycled. And it is micro fiber that accumulates in animal tissues!
I am certain there is a capitalistic equivalent of the economic calculation problem.

In a planned economy, good decision making is impossible above a certain level of scale and complexity, because it’s infeasible to get the right information on all relevant factors and constraints to the decision makers.

In a market economy, good purchase decisions are impossible because the supply chains are opaque and complex and by the time anyone has figured out the true quality of something, it’s no longer made in the same way.

This fast-fashion shit has ruined everything. Zara is a spanish brand that around 20 years ago used to produce high quality garments, remember having a lot of shirts, sweater and pants lasting from 5 to 10 years .... After going global they shit everything up .... Always the same issue with capitalism and globalization
Brussels bureaucrats sure seem like they want to build a moat for the large incumbent companies that startups will have an increasingly hard time disrupting due to increased costs.
Literally the fashion police.
Classic UK poking their fingers on everything and anything.
> Manufacturers will have to ensure their clothes are eco-friendly and hard-wearing.

Very little of substance in the article. I wonder if this is a “baptists and bootleggers” moment for greens and Euro clothing industry?

EU parliament members who can afford Brioni suits and haute couture for their families can’t be in charge of making rules like these.
Half-OT

Fast fashion seems to be one of the problems the metaverse could solve.

In the pandemic, many people moved more and more of their social life online. Not 100% of it, but quite a bit more than before.

If less people would buy real clothes every season and just show off digital clothes online, this could solve the overproduction issue.

You can still signal being wealthy or stylish online, but nobody would actually have to sew all that stuff.