#I'm all for fair pricing & ethically made clothes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

catoi-calamari · 8 months

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I’m dying out here, the gradual enshittification of all products is killing me. Could you please share your knowledge of brands that actually make good, durable clothing items? Tsym!!!

The Big One v3.0:More Boots!

>Blundstone

>Thursday Boot Co

This version is focused mainly on work/masc clothing . If anyone has recommendations for more decorative/femme clothing, please share them with me so I can update the post :)

Make sure to check the version number if you see this in the wild, it may have updated!

Recommendations marked with an asterisk (*) means I have no personal experience with them, but I've heard enough good things that I added them to the list.

1. Shirts/Tops

First of all, I'm a huge whore for 100% cotton, but in theory polyester will last longer. On the other hand, polyester will last forever, seeping into fish and local blood streams for millenia to come. Second of all, if you want cool graphics then I'd highly recommend doing it yourself. I'd say the easiest options for getting reliable, long lasting graphic tees are screen printing, tie dye and vinyl decals, but this depends on what resources you have access to. Keep in mind this is for shirts that you'll (hopefully) be able to wear for over a decade since really any decent cotton tee will last a decent amount of time.

Recommendations

-ASCOLOR

These are the best blank t shirts I've found, period. Stitching is great, the fabric is thick, and from what I can tell they're slightly more inclined to ethical production than your average mass produced T-shirts. They also sell nice jackets and coats as well!

I might try out a couple of pairs of pants from them to see what's up.

Band Tees

For some reason these tend to be really solid, depending on how big the artist in question is. Usually printed on Gildan, which ain't bad. They are expensive though, which means they may not be as great of a deal

This would be the section where I talked about stuff that isn't just t shirts but idk any brands that make consistently durable examples for a good price.

2. Pants

I would recommend a maximum of 1-2% elastane if you're getting skinny jeans, otherwise it's 100% cotton denim baby. Durability decrease exponentially the higher percentage of non-denim there is.

Also, I highly recommend selvage jeans if you can afford them. They use a tighter knit and are made to be worn in.

For cargo pants, get something that's thick and has ripstip material.

Recommendations

-Levi's

The lowest in price I would go tbh. I recommend the 502s since they're 100% cotton but 511s have been a staple of the street fashion world for a while. They're skinnier jeans ain't bad either, but I feel like they're starting to hit the edge of being too thin.

-The Unbranded Brand

Focused solely on getting the price of selvage jeans down to affordable levels. Fair warning, I bought a pair of black jeans (with 1% elastane) and the formaldehyde smell still hasn't gone away. I have an indigo pair that smell fine though, and besides that they're my favorite pairs of jeans.

5.11

Now most """Tactical Apparel""" stores tend to be a bit...off, but since this is a post about durable clothing, I gotta mention the probably undiagnosed autistic guys with a special interest in manly man pants. I have a pair of 5.11 Canvas Cargo Pants and I've taken these things camping, through outdoor airsoft fields, and underground deathcore moshpits. The bastards still looked mint when I finally handed them off to my partner because my ass got too juicy to wear them and gave me a blister when I spent all morning working for a landscaper. (That job was the final straw in my anti-lawn radicalization arc btw.)

To reiterate, I would look for anything that's ripstip and not paper thin. Nylon also works but the texture sucks.

Duluth Trading Co.*

Carhartt if they didn't sell out, from what I've heard

Insert Mid Level Selvage Jean brand that's about $150-$250 a pair*

3. Shoes

Always invest in whatever goes between you and the ground. This goes for mattresses and chairs as well. And for fucks sake get something that can be resoled, and find a cobbler near you. Also look up the Sam Vines Boot Theory of Economics.

Recommendations

Vans

Unlike converse, I've only ever bought one pair. The problem with Vans is the lack of impact absorption, something that can be fixed with aftermarket inserts in theory. Old-Skools take insoles fairly well. Their ComfyCush line is aimed at fixing this problem but I haven't tried any of them. I did get a pair of Ultraranges recently and they seem decently durable, but I've yet to really start wearing into them.

Any skate shoes in general*

Theyre made to be dragged across concrete at relatively high speeds. Try to go for suede.

Solovair*

Now, I have beef with Doc Martens since they sold out, but they're still cheap, comfortable, and made out of leather, which is all you need. Anything lower and I would argue that it's too cheap. However, they can't be resoled, they're leather is kind of thin, and they definitely have a fast fashion mindset.

Solovair is a company that uses the original factories in England to make their own line of lookalikes, for a slightly higher price and slightly higher quality. I've heard their customer service is shit.

Redwing*

I have heard nothing but praise for these. I'm going to buy a pair of Supersole 2.0s once my current pair (which didn't make the list since they kinda went downhill) finally bite it.

Danner*

Another popular recommendation for leather boots.

There is a queer owned boot brand that has canvas and leather boots that are relatively cheap and have cool art but I forgot the name

3. Socks

Blundstones*

Chelsea boots but austrialian

Basically either get Darn Tough* or Point6 some decent socks from whatever brand works for you. I highly recommend merino wool hiking socks, and I just wear cotton socks during the summer.

4. Underwear

You do wear underwear, right?

Recommendations

TomboyX

Queer-owned business catered towards gnc people. Their stuff is dope, high quality, and made in the US with livable wages for their employees. Highly recommend.

5. Specialty

From cold weather gear to military surplus, this section covers everything else.

Recommendations

Patagonia*

I'm still amazed they're this popular and have this much of a focus on sustainability and longevity. Their sibling, North Face, definitely fell into the consumerism pit years ago but Patagonia has still been chugging along.

Military Surplus

I feel a bit guilty for gatekeeping the specific companies I like, but if you go to the right places (eBay) you can get durable clothing for SUPER cheap. It's usually not the highest quality, but it's better than the same thing from an outlet mall.

Chrome

Mainly a bicycling brand, their bags are the kind of things that last a stupidly long time. The internals of them aren't amazing, mainly just an empty main cavity with a laptop sleeve and a smaller separate pocket, but all of their stuff is rock solid. They also have a solid warranty as well.

Swiss Army

Yes, the knife guys. They haven't changed their looks since the late 90s but their backpacks are designed amazingly well. They also have a limited lifetime warranty. I've noticed some cosmetic wear on mine after a few months of using it pretty roughly, thankfully it's just skin-deep stuff but it's also different to older examples I've seen. Definitely more suited towards carrying books and folders.

#sorry this took so long lol #fast fashion #clothes #consumerism #certified og catoi post

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maximumsunshine · 2 years

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Remember back before everything was owned by 5 companies when stores and manufacturers would compete for your business by having the lowest prices possible and still make a profit? And in some cases they'd lose money selling you the tv or they'd sell it at cost, but made a killing on like the cables and such you needed to make the tv work? (This is true I worked for a big box electronics store in the early 00's.) Not just on big annual sales but like day to day? I do. Now they are making a killing on both the tv and the cables but they know they have you by the balls so what are you going to do? Shop the competition? Ha.

We like to say there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. And I remember when that used to be true. Well. The only truth, at least. The new truth is that under late stage capitalism there no longer is even any consumption.

So many of you are too young to really know what I'm talking about. You see a world where you can buy anything and everything you could possibly want or need on amazon, and you think the problem is that it isn't ethical because bezos is a billionaire who doesn't pay his employees fair wages. And ok, he doesn't. But that's not the problem of Amazon.

Look. When you are working 2 jobs, shopping Amazon at 2am is easier. When you don't drive, shopping Amazon is easier. When you live more rural, shopping Amazon is easier. People are going to shop Amazon and we just need to radically accept that that's fine.

But. Can i ask you a question? With your 2 jobs and living paycheck to paycheck and rent costing 2k a month and you barely make enough, even with two jobs, to pay rent and the bills and still eat. With all that, most your Amazon purchases are probably essentials. Maybe not basic essentials. But like if your shower curtain is gross and you're buying a new one off Amazon, even if you pay a little extra for a pretty one, it's still an essential.

And I'm not saying none of you ever buy nonessentials. But what is the math? What are the essentials to nonessentials statistics. All food, hygiene, and clothing counts as an essential btw. Yes even the fun stuff. Yes even that 5$ bathbomb. Work with me here. How many of your Amazon purchases are strictly nonessential items?

Anyway, as i was saying. Under late stage capitalism, there is no consumption. And it only gets worse. Especially with the way inflation is out of control right now.

And I don't know how this ends. I'd like to think it brings about the end of monopolies and the oligarchy. But I'm not sure it stops there.

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queenofzan · 10 months

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and idk it's hard not to be bitter about how anti-fashion people are when most people are also under the impression that clothes are cheap and easy to manufacture

they're not!

everything you're wearing was made by human hands, with very very limited exceptions. some tubes can be knit entirely by machine. your socks may have only been monitored by a technician, not directly sewn by one. likewise simple knitted hats. tubular skirts or dresses.

does the thing you're wearing have sleeves? straps? separate elastics? a zipper? it was made by human beings.

the only reason we think clothes are cheap is because they are made by slave labor.

everything i am wearing right now, except my socks, was made by me. if i paid myself an equitable wage for that labor, this outfit would be hundreds of dollars.

it's not a fancy outfit. i'm wearing a binder (self-drafted pattern), underwear (multiple-iterations of fit adjustment on a commercial pattern), a button-up sleeveless top (self-drafted pattern in multiple iterations), and trousers (self-drafted pattern with multiple iterations for fit). and the socks i did not make, but which i bought from a company that purports to only sell ethically made items like eight years ago.

i'd estimate the top took about four hours (not including pattern development), the pants more like eight (which does include some pattern development, since it was only the second time i used the pattern, and i ended up removing and adjusting the waistband twice), the underwear about an hour, and the binder probably two. at a decent but not great pay rate (less than most union jobs in my area pay, but about what they paid ten years ago), that is $375 not including materials, overhead, or any of my other costs (such as the pattern development and training to do all this).

this is a pretty standard casual-to-business-casual outfit. it should be $500-600.

now, i can get a pair of work trousers from target for, idk, $30. a top, let's say ditto. the binder is more expensive because it's still a specialty item but let's pretend anyone but me makes binders in my size i personally find comfortable, that's $75. underwear? likewise, i'm a sensitive baby, i have to buy kind of expensive undies in order to not feel pinched, let's say $15. which puts me at $150.

the only thing close to a fair wage for a skilled worker there is the binder, because, again, that's a specialty item people still feel comfortable charging a decent price for, because there's less undercutting happening. that won't be the case for long, as more places stock binders in store and therefore try to find ways to cut costs and get their sweatshop workers manufacturing them.

clothes are not cheap. clothes are not simple. they are not easy. they should not be so cheap, and the people who make them should not be exploited.

and tbh i do feel like there's a connection between not understanding how much work still goes into clothes and devaluing Fashion-As-Art. i think if more people were aware of the Real Cost of an everyday outfit being several hundreds of dollars, they might be less confused about why clothing designers and producers think hard enough about it to make Weird Fashion Art.

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aa-line · 1 month

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On branding amidst thorny issues

We started this week talking about how you can make a product durable, stand out, and be coveted to create something luxurious, and we're finishing this week talking about how you break through cultural perceptions to create a branding experience. Since we've been looking at things from a user centric lens, we know that customers will always bring their own lived experiences, culture, assumption and stereotypes - and for this class I thought a lot about how, in the context of larger societies, brands can work to dispel, modify, or create new ideas about a product.

When thinking about my own clothing line, one thing I'm working hard to dispel is the idea that clothes are "cheap." I had my first dose of reality last month when a potential customer approached me and then had a very visceral reaction to the price I would charge for a custom dress. In my mind, my careful analysis of the fabric cost, construction time, and fittings made the price I charged entirely fair - but in their mind benchmarking to other mid priced, "ethically made" garments, it was too much.

Now, part of what could be going on here is just that this was not my type of customer, since my type of customer understands the value of a handmade, bespoke item and understands that the current supply chain allows clothes (even more expensive goods such as brands like reformation) to sometimes cut corners (with things such as finishings, or in other cases fabric or labor) and then be priced cheaper and "better" for consumers. But, at a level deeper, to me this represents how customers have an idea about clothing -that it should be readily available in any style that is the trend and in a price point that reflects a few times wear - whereas as an industry and larger sustainability movement I and others would love to transition this to something slower, and more artful. To change perceptions, I've started on Instagram (and plan to build this out more) show snippets of my process and show HOW complicated it is to make a garment, particularly a custom one. This will hopefully help illuminate the complexity you are paying for and work to modify the cultural ideas of clothing in a fast fashion world.

In a different vein, I also couldn't help but think of the Nike Sports Drink our branding group is taking on and how the cultural context of food/drink has shifted since the first time they tried to launch this product. Nike has been embroiled in labor fairness conflicts in the past, and the brand's fame also has led it to have scrutiny. By trying to break into a world of sports drinks in an age where people now care about "wellness" and "fair trade" and "organic", I wonder how they could create a sports drink that relies less on chemically processed ingredients/gums, and more on something holistic (and if that's even possible?). For this product to be successful, I think there needs to be some nod to the current cultural moment around wellness in food, without going too far to create something that doesn't fit the "sports drink" mold at all.

#MITSloanBranding2024A

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lapeaudelamemoire · 7 months

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I'm genuinely angry about the way things have gone about Tumblr. I just went on the Tumblr merch blog and every single fucking post has replies and notes of people literally going 'Lol stop posting nobody is buying your stuff' or 'Lol so cringe' or 'Lol as if I'd pay money for this overpriced shit' and like. This was for instance on a post of sweatpants for $55.

I fucking hate USians and hypocrites like that. You do not know the cost or the price of anything. You always see people say things like compensate the artist and then they will expect $20 sweatpants. Like. Fair enough if you think something is expensive, and fair enough if you decide that it's too expensive for you and you're not going to buy it. But why is that any different from going on fucking Etsy or whatever and messaging a shop owner to tell them that their things are overpriced? People are always talking about 'ethical' and 'sustainable' and being underpaid and then you will turn around and say $55 for sweatpants is too much.

I paid $92 AUD for my sweatpants from an Indigenous clothing brand here. Regular retail price is $120 AUD but I got them on sale. Is that expensive? Yes, I do think that is expensive. But does that price reflect the fair wage of minimum $25/hour here? Yeah, probably!

Sweatpants can only be $25 if they are literally made in a sweatshop, most likely. Do I also love a cheap thing? Yes, absolutely. But other people also need to make money to fucking eat and live. What the fuck. Also, those people who are being immensely underpaid are almost always non-USians in ""undeveloped"" countries, aka countries that have been plundered and continue to be pillaged by colonialism and imperialism that nowadays comes hugely from the fucking 'US'. You are literally profiting off exploitation.

And the merch was literally explicitly transparently, yes, about trying to make some fucking money to turn a fucking profit to keep this fucking site going.

And users fucking laughed in their faces and taunted them about it *while using the fucking site*.

Like yeah staff isn't perfect and there are grounds that censorship and some problematic things may be going on but people really don't understand or are not aware of the logic or wisdom of not offending the person who serves you and who could literally spit in your food or tamper with it even, huh. People provide you with something and yeah there are some Issues but like bullying staff really seems to be a past-time and specific and purposeful here. This is of course also the website where author John Green was bullied off the entire platform.

I'm so fucking sick of it. It reeks of white entitlement and """individualism""". It only matters when it's you who's getting bullied or underpaid. If you made a thing and spent time developing it and put it out into circulation and people went at you like "Lol hahahah what a shit product wtf you seriously think people are gonna pay good money for this? Get real" you would cry about it. But when it's someone else or someone who, g-d forbid, works a job at a company to get some money to fucking survive, just like you, you do that exact thing to them. 'Ha-ha everything should be free for me uwu' and don't expect to pay for a service even when the company is transparently losing money and has been for years.

People literally profit off Tumblr by getting to come on here, interact with others, make posts, have pictures and whatever on their entire blog hosted, using the site, and simply expect it to be magically free forever? If this were a 'small indie bzniz' people would be frothing at the mouth and calling this theft.

It's so stunningly short-sighted if not outright stupid to play 'Haha why don't you send me, a long-time 12-year user who has not paid anything in all my 12-years of usage and now still refuses to shell out even a cent despite you trying to keep this platform that I am using afloat, a $55 piece of merch for ~exposure~ to my followers'. Which was basically something someone said. "Lol why don't you send me this for free as a long-time user who's been here for 12 years and I can give you exposure lol". For real?

And then of course people bullying Tumblr merch for being 'cringe'.

Get. The fuck. Off the site. If you find it so cringe. And stop using it. Then.

Cunts.

#personal #rant #if i see people clowning on this rant im just blocking them at this point. ive spent half my life on tumblr it raised me #i met people who saved my life here. and they tried to save it and people laughed in their face and kicked it.#fuck. off.#im gonna go buy some merch now.#again - c u n t s.

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sun4lrgirl · 1 year

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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Meet your Posher, Denise.

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biarology · 5 years

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My taste of Asia so far

I am landing in Bangkok in 22 minutes (according to the back of seat infront of me), following a 2 week taste of Nepal.

The people seem lovely. I can't imagine what it would feel like for them to come to Australia.... I highly doubt Australians are as welcoming to tourists as they are. Other than the touristy parts where people want you to buy everything, which is obviously overwhelming, other people also say Hello, or Namaste. Similar to Vietnam (North). Though Vietnam maybe even more Hellos, especially from the kids with their big smiles. So cute.

Nepal, I only went to the tourist areas, but the further from Kathmandu the nicer. Well..fresher air, less traffic and noise, more Homestays.

I've only been to Hong Kong* for a week, Malaysia cities for 3 weeks, Singapore* for a week, Vietnam for 3 weeks, Nepal for 2 weeks. But so fair here's my take on Asia (excluding the * cities).

Asia is a glympse into Behind the Scenes of the Western World.

Shop fronts are also factory fronts, and usually attached to home. You literally walk past what is usually behind closed doors: mechanics mechanicing, woodworkers, metal workers, stone workers, clothes makers, shoe makers and fixers...and butchers. You can't pretend here that meat was not once a living, sentient being. And by 'once,' I mean earlier that day.

In fact, Asia is not dissimilar to Aboriginal communities. And as I suspected, the conditions so far that I've seen, although I havent been to remote places in Asia - are worse in Australia. Overcrowding and unhygienic. Little access to drinkable water. Scary animals. Australia may have better access to medical assistance I'm not sure. We have the clinics and planes to hospitals. The smiley kids are similar, even the way they ahg their clothes - on fences, home made lines, nd in nepal- rocks and walls.

Anyway less analysisng more touristing: met Tulara in Kathamndu for our 30th :) We had a nice routine of walking through the paved alleyways to the local cafe which many of the monks ate at. We were amused to see them playing Fifa on play station.

We explored KTM a bit - walking tour around the city, temple, national park and then we went to Pokhara. A lakeside town where you can see the Himalayas if the weather is right. It wasnt. Tulara shouted us a room on top of the hill! The price was purely for the view but probably still the fanciest place I've been or will be. Also good exercise to get to the top 🤣

After Tulara left I went to Chitawan National Park, where it was 38 degrees and 45+ humidity. Probably a good choice because it prepared me for Thailand 😅 I stayed at a homestay/hotel and got my own room which I wasnt expecting but appreciated. Beginning and ending of the day were elephants. Nepal supposed to be most ethical for elephant treatment but we still saw sharp metal rods (which I'd read were banned)..maybe they were for emergency.

Was very exciting to see Rhinos, and a bear (from a great distance). Also interesting to see all the deer who get along with the monkeys. Apparently the monkeys get a lift across the river. Birds were cool but similar to Aus - water birds and kingfishers.

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