"I Don't Want More Choice; I Just Want Nicer Things!"

Anyone who's had the (dis)pleasure of buying clothing recently knows that even expensive items are cheaper than ever. On the complicated history of textiles, and how we got here.

Pride in London 2016 - Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as their Absolutely Fabulous characters opening the parade. Photographed by Katy Blackwood. Via Wikimedia Commons.

There’s a scene from the hit BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous that lives rent-free in my mind.

Absolutely Fabulous aired in a clustered mini-series format from 1992 to 2012, followed by a film in 2016. The show is a cutting satire about the fashion and PR industries, told through the lens of a highly dysfunctional family helmed by PR mogul Edina “Eddie” Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and her best friend, Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley)—the executive fashion director of a top British fashion magazine.

The scene in question comes from the episode “Jealous” (Season 3, Episode 4). Eddie has just lost a major PR award to her biggest rival, Claudia Bing. (A horrific slight! After all, Eddie paid for the judges!) A few days later, at an industry luncheon amidst smug, do-gooder colleagues, Eddie stands up for her scheduled speech—and unleashes on the audience instead.

“This used to be fun, you know!” she cries, bemoaning the new landscape of “no-name” celebrities and phony activism. “I don’t want to be in some sort of cyber-space, hyper-virtual bloody reality… I don’t want more choice; I just want nicer things!”

A tirade about life in the 2020s? Rather, an episode that aired in 1995.

Perhaps it’s been top of mind for me, now that the holiday season has wrapped up. But clothing just isn’t made how it used to be.

Even in the past ten years, consumers have witnessed a considerable decline in the quality of clothing on the market. Part of this is due to increased consumerism—today, Americans purchase five times the amount of clothing as they did in the 1980s. The shift began in earnest in the 1990s, as trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and increasing trade with Asian countries meant that “Made in the USA” become a distant memory. Note that in 2020, NAFTA was replaced with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, and received overwhelming bipartisan support. At least in the US, there’s a greater understanding today of the importance of US manufacturing, and how rapid globalization left many middle- and working-class Americans behind.

But clothing is still largely produced overseas. The numbers are staggering—according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, in the 1960s, almost 95% of clothing purchased in the US was also made in the US. Today, only 3% of apparel purchased by Americans were made by Americans. What began with the trade deals of the 90s was exacerbated by the Great Recession. By 2008, clothing companies had already determined that they could exploit cheap labor and menial regulations in developing countries. But then the Recession hit, and what resulted was the perfect storm to launch the fast fashion industry. Consumers suddenly had far less buying power, and with the rise of Instagram and Tumblr, young people were particularly susceptible to new forms of advertising. In came fast fashion giants like Forever 21, H&M, and more recently, Shein—all producing cheap, rapidly-made clothing in the latest trends.

It may seem contradictory that in a time of decades-long wage stagnation and increasing cost-of-living, US consumers would be purchasing more clothing than they ever have before. I think part of this is psychological; when home-ownership gets pushed to later in life, buying those shoes you don’t need gives you a boost to the ego, or rather, a shove on the hedonic treadmill. (“At least I can afford these!”)

Likewise, as clothing becomes cheaper, poorer quality, and increasingly reliant upon synthetic materials (remember, folks: “vegan leather” is just a nice way to say plastic), clothing simply doesn’t last as long, causing the purchaser to need to replace items more quickly. My t-shirt from Everlane, which I purchased last year, already has holes. Everlane isn’t supposed to be fast fashion; the company is part of a growing cohort of direct-to-consumer brands that allegedly deliver higher quality at cheaper price points by cutting out middlemen. In comparison, the Gap t-shirt I purchased almost a decade ago is in perfect condition.

Finally, social media has fast-tracked the rate at which trend cycles rise and fall, leading to the surge of “aesthetics” or “cores” that encourage impressionable young consumers to emulate niche style-identities—at an extraordinary cost to the environment.

The result is that clothing made in the US, or any developed nation, is now a luxury good. For members of my generation, we’ve simply never known anything else.

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It’s unclear when early humans began wearing clothes, with estimates varying wildly among experts. The oldest example of textiles that archaeologists have found thus far were flax fibers in the Dzudzuana cave in the country of Georgia. While the fibers date to 30,000 years ago, it should be noted that other studies estimate the emergence of clothing to over 170,000 years ago—such as this one from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, which examined the evolution of body lice that live in clothing. The reason early textiles aren’t as common in the archaeological record is because unlike the synthetic fabrics that overwhelm modern fashion (and subsequently, our landfills), natural fibers decay over time.

Since the dawn of ancient civilizations, textiles have powered the wealth of societies and fueled trade. As Virginia Postrel investigates in The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, textiles encapsulate the best and worst of humanity—both the creativity and cooperation of production and trade, and the bloodshed and enslavement that allowed cotton to become “king.” From Chinese silk to the cotton of the Mughal Empire, the production of textiles was central to the economy of many countries. (Muslin cloth from India posed such a threat to the French silk industry that the importation of cotton was banned in France in 1686.)

However, the shaping of our modern fashion industry really emerged during the Industrial Revolution. Previously, the vast majority of clothing was custom-made to fit an individual person, whether by a seamstress or tailor making clothing for the well-to-do, or peasant women sewing garments for their own families. During the 19th century, the actual making of clothes remained largely women’s work, as female laborers dominated the clothing factories that would emerge in the United States and Europe. But thanks to the invention of the sewing machine and steam power, clothes could be produced in far greater quantities than ever before.

Enter the rise of “ready-to-wear” clothing, which refers to clothing sold in standardized sizes and ready to be worn with minimal alterations. Today, any item of clothing you’ll find in most stores would qualify as ready-to-wear. While mass-manufactured clothing grew more common in men’s fashion throughout the 19th century, ready-to-wear for women wouldn’t gain traction until the early 20th century, when dress styles became simpler.

The results were complicated. On one hand, the ready-to-wear revolution made clothing more affordable, and it freed up time for ordinary women, who no longer had to devote so much time to sewing clothes for their families. On the other hand, the standardization of sizes gave rise to diet culture and the onslaught of dietary fads to achieve the latest trendy body type. It also set the stage for the overconsumption and environmental degradation that permeate the fashion industry today.

The human cost of mass clothing production cannot be overstated. We often think of slavery as a thing of the past. But modern slavery, defined by Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index as “situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power,” is on the rise. According to Walk Free’s report, the number of people around the world experiencing these conditions rose from about 40 million in 2018 to roughly 50 million today—and the fashion industry is one of the worst offenders.

Our gluttony for more, more, more at the cheapest possible price has not just decimated clothing manufacturing in Western countries; it has exported pain and suffering all over the world. Furthermore, I can’t help but find it ironic that the age groups who report the greatest concern about climate change are also those keeping fast fashion afloat.

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The other day, I came across an amusing video on TikTok. In response to the latest ridiculous “aesthetic” promoted on the app—this time, a style trend known as the “Eclectic Grandpa”—vintage fashion enthusiast Elliot Duprey shared a now-viral response. “An ‘eclectic grandpa’ is someone with actual personal tastes and preferences, is comfortable but has their own opinions, and has worn their clothes for decades. I can’t think of anything to better sum up our current personal style epidemic… we want nothing more than to emulate someone who has lived an entire life developing personal style.”

He's absolutely right. Personality can’t be bought, and experience can’t be gained from a Shein clothing haul. As I think back to that episode of Absolutely Fabulous, I’m struck by how incredibly prescient Eddie’s speech was, and how much worse the consumer landscape has grown since the 1990s. In 2024, even pricier items are often made of cheap, synthetic materials, like this infamous Abercrombie coat (a “wool-blend” design made overwhelmingly of polyester, originally selling for $220).

All of this was on my mind this weekend as I wandered into one of the many vintage stores that permeate artist-heavy cities like Nashville. This particular location had a great selection from the 1960s to 1990s, the sort of quirky shop that has a cocktail bar in the back of the store. As I sifted through the concert tees from the 80s and 90s, I was struck by the thickness and durability of the fabrics.

Suddenly, a group of young men in their very early twenties wandered into the store. They possessed an exuberant, boyish energy, and I couldn’t help but notice their clothes. Each had a distinctive sense of style, free of obvious logos—the sort of comfort and creativity that those mining the “aesthetic” content on TikTok could only dream of. These young men were many decades away from becoming “eclectic grandpas,” but they were well on their way.

As they perused the men’s jackets, I returned to the concert tees. Turning over one thick, 100% cotton shirt, I noticed the perfect line of stitching on the hem, the “Made in the USA” label, on sale for sixteen dollars. I wondered who had previously worn this shirt, and where they were now. I wondered if they would have given this shirt away had they known the flimsiness of what was to come.

I don’t want more choice. I just want nicer things.