At a low confidence, I'd suggest that fabrics were often of higher quality, but even more often were simply sturdier. Our "better fabrics" often have a focus on being light weight at a cost to durability - which is a fine thing for some use cases and a poor fit for others.
EDIT: I suppose the photographer might have preferred better dressed subjects, too.
One guy had a beaver pelt top hat. I read somewhere that at one time they cost as much as a Porsche in today's dollars, though you can only make a crude analogy between our money and theirs.
We are wealthy because so many cheap things exist now, so we can have a lot of things. But tailored clothes are still expensive.
On excellence, it's really about taste and task. A comfortable leather shoe is heavenly, but you still wouldn't run in it. They will smell less though.
This said, pre-WWI shoes were already mass-manufactured for the most part. Mechanization arrived in mid-19th century.
Also, watching vids of bespoke shoemaking is satisfying
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs3EJmuzAoA
Edit: I recall the shoe company:
Mezlan.com - they don’t make the shoe I had any longer, but the quality of their shoes is top notch for the price.
The big reason though is that I'd much rather have 4 pairs of $100 sneakers than one pair of $400 leather shoes. I get bored of wearing the same shoes and being able to frequently swap them out for new ones is part of the appeal.