This is evidenced by the following facts: 1) Wages have been stagnant 2) Cost of living has been increasing well beyond the stated 2% rate of inflation.
But in my travels the outfits are all of quality (highest that the person could afford or find) and they are all very clean.
I had an hour-long conversation with a Guatemalan woman about how she hand-washes her whole family's shirts and pants every day because they each only have two sets - one for today and one for tomorrow. She took great pride in how well-dressed and clean her family was despite them not having the resources for many clothes, a washing machine, or the luxury of not having to do hard, dirty work on a regular basis.
I see two things happening here: (1) American spending less on clothing and (2) Americans having less self-pride in their attire and presentation.
I've spent a fair amount of time in Latin American countries, and a real sure-fire way to identify tourists is to look for people poorly-dressed or those who look like they just don't care about how they look.
E.g., despite much of Mexico being quite hot, you will almost never see a local Mexican wearing shorts, even on beaches. Tee-shirts maybe but almost always a freshly-washed button-up shirt. (Or a swimsuit if they're swimming obviously.) This is true of other Latin countries too in my travels. It's really humbling to see.
Then there are locals who wear heavy black-cotton pants and poly-blend long-sleeve button-up shirts while walking around the asphalt streets on hot-humid days. They make me want to pass out :)
I think most of ^^ are actually corporate dress-codes (plus perhaps lack of resources to buy non-work clothes) but I've not had reason to strike up a conversation about that.
I lived in central Africa for four years after growing up in New England. Adjusting to the climate was partly just a matter of time there, but also learning the unwritten rules. For example, if I met a friend on the street, we would not even think of starting to chat in direct sunlight, we would always look for some shade first. I also learned to walk much more slowly and really minimize the heat that my body was generating.
Vice versa, I have now lived in Vermont for twenty years and every year I am amazed how I start looking in my closet for a jacket the first evening that it hits 40 degrees, and yet the same temperature in February means my kids are wearing shorts and t-shirts to school that day and I am grilling steaks in flip-flops.
I don't follow the logic.
(You're not a bad person because you only wear cargo shorts! You just don't value your appearance as much as somebody who always wears suits.)
I'd love to learn of (and maybe live in) a culture that thinks elastic-waist sweatpants show a sense of pride rather than somebody who (for the moment) is choosing comfort over appearance.
Meanwhile I see some of the pics from r/streetwear, and those folks have pride! Sweatpants and all, I can appreciate that there is an actual aesthetic there and that their outfits fit their body types and daily needs (especially for techwear).
Nothing makes comfort or lack of traditional formality unstylish in itself, other than biases and cultural gatekeeping at least. Dirty clothes are lazy of course, but so long as your clothes actually fit you and are clean + coordinated, its possible to have pride in your style and be comfy. Even if suit afficianados sneer, if you like it and others like it, you can be proud.
It's not that I cannot afford to wear suits. Its that I dont like suits. Add in the marginal cost difference and I'd rather wear a tshirt. It's the market punishing the inefficiency of requiring your workers (or date) to dress in a certain manner when it adds no true value.
I think you prove my point (and it's not a bad thing!)
Sociology is interesting. A suit is traditionally a sign of "I invest in my clothes and therefore I have self-pride." (It's also a sign that you don't have to do hard/dirty labor.) It seems culturally America has decided that this is out-dated and are choosing to focus less on clothes as a sign of pride. This doesn't the pride isn't there, just that the ways of showing and seeing it have changed for some or most.
Some people will always think a tee-shirt or shorts look worse than a button-up and pants. It's a personal sentiment for sure.
I've avoided these kinds of careers because I want to be graded on my skill, not my ability to dress well. And suits are uncomfortable, and I like to be comfortable.
Over the decades, a suit has morphed from "I have power" to "I conform to the norm (and therefore I don't have power)" and with that change it is also apparent why people would want to not wear suits in an environment that traditionally required them.
Location may factor in here. They may look nice in NYC but they probably wish they could wear whatever they wanted (Zuckerberg) in Southern California.
Only lawyers and bankers dress fancy everyday here. And not even all bankers.
This is a non-sequitur: all of gp's points apply to people in the US. Cost of living, rate of change of income, fashion/dressing culture and price of clothes (absolute, and relative to income) are very different between countries - so I do not see the point of comparing at all.
"Dress better" is also subjective.
In any case, to me it means less waste.
Not only wages are stagnant, but the population is under high increases in housing and health care costs, which are not accounted in official inflation. Add this to the reduced welfare state, and you have the perfect recipe for this situation.
The US CPI does account for those, and the CPI changes are the "official" inflation rate.
Do you think they're looking at the wrong economic data?
Unemployment is low, but the labor force participation rate is also low. Are the jobs good quality?
Wages are rebounding? I haven’t seen any evidence of this. There’s many people asking if the Phillips curve even works any more. If there had been any uptick in wages it’s a very recent uptick and hardly a trend yet.
In essence, if there's a 2% growth in average real wages (which would be a major change), then it generally would happen with, say, 80% of people experiencing no change or even a decrease (i.e. nominal growth slower than inflation), and a 20% minority, usually disproportionally concentrated in particular industries and locations, experiencing a significant (e.g. 10%) growth. And, this growth often is associated with a change in position, level or industry - most of the impact is not by the same job paying more, but by slightly less people working the low-paying job and by slightly more people working the high paying job.
So no matter if real growth is happening or not, personal evidence of the majority would not, could not show it unless it's on a very long timescale or the growth is sudden and rapid - you have to look at the aggregates to see if it's happening.
In essence, if the aggregate growth looks like "Yay 2%! Yay 2%! Ugh -2%! Yay 2%! Yay 2%! Yay 2%! Yay 2%!" as having growth almost every year, then the median individual would see the exact same environment as "Nothing :( Yay 10%! Nothing :( Ugh -10% :( Nothing :( Nothing :( Yay 10%!" as having growth very rarely - and connected (and attributed!) to something meaningful they did, not the overall growth.
> Apparel is being displaced by travel, eating out and activities—what’s routinely lumped together as “experiences”—which have grown to 18 percent of purchases. Technology alone, including data charges and media content, accounts for 3.4 percent of spending. That now tops all clothing and footwear expenditures.
Anecdotally I don't think they're too off-base on travel and experiences. Airports seem busier and even with an increased number of flights the airlines generally run at higher capacity (although some of it could be explained by post-9/11/2001 slump).
Labor in working overalls is salt of the earth type. Senior exec in a suit is an empty suit. When labor makes a bad decision it only affects that person. When an exec makes a bad decision they are usually the ones not affected.
The hoodie CEO is GenX/Millenials attempt to get not appear as the empty suit. To announce that they are from working class even if they are not.
This is definitely not the case outside of tech, and generally not the case for firms headquartered outside the major US West Coast cities. My line of work exposes me to the senior leadership of major US and global firms across the US in a wide spread of industries (tech, energy, pharma, medicine, industrial suppliers, consumer goods, automotive), and there is an almost universal expectation that middle managers and above will be dressed in business casual attire, with one's clothing becoming increasingly formal the closer one is to the top of the management pecking order.
I don't disagree with your assertion that wages have been stagnant and that cost of living is increasing (which should be obvious as more people == fewer resources) but even from my own anecdotal experience as somebody who is paid very well I buy fewer clothes than I used to. I buy nice clothes, but the clothes I have are clothes that don't go out of style, or even if they do I just don't care. Maybe more Americans feel this way as well?
And as others have mentioned, the work place is fortunately becoming more casual with respect to dress. I work in finance and even here we wear t-shirts and jeans. There's no reason for me to buy 10 shirts from Brooks Brothers, 3 suits, ties, dress shoes, sweaters to go with the shirts, etc. as my casual clothes are also what I wear to work.
Maybe more people are spending less on "brands" like Burberry and more on H&M or lifestyle brands (Arcteryx/Patagonia/NF) or basic colors/styles that don't require you to repurchase?
Consumer prices have been declining since 1979 and non-wage benefits have been increasing. Suggesting clothes purchases are declining because wages are stagnant is logically flawed because we would expect declines in similarly elastic goods as well. But we aren’t seeing that. Consumer purchasing is growing, consumer confidence is up — pretty much the opposite of what you’re implying.
The workplace however, as the parent comment suggests, is changing.
http://reason.com/archives/2016/01/19/cost-of-living-vs-wage...
This is codeword to say that gains are going to people of high net worth. Most of the population still survives on wages (excepts for the ones out of work). So what you're saying doesn't disprove the fact that for most people income is going down, adjusted for inflation and for costs that don't appear on inflation statistics (housing, health care).
I strongly suspect this is predominantly out of control healthcare, and the non-wage benefits stat doesn't even capture the full 'tax' on shifted out-of-pocket healthcare costs via plan terms like higher copays.
Dunno if that's true or not, but I suspect it is just from my experience. "Fast fashion" has really taken off.
I think focusing on the changing workplace as an influencer of clothing purchasing habits is spot on.
You'll need to support your claims about the second item. Saying it, does not make it so.
Real disposable income is at an all-time high. Personal consumption expenditures are at an all-time high.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
Americans are also spending less each year on soda. It's not because incomes are plunging 7% per year and they can't afford Coca Cola.
The median consumer has real impact even as the wealthy consumers have an ever larger impact on the averages.
Consider housing, people that make 10x as much rarely spend 10x as much on their home as excess becomes useless. Similarly, some people spend a lot of disposable income on clothing, but plenty of rich people don't care about clothing and spend relatively little.
1) After adjusting for inflation, wages have fallen and rents have increased. They've been increasing at a pace of roughly 3% above inflation/year: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/new-census-data-show-rising-rents-...
Additionally, people aren't saving money like they use to. In fact, the savings rate is currently the lowest its been...ever: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
This is made obvious by the fact that the amount of actual dollars Americans have saved is also at the lowest point in history: https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-american-savings-statis...
Not sure what you're trying to show with your charts. Real DPI is merely a measure of dollars left over after taxes. Several issues with the Real DPI measurement: 1) it tells you nothing about the median household. 2) The inflation adjustments are optimistic -- who honestly believes inflation is less than 2%. 3) It doesn't change the fact that most of that after-tax income is going straight to either housing or healthcare.
Where in that link does it say per year? The text and the chart show a 4% rise above inflation total from 2007 to 2015. That rate of rise is in line with the numbers from last year[1] that show housing as a whole rose somewhere between 0.5% and 1% more than overall inflation.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/mobile/consumer-price-inde...
I wish there were stats showing different segments of the market, but in a simple observation, look at the declining results of mid market retailers (even online). You have luxury doing okay, like Nordstroms, but nothing else until you get to the much lower priced brands.