People who haven't bought clothes for a decade
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Within months she was sending me contacts of other high-powered executives from big corporations who were following her lead. She sent me pictures of clothing she repaired that she would have thrown out before.
When she was invited to give a TED talk that year, she told me she felt liberated from wondering what to buy to wear, instead getting to feel like herself and focusing on her message.
Hear for yourself. Our conversations, before and after: https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/lorna-davis (also a great primer on B corps, given her significant role)
Her TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lorna_davis_a_guide_to_collaborati...
When I finished listening to the Minimalists podcast (first 120 episodes) for the second time I was already immersed in minimalism. I donated 90% of my clothes, I now have 5 t-shirts, 4 sweaters, 2 jeans, 10 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of shoes, and some snow/skiing related accessories (hoods, etc.)
I also have "office clothes" which I don't count as clothes, I treat them as a uniform, when not in the office, they don't exist for me (and Coronavirus-->remote working was a great 'gift' for me on this area)(I hope the deaths stop and we continue the WFH).
I see fashion as a "subscription" scheme. You spend £€¥$, you get clothes and after X seasons you need to spend another load of £€¥$ to renew your "trendy-ness".
I can never forget that in the term "fashion VICTIM" the word that sticks with YOU is the word "victim".
I take it you don't live in place with cold winters?
I guess if your coat is good enough at -40 with just base layer and a tshirt wouldn't it be too hot( and ineffective) when it isn't that cold?
Isn't sweating the worst thing that happen to you when you are cold ? What do you do when its slightly warmer?
2 pairs of shoes
Having to decide between wearing my climbing shoes and my ski boots to work would suck :)
So I have 8 pairs of shoes, but I still consider it relatively minimal, because each serves a distinct purpose, such as my safety boots.
I also have multiple pairs of leather boots (military surplus), because leather boots/shoes really should be aired out for a day after you wear them, especially if you've been doing anything strenous. By having a couple of pairs, each pair will last significantly longer than if I just wore the same pair every day.
Minimalism can easily go way too far and become counterproductive.
My "office gear" includes two pairs of "office shoes" that I absolutely never wear when not in the clients' offices/meetings/interviews. I hate those clothes :)
Although I did keep my shorts and tshirts for occasions where I will be outside since it is quite hot and humid in the summer where I live.
1. Here are videos on how to mend jeans: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=patch+jeans&oq=...
2. The bigger picture is that when you force yourself to live by a value, you learn all these things. When I first challenged myself to avoid buying packaged food for a week, I had no idea I'd go from emptying my garbage weekly to less than once per year. Looking back, it seems inevitable, but when I started 5 years ago, I barely knew about farmers markets, CSAs, fermenting vegetables, etc.
The key is to use nice thick embroidery thread.
that's why i thought i might try to learn a better technique myself, but maybe i should look for a different repair shop.
I did not know that this was something to be applauded for.
I kept the following quote from the article: "but it is only you who inherently cares what you look like"
And I remembered the phrase: those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.
Carhartts are more functional for me now, but they wear out after 5-8 years depending on the style (model?). I haven't noticed any change in durability since I started wearing them 18 years ago.
I have several pairs of Injinji socks that are close to 10 years old, and still in great shape. I have also worn out two pairs of those socks after about 5 years, and the newer ones are softer so I suspect they'll be less durable.
In the US it's not hard to find regular carhartts work wear - in Norway I've only seen the fashion stuff. On the other hand, Blåkläder operate a few outlets that are aimed at the business market - and there it's possible to buy their "actual" work clothes.
Ed: in addition to such work wear, military surplus & second hand is also a good bet.
I still year the same members only jacket my father bought in the 80s and gave to me in the 90s - the lining could use some work but otherwise completely functional. I’ve had the same umbrella for almost twenty years - was a niche brand that built heavy duty frames and it’s taken punishment that would have broken a lesser umbrella dozens of times over - but aside from some thin spots in the canopy it’s perfectly fine. I wrote the company that made it but only got a form letter in response so guess they weren’t impressed with my long lived umbrella that’s been to every continent except Antarctica.
I do have to say that buying clothes from amazon is a pleasure. They remember your orders forever so if I’m not sure of size or brand I can always look at order history. If the style or color I want is no longer available the purchase recommendations are good at finding me something similar. Best of all I don’t have to buy what’s available and get it tailored, I can buy clothes made for my exact size. I used to spend as much getting pants legs shortened as I did on the pants because I have an odd size that the stores don’t carry and can’t get for weeks. I still have to typically buy shoes two sizes larger to accommodate the width of my feet - Allen Edmonds is about the only places that makes affordable shoes in my exact size, but those soft leather soles get torn up quickly by NYC streets.
I’m sure that in another ten years I’ll just give Amazon my measurements and tailored clothing will magically appear whenever I order it.
Ironically, I've heard complaints from people who've re-ordered things this way that the fit changed between orders.
> I’m sure that in another ten years I’ll just give Amazon my measurements and tailored clothing will magically appear whenever I order it.
Other sites do this. I'll be a bit sad if Amazon crushes this market too.
When you start ordering clothes online you discover in a real hurry that sizing is agonizingly approximate on the best of days. The same size can be significantly differently sized between batches. I figure it's due to fabric being tricky to work with in a factory setting. One worker might sew the seam allowances a smidge tighter than another which can easily add up in a garment.
That said, there's nothing quite like knowing exactly which size of which model of which brand shoe to buy without having to go shopping. It has changed buying shoes from a weekend-long hunt to a 10-minute online order which gets me exactly the same shoes as the old pair. I've been looking for a good brand of socks to do the same trick with, If I can just find a single model of nice wool socks I can order online I'll be so happy -- cold feet and ill-fitting socks are no fun.
I wish it was that simple. I tore a big hole in Columbia ski pants I got 2 years ago. I bought two replacement of the same size, but different color since the original one wasn't available. Both of them had up to 2" difference in waist or length from the original. I've sent them back. This has been my experience with many clothing items. 95% of items I try don't fit. I hate shopping for clothes!
That said, I've heard their QA and service have gone downhill dramatically over the past year or two since their aquisition.
More then ten years ago my fiance have converted three bedrooms into additional wardrobes (or more like storage rooms). All expensive designer stuff that she has been rarely using (if at all) just purchasing and storing for later.
Since then I wear mostly Uniqlo, $1 t-shirts from a heap or almost new re-sold stuff.
Clothes and especially cotton are killing the planet.
> About 5 % of household expenditure in the EU is spent on clothing and footwear, of which about 80 % is spent on clothes and 20 % on footwear. It has been estimated that in 2015 EU citizens bought 6.4 million tonnes of new clothing (12.66 kg per person). According to European Environment Agency (EEA) estimates, between 1996 and 2012, the amount of clothes bought per person in the EU increased by 40 %. At the same time, more than 30 % of clothes in Europeans' wardrobes have not been used for at least a year. Once discarded, over half the garments are not recycled, but end up in mixed household waste and are subsequently sent to incinerators or landfill.
> the global textiles and clothing industry was responsible for the consumption of 79 billion cubic metres of water, 1 715 million tons of CO2 emissions and 92 million tons of waste. It also estimated that by 2030, under a business-as-usual scenario, these numbers would increase by at least 50 %.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/6331...
Although I say I only had 2 pairs of trousers, I actually have a wardrobe for winter, summer, and spring/fall. In the summer, I often wear a jinbei which are... kind of like pajamas. But they are loose and cool and don't really wear out. In the winter it is trousers and shirts, but with a high quality undershirt. Generally I go for "outdoors" wear because it is usually of much better quality and also performs dramatically better (warmer, breathable, lighter). I wear exactly 1 fleece jacket (although I keep getting more as gifts... not sure what to do with them) and I don't dare to even imagine when I first got it -- probably over 20 years ago.
French basic T-shirts: https://www.maisoncornichon.com/product-page/coton
German made basics https://merzbschwanen.com
French made: https://debonnefacture.fr
Personally I recommend Schott in NYC. A bit pricey but my jacket still looks great 5 years later. I imagine it will be wearable for at least another decade.
Plus denim isn't acceptable attire at many workplaces.
This American Life did an interesting piece on it, I was surprised the degree to which people abused—or, I guess, took advantage of—the policy.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/591/get-your-moneys-worth/a...
But people are used to buying things sight unseen now; maybe the ironclad return policy doesn't have the value -- to the company -- that it once did.
Citation please? This seems like the Welfare Queen argument that has been disproved.
For pants, I was using lululemon for a while and just accepting that their build quality made them last about 18 months to 2 years, while the warranty was five years, so I would just have the company swap them out for new ones on a regular basis. I'm trying some pants from prana and arcteryx now that offer equal freedom of motion but hopefully will be a little more robust.
Obviously you will be a little challenged on the aesthetics, but that is sometimes the price you pay for durability.
No affiliation
This article claims it's abrasion due to pants and poor quality fabric
I have found that my shirts were getting holes in the armpits area, and I discovered that the drying rack is causing this. Since then I use 2-3 racks/'lanes' per item, so the weight of a wet garment is spread out and also helps the garment dry faster since air can circulate. I also make sure the armpit regions of the t-shirts aren't right on the wire but a bit lower.
Puppet (the server software) seemed to go hard on this and I think I ended up with 5-6 shirts even through we never rolled it out into production. I mostly wear em to the gym or use em for sleeping.
I try very hard to to wear any clothes with logos. For some technical clothes it can't really be avoided, so much of my winter/snowboarding/climbing/other sporting gear has logos, sadly.
I’m not sure how to work around some of these issues without buying more clothes. My main rule is that if I buy a piece another piece has to get donated. This keeps the size of the collection in check but wouldn’t put a brake on new purchases in and of itself.
Most people hate the idea of wearing someone else's clothes...
Having visited a small town in south western Ukraine, no shops even sell new clothes - everywhere is selling 2nd hand clothes, and they sell it by weight. Underwear is one price per kilo, and everything else is a higher price per kilo.
Even then, a kilo (2 lbs) of clothes (maybe 3 items) cost around $1.50, which was pretty expensive compared to other prices.
Imagine a system where say 10 critical dimensions of a bit of clothing could be embedded onto a QR code on the label. Then you could scan the code with some app which has your measurements (or potentially just take an average of the existing clothes in your wardrobe). It could tell you "Yes, this fits quite well but will be slightly baggy round the waist."
The dimensions could also include "stretchability" figures, so the software could know which dimensions are critical to be correct, and which are "fits all sizes".
The QR code could also include a manufacturer code, and blacklists could be made of manufacturers who mis-measure clothing.
I'm still looking for something like it, I don't know what the synthetic material is called, it just looks great, really soft, silk-like, but not the same as what I see in stores nowadays. It just looks more natural, more expensive somehow.
A fantastic idea if you like doing so or the value of your time is low, but if your time is valuable, figure out the basics you like and buy those.
Stuff doesn't really wear out/get ratty very quickly when you hardly ever wear it.
I also started https://freesewing.org/ which is the most geeky way to get into sewing :)
If your logo wasn't a "scary skull" I would be showing this to my kid in our "where clothes come from" lesson (we do everything ranging from pottery to NASA space missions)(buy scary skulls are a no-no)(let them figure it out when they discover my Iron Maiden albums - many years from now!)
My everyday shoes are suede military boots. I don’t think they last a decade but they last a long time and can take quite a beating. They are certainly worth the expensive retail price though I typically get mine for free. I will ultimately end up replacing the laces 2 to 3 times before replacing the boots.
Many of my shirts last well over a decade. I prefer business casual long sleeve button up shirts. They wear less quickly because I only wear them over undershirts. I have one shirt I still wear that was from my first year in college more than 20 years ago. The thing that kills my shirts are stains. Stripes and plaids show less stains than flat colors and thus last much longer.
What doesn’t last: running shoes, jeans, and watches. The battery on my Timex watch is only good for 3 to 5 years and that is about how long I hold onto my running shoes. My jeans are good for about 4 years and then they see to completely fall apart. I don’t even care if they get minor stains.
This was valuable to learn because I since replaced the Timex with a Garmin Forerunner 220 (now 5 years old) that's much more expensive. The rechargeable battery now only lasts for about 2 hours of GPS activity or 5 days of non-GPS use, about half what it did when I bought it originally, so I'm considering an upgrade again.
Worth trying to fix perhaps?
Likely not a “good” use of your time, but fixing stuff is strangely satisfying. You seem skilled, but if you are just learning, then try to fix stuff that you would otherwise throw out and that doesn’t need expensive parts. It does “waste” time, but many people get a lot out of it.
I am confident I could replace the battery, less so that I could do so non-destructively and make it waterproof when I reinstall everything - it's not designed to be particularly repairable, you can see they had to cut the plastic to get into the strap in that video. It would be fun to try to write new firmware for the watch and add some of the Fenix features to the Forerunner.
as for jeans, these can also last a long time if cared for properly. in my experience, jeans are pretty resilient to day-to-day life but take a real beating in the washing machine. I wear my regular pants one or two times before washing and jeans two to four times. I still have a pair from ten years ago that's a little too worn for going out, but is perfectly fine for yard work.
I'm lucky if road running shoes last me 4 months. I wonder if you might be running on worn out running shoes..
I wear minimalist shoes from Vivobarefoot and Merrell. I had one casual pair with a thinner/softer sole that wore through in a couple years, but my active pairs' soles have all lasted 5+ years.
I buy new clothes only when my old ones are visibly faded or start getting ripped (or when I spill something that can't be washed). May be the influence of video games, but I've got standard outfits for different situations and travel distance, so I buy 2-3 of the same clothes (wear one set - wash the others). I see other people try to wear something different/new every other day...
I buy a $20-40 dress shirt. After about 2 years the cuff splits or an elbow spontaneously explodes. I could patch it, but the surrounding fabric is still threadbare and it will just rip again.
I buy a $100+ dress shirt, it wears out just as fast, it just looks nicer until it does.
I bought some $450 Allen Edmonds shoes based on numerous people talking about how they had a pair for decades and it looked brand new. I got them for far less than that, but the quality wasn't even close to worth it.
The first time a single drop of water gets on the leather for longer than 2 seconds, that part of the surface is permanently damaged and puffs up, ruining your ability to even shine them again properly.
After about 6 months of only wearing them to walk from a parking lot to my office job and then back into my house when I got home, the heels started falling off of the shoe. I thought surely something must be wrong and I contacted Allen Edmonds. They wanted me to send my shoes back for an extensive investigation before giving me a refund or a new pair. So much for their reputation for amazing quality and customer service. They also recommend I wear them only once or twice a week instead of 4-5 days. So presumably I'm supposed to have $1300 of shoes on rotation even though I'm not even putting a mile on them a day.
Probably the only thing I have had last longer than a couple years would be some cheap underwear that lasted probably 7 or 8, and some cheap T-shirts most likely from walmart or kmart.
Anyone got a source for high quality clothes that actually last?
This is one reason why minimalism taken to extremes is counterproductive.
My wife and I are married with a full separation of goods and possessions contract. Not because we don’t want to make financial choices together, but more to protect her for the possibility of me being ruined if my company fells.
When she was working, we agreed on the money we each put in the family budget for groceries, kids stuff, etc...
Never been a problem.
There's not a binary distinction between fashion victim and enlightened minimalist.
Yes, reduce your purchases. Yes, prefer high quality products. Yes, reuse your clothes instead of throwing it away.
No, don't spent your life constantly worrying about what you need to repair before it falls apart. No, don't put people through enduring the summer smell of your only t-shirt. No, don't look awful because appearance matters on a basic level.
Above all, don't virtue signal so hard because it makes you look ignorant to people with more complicated lives.
It feels like my version of the black turtleneck and jeans.
And free shirts are for wearing to bed.
Wearing longer boxer shorts can lessen it, but the best thing is to find pants with a roomier fits, ie. old-fashioned straigh-legged jeans or chinos with pleats, that sort of thing. The looser fit lets the fabric move around, instead of rubbing in the same places all the time.
I've been very happy with reproduction Bundeswehr "moleskin" pants in black, they're like the dressy version of cargo pants, made from thick cotton fabric. You can take out the threads that hold the cargo pockets on, and then you have a comfortable and durable set of pants that don't look like you're some kind of security guard.
I don't know if you can get them in the states, they're widely available in Europe.
Otherwise look for slightly-old-fashioned menswear in thick cotton or wool fabrics. Good Tweed lasts for decades, if you don't mind the style. Don't go to big box stores, look for the dedicated niche menswear stores.
Careful there. Lasting long doesn’t always mean it’s higher quality. Plastic clothes will last a long time... in the landfill.
I haven’t bought clothes with plastic in them for 3 years now. No polyester, no spandex, no nylon.
Every 5 years or so, I discover it at the bottom of the heap and chuck it back in again hoping that next time it will for sure break down... It hasn't yet.