I fully expect they will last me the rest of my life. That’s very expensive, you may say - but consider how many pairs of $150 boots I would have gone through in that time.
I also have several pairs of high quality English dress shoes that are decades old. They look better than ever. They don’t crack and the stitching doesn’t fall apart. The biggest problem is finding a cobbler who can do a full high quality resole without damaging the uppers. They are all rapidly dying off.
Modern cloth and rubber shoes don’t last. The rubber deteriorates, the stitching and glues fail, and the cloth frays. They can’t be repaired. It’s not worth trying to make long-lasting, custom shoes from materials like that. Thus, the throwaway culture.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
~ Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Romanian proverb, probably predating Pratchett :-p
You can still buy clothes that will last decades, they're just more expensive than the average person is willing to pay. Especially considering the length of time that something stays fashionable.
ETA: I just looked in my closet because I have a Sears dress shirt from the 70s. It is thin enough I can easily see my hand through it.
When the collars wore out, I'd remove them and sew them in upside down. You just can't kill BB shirts made up to around 1980.
Since then, I found out about Solovair, which manufactured shoes under the DM name in the UK for decades. I bought a pair about 8 months ago. What an incredible difference in quality. This pair still look great, and unlike Docs, I didn't immediately need to put insoles in them. I definitely will not buy Doc Martens again.
No college, but a great resume, and a natural seller.
The guys running the business didn't realize the fashion potential of their shoes.
They told her whatever you sell; we will give you a healthy percentage.
All the salesmen were guys in their 50's.
By year three, she was making $600,000/yr.
When they realized their utilitarian product was now a fashion statement, they let her go. She went on to make more money though doing her own line of shoes in America.
Stuff can still be made here, but the profits won't be as high.
Honestly, the higher quality pair is now significantly cheaper per use than the cheaper ones (if we disregard REIs return policy at least).