Top comment over there pretty much nails it. Putting my quality management auditor hat on, quality does not mean high end, it means fitness for purpose and meeting customer expectations, take designer dresses for example - some require the wearer to be sewn in, their expected service life may be just one evening, but they are undeniably high quality- they meet the wearer's needs and expectations exactly.

If your definition of low quality clothing is clothing which falls apart after a few uses, then by definition higher quality clothing lasts longer or wears better.

You don't have to pay through the nose for clothing which lasts, and you should never trust a brand or price point as evidence that an item will last. Things like higher thread counts, stronger stitching, higher quality zips, appropriate warp and weft of fabrics for their application will make for longer lasting clothing.

I've bought $2 underwear and $10 underwear. The $10 holds up in ways that justify the 500% price difference.

Patagonia puts some (all?) of their items through a "killer wash" test, where they repeatedly wash it to check durability. Their website only talks about it for waterproof fabric, but I'm pretty sure they used to say they do it for other items as well. One of their goals is to make durable products, to reduce the environmental impact, and because it's part of their brand reputation. No one is going to keep paying a premium for their stuff if it falls apart in a year. With cheap alternatives, the priority is making it as cheap as possible.

There’s so much profit margin in clothes that it’s hard to tell if a $100 sweater costs $10 to produce or $2.

I mean are you looking for double blind peer reviewed studies on t shirts?

For workwear you can find testing videos. Project Farm has done a couple for example.

Higher quality fabric 100% makes a difference, everything from the quality of the threads to the density of the weave will have an impact. Higher quality clothes are often easier to alter to your body shape which can cut down on wear. Being able to alter easily also helps accommodate your body changing shape, which is a common reason people get rid of clothes. Then again no piece of clothing will last forever and keeping up with mending small holes as they form is necessary to stop them from becoming big holes.

The problem with clothes is that unless you maintain exactly the same weight over your whole life typically you will need different sizing. Also you have to understand your use compared to others. There is no mileage on a shirt or pants. So you have no idea how it was used. I know with my cheap clothes I don't really care and will just throw them in the washer and dryer. Where as with a something more expensive I will hang it to dry or hand wash it. Typically, you will take care of something more if you paid more for it. And then there is how much you wear that thing. Your work pants might get more use then a pair of expensive dress pants so they just wear faster. That doesn't mean that they are better just that you didn't wear them as much.

Use patterns matter massively. And not everyone is the same. I run so I go through running shoes every 6-12 months. There is no running shoe I can buy that will really last longer than that. If instead I wore them only once every couple weeks they will last far longer in time. So when you see someone who wants running shoes to last for life I understand that isn't possible for me regardless of what I buy.

No hard evidence like a peer reviewed study. But you can think about the things that cause clothes to wear out.

Fabric quality is one. The lint that comes out of the dryer used to be your shirt, for example. If you are buying a new shirt, better quality cotton fabric is made by spinning longer natural fibers into thread and knitting more threads per square inch. It’s tougher to yoink the long fibers out of the thread because they are spun in there over more twists, while cheaper, shorter staple cotton is more fuzzy and fragile. There’s also just more shirt left after each wash, because the thread count is higher to start with.

On the seams and hems, your high-quality shirt might have more stitches per inch, fewer stops and starts to the sewn thread, and more even stitching. Thanks to that, the sewing is not strained in spots by uneven tension. There are not dangling tufts of thread that can catch and be pulled out.

Finally, your better shirt will be cut better and will fit correctly (if you find the right one for your body, of course), which means it will not pull or rub or be subjected to as much strain.

Of course, you can mess all that up by laundering it on the most aggressive cycle every wash or eating a giant mustard sandwich without a bib, which is why it’s hard to get objective, controlled data.

As someone who sews: 1000% percent. But it’s not “high quality” as in expensive it’s “high quality” as in well woven fabric and well sewn clothing. I can identify when I see it and also tell you that pretty much nothing you can buy at the mall or in a target meets this criteria anymore.

So I bought some Eddie Bauer clothes back in 2018, pants and shirts. And a jacket in 2017. They are still in incredible condition today. Last year I went to try to buy more Eddie Bauer stuff to expand my wardrobe a little bit and the buttons on the pants came off within a month, all three pairs, and the shirts armpit seams started unraveling within two months.

My suggestion is look around and carefully examine the different parts of the clothing. You can feel and see the quality if you pay attention.

There is too much fluctuation to make it cut and dry like you have above. I have noticed the same thing with cars, houses, and many other things. There’s a name for it I just can’t remember what it’s called exactly.

r/minimalism is a circle jerk of I've ever seen one. They're almost as bad as r/onebag.

This is an argument I've had about all the stuff in r/rawdenim before. My Levi's from Kohl's seem to last just as many years as the $400 Japanese stuff, yet people will swear that the higher end ones are more durable. Funkier fabrics, sure, but I don't think they're any more durable.

I've also got cheap H&M polos that I've worn for years with no changes in them. For most office workers, if you take care of your clothes, they will go out of style or not fit anymore long before they actually fall apart.

I doubt there is any proper research available, because it seems doomed from the start to me.

The first problem is how fast fashion nowadays is. We often have multiple collections per year.
The moment you‘ve collected the required data, drawn conclusions, peer reviewed and published it, said data is already outdated because the companies have produced a new collection.
It‘s just not repeatable that way.

Another problem is that said brands produce the same item in many locations, to sell in yet another different location, but sometimes production quality can differ between those individual factories.

You also have a problem with sample size and how to choose companies.
There is a lot of competition in clothing companies, which means a vast sample size is needed to adequately represent „high quality“ vs „cheap“.
You also need to choose whether to include one or multiple items per company.

For example: do I choose only one pair of jeans from company X to represent the quality of that company? And what if they produce multiple different jeans?

Since you want to compare „high quality“ vs „cheap“, that also means your little study is gonna cost you a lot of money just to aquire the sample items.

Another problem that I imagine could arise is that wear and tear on clothes can be simulated by different mashines, but that must not translate perfectly into real life.

For example, let’s say item X has better seams in general than item Y and only a few seams of Y are better on average. Now imagine that particular place that tends to rip more often for customers is the one that‘s better in item Y, just because said customers tend to do certain motions more often. They will notice that item X is less reliable than Y, even though it has better seams for the most part.

That‘s a problem that you could fix by handing out clothes to groups of people (aka participants) and interviewing them over a long period of time. Which would bloat the study even more and require much more money, because now you‘re looking for participants in a longitudinal study.

Another problem is not only the different ways people use the same item of clothing (for example I tend to sit in the so called lotus position a lot in my jeans, because it‘s comfy. This means the seam at my crotch needs to hold under more tension than when I sit straight at a table), but also the different ways people wash and store their clothes.
Tumble drier? Hanged for drying? Folded in the closet? Not folded? Rolled?

Depends 99% on how they're taken care of. Or not taken care of.

if you look more from the sustainability angle you can find a decent amount of work

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/8906 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9151

Yes, says my wardrobe

In a word, no. And there probably won’t ever be.

Here’s why:

First, we would have to define “durability.” And then, how would we test that? And how would we know how accurately the tests replicate real-world “durability”?

And then, after we also determine which articles of clothing to test from which clothing brands and how many replicate samples are needed for each, we might have a decently designed study.

Then all that’s left is to find the $50-200K needed to purchase the clothing and carry out the study.

This is why all we will probably ever have is anecdotal evidence.

(Source: 25-year veteran product design and development engineer.)

That said, about 15 years ago I replaced all my socks with Smartwool and Darn Tough. Since then I haven’t bought any new socks, and I’ve worn out about four pairs. With about a dozen pairs left, I doubt I’ll ever have to buy socks again.

I think it’s mostly true but you can also find durability in cheaply made items depending on a few different factors. (Fabric content - I pay attention to that, I’m guessing stitching plays a role though I don’t know much about it) I’ve had a few clothing items that I bought literally in high school from fast fashion places that I still wear and that look fine. And I wash pretty much everything on a high heat sanitization cycle.

Your question lacks depth so there is no answer for you. Clothes. Tuxedos? Silk pajamas? Socks? Platform heels? All have unique use cases and metrics. What is high quality? That means many things to many people....to some this is based in Brand Name, cost or style, of which we don't know.

I have about a decade of my own data. I should crunch the numbers again some time.

One thought I had when people mentioned high quality second hand items: could this be an example of survivorship bias? If an item is strong/quality enough to make it to the second hand market, then it's a strong/high quality item.

Hard evidence? No, but better garments properly maintained very much do outlast their lower quality counterparts. The issue is very few consumers can assess fabric quality, patterning/construction or fabrication much less know how to maintain or mend items. A well made garment will outlast a poorly made one and a well cared for item will outlast one that isn’t cared for. I do think quality has gone down quite a bit because the average person doesn’t know these things and the market rewards corporations for poorly made goods.

It used to be.

I bought a couple suits a few years back, at about the same time. One was a really nice one and the other was a much cheaper version.

The really nice one is still in top shape. The leather only gets softer and more supple with age.

The cheap one let me down a long time ago. The vinyl got brittle and cracked, and the mouth zipper fell apart.

Firm believer in buying American made clothes. My red wing heritage boots and socks are on year 5. That’s one pair of boots and three pairs of socks for about 350 bucks that I’ve worn almost every day except for in the summer for the most part. Jeans, Imogene and Willie. My pair is on year 3 and is finally starting to tear and that was for 150 bucks. So for 500 bucks I haven’t bought new shoes, socks or jeans in 5 years. Pretty great.

Okay so i have lucky jeans and i have walmart jeans. Out of the two, lucky is most comfortable but walmart jeans can take the abuse i put jeans through.

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This is a pretty good comparison for something simple like t shirts.

https://youtu.be/TyoU3mKwd6g

The more you pay the better you look after it !

Ive bought cheap shorts from China that fall apart after a few washes. Ive bought nice shorts from Thailand that last years.

Its all to do with the fabric and thread quality imo.

Theres probably a point at which super expensive is no better than mid range, since style seems to be more important than substance for those expensive brands. They are all made in sweatshops for pennies by underpaid workers.

I have a pair of Lucky Jeans that I’ve had for five and a half years now.

Cost me $125.

I’ve had to take them to a tailor twice for a hole in the crotch (not one hole twice but two different holes—I attribute that to leg growth from lifting).

Aside from that and obviously fading, they still look really good and feel great.

I’ve worn and washed them countless times.

In this case, I think you get what you pay for.

Yes, my dad's closet. I don't think he's bought a new garment since the early 2000s. Many suits from the 90s and earlier. The other thing is if you have classic tastes the tailoring for men never changes either. He benefitted from his dad being a textile engineer.

I usually just want something that actually blocks the harsh weather. Something that actually functions as intended: to keep you protected from the elements be it the sun or the rain or the snow or the winds.

So far, wool’s been my shield of choice. Ooooooo, there should be a brand called “Shield of Choice”.

Anyway, it came down to wearing a lot of clothes and thinking they’d work for its intended purpose, but, unfortunately, they all did not get the job done. I was either left too cold in the winters or too sweaty in the summers (and I run hot). Layering wouldn’t help either because then I’d be too hot.

Recently found my dream clothes after 20+ years of unnecessary suffering in the cold/heat.

So for me, quality = functionality.

I would say that the definition of "high quality" when it comes to clothes is just that - how long they last. But does a high price equal high quality? No

Start your wardrobe out with what Walmart has available and if don’t hate it then more power to you buddy. I won’t wear anything from there because of the way all of their clothes shrink, pop seams and wrinkles up worse than old Gorge Burns.

I find that the things I like to wear year after year are the clothes that continue to look as good as the day I bought them. Men’s clothes don’t change styles very much over time so if you hate clothes shopping then buy higher quality.

I have shirts from North Face, Arc’teryx, Patagonia and Smartwool that are all older than 10 years now and look nearly new still because they don’t stain wrinkle or fade. They also save me time since they don’t need folding or ironing to look great and take regular abuse.

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yes, office dress shirts made of certain (thicker) cotton do last few years longer. I saw that fabric in Ralph Lauren shirts, now in Brooks Brothers (getting them on sale as am not into wearing this season’s fashion, quality is enough). Conversely, many costly products made of thin fabric (I’m looking at those crocodile logos) do not last in my experience.

Thus the question was asked incorrectly (quality vs cheap) as their antonyms (low quality and expensive) are not mutually exclusive.

Honestly I think a lot comes down to understanding materials and some logic.

Natural materials tend to be desirable and can be combined and even bolstered with synthetics to make a nice blend. 98% cotton with 2% spandex for women's denim that has to stretch more? That's reasonable. But 12%? Adding in some random 15% polyester? That sounds like a combo that is trying to save money by cutting down on higher cost materials... Already a red flag.

As for logic, I have to ask myself, is the product I am holding trying to take advantage of a trend by "duping" an existing product? Like a thick fuzzy sock that gives the impression of a thick merino wool sock but is actually pure synthetics? I'm not trying to get down on synthetics here, they have their place, but it helps to ask-- what are they trying to lure me in with?

I know there is a lot we don't know... One company's bottom of the barrel cotton against beautiful long staple cotton are both still just going to be "100% cotton" on a label, but taking the time to look at a product in detail can help a lot.

theres a difference between crappy walmart and target brands and some decent mid level clothing, but like anything else you get diminishing returns. A $20 is going to feel and last like a $20 garment, and a $100 dollar garment will be a huge improvement. But dont expect a huge difference between $100 and $500 garments (barring things like leather/wool coats)