The same factories in China and Vietnam and churning out the wares sold at Macy's and Target. The only diff is the price tag.
For a while the fact that I made my own clothes shielded me from reality. But now it has hit the fabric stores. It is harder and harder to find good quality natural fibers: cotton, silk, wool, linen.
I am starting to hoard.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- I don't know of a book, but there has been a discussion of how this has been done in fashion. One other good book, related, is about the rise of throw away fashion. They create this shitties of clothing, make a virtue out of crap, sell $5 skirts that are basically threadbare tubes.The idea is that you want women in the store shopping every six weeks for new clothes, rather than the two or four times a year seasonal shopping we once did.
you see cost cutting measures showing up and being sold as fashionable. some examples:
- Strappy cut-out shirts. These are tee shirts that look nice, appear to have cut geometric and curvy shapes cut out of them to give interest to shirt. Actually done because the left over cut out can be used for things like pockets.
- extremely thin material that is striated. The striated appearance is an illusion that makes the material seem less see-through
- thinning out most shirt materials, especially for women
- thinning of jeans: these are sold as "comfortable" and "broken in". I forget what my son was calling them. Anyway, they are just really thin denims.
- exposed zippers. My husband calls some of this stuff "Frankenstein Fashion" because the exposed zipper looks like bad stitching for Frankenstein's monster. Point of it: you don't have to worry about covering up zippers - takes extra material, more care, more quality assurance
-- clothing that doesn't have hems and rolls: no need for hemming work
-- loosely stiched seams and buttons. You put something on, the buttons fly of or you find you are reinforcing a seam. Less thread, lighter weight thread, faster.
-- Costume jewelry fashion - tassles on long necklaces - can reduce length of change, tassles can be made of lesser material. incorporating use of fabrics, string, etc to replace need to use even gold or silver plated nickel.
-- death of flare and boot leg, rise of ankle hugging slacks.
-- boxy shirt and dress fashions for women reduces need for darts or even making sleeves.
*Carrol Cox* wrote:
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------------------------------ Everyone knows of the famous shrinking Hershey Bar; that phenomenon goes back 70 years or so and was mostly harmless. It is not my concern here.
But in some commodities quantity is identical with quality: a less bulky (thinner) sheet of toilet paper is qualitatively damaged. Ditto facial tissues.
Mere redction in size can also damage saltines qualitatively. Current saltines (most, perhaps all, brands) are thinner and break up more easily. They are also smaller around, & that has some qualitative dimensiosn.
But saltines, graham crackers, & Oreos have also disastrously degenerated in taste! Some years ago there was a blog on toilet paper degeneration with the slogan, They Caught Us With Our Pants Down. That will work as a general label for the matters discussed in this post. Lorna Doone shortbread has also lost flavor.
Hydrox cookies, some 10 years older than Oreos, stopped production in 1998 because everyone thought they were imitations of Oreos, though originally the opposite was the case. Be that as it may, in the last year at some point several _new_ 'oreos' appeared: they are the same shrunken size but they have the original flavor that disappeared from Oreos a year or so ago. Schnucks now has its own brand of 'oreos,' and they are satisfactory.
The ersatz sheet/quilt now on all hotel beds may be explicable as labor saving; I was in a hotel room recently when the maid came, & it took her seconds to pull the bed covers together. But the other changes mentioned in this post seem to have some other motive. They must save _some_ pennies in materials????
Economists really ought to study this widespread phenomenon. Some of the changes must save
Is there any basis for the following speculation?. Financial firms dealing in billions probably pay attention to minute differences in the return on various securities. Would this make worthwhile the minute savings brought about by stupid hotel bed covers and flavorless oreos?
Carrol ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk