dawg i’m working part time and studying. not everyone’s life is sunshine and rainbows like yours. just showing shit that lasts here 🤷‍♂️

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Gimp suit

What do you mean by suit? I’ve never seen a leather or vinyl suit. Are you talking about, like, motorcycle gear?

A top quality suit where I live would be made out of wool or silk.

I’ve had the opposite happen as well.

Of course. All the top quality ones are leather. The cheap ones are vinyl.

Ok but if the requirement is durability or “shelf life” so to speak…like what do you look at to guage quality and durability? Heavy vs light for different climates is much easier to assess so I’m not worried about that. I’m saying like, what do you look at to guage whether or not a piece of clothing is likely to fall apart after 3 dozen washes vs something that is likely to last many years? For example, I go through jeans like nobodys business. I’ve tried spending more for “quality name brands” and choose jeans that feel really thick and solid and go with what feels high quality, but they just fall apart and I’m tired of spending $60+ per pair of jeans every 4-6 months.

So what are the objective metrics I can look at to determine what is better quality and will last longer?

Also when it comes to the world of clothing, the materials are really a minimal piece of the cost. A big portion is the labor that goes into it. Wool sweater of the same material may still range wildly (say, $100 vs $400) because of the ethical labor practices that they take. And sometimes it’s really just because of a brand name and their labor practices still suck.

There are objective measures, but your requirements are different to my requirements and so you'll need to build on your experience to know what these are.

It's not quite guessing to take a known good item (I use my Rapanui t-shirts as a yardstick) and compare that to unknown goods to make a suitably assessment.

I wear moleskin trousers because I find them very hard wearing and their water resistant and tight weave qualities are good for cycling. An objective measure I use is to buy 250gsm or above fabric, it makes for heavy trousers but it suits my needs. If I were somewhere hot that measure would be useless because they would be too insulative to be fit for purpose, I'd be looking at lighter weight fabrics and need to find my own metrics.

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)

I was afraid of that lol. Based on your comment above, it sounded like there were actual, objective ways to determine quality vs. guessing…lol oh well.

Interesting study, but that’s talking about designer items, not necessarily high-quality. I honestly think designer/luxury brands are milking their customers… they know people will buy their clothes just for the name

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.

Some manufacturers list these details (thread count or weight per area), some will answer if asked, but for most it's a case of making a personal comparative assessment based on known good items, or knowing specific tell tales for certain items.

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 agree, they're quality mechanical tools. But their ESD safe line is not

You got a leather suit?

Piggybacking off of this, I think that the average person treats items they spend more money on with more care.

Higher end stores have maintenance supplies available for purchase while you would never see leather conditioner in H&M near their shoes and purses. It reminds people that longevity is a byproduct of care.

A wool sweater will shrink in the dryer whether it’s $30 or $3,000, but if you spend $3,000 you’re going to triple check that tag before you wash it.

Project farm is the goat

Where does one find this information to assess clothing before purchasing? Where do you get thread count info as well as the other metrics you listed?

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

https://toolguyd.com/kc-tool-wiha-split/ They specifically say Wiha Tools USA - these would be made not in Germany but in Monticello,MN. I guess the USA plant doesn't meet the same quality standards as those made in Germany. In any case, Felo and Wera-made tools are just as good. I am not familiar with other brands KC Tools carries.

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.

Didn't KC Tool stop carrying Wiha because they stopped meeting expectations?

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.