101–110 of 344 posts
With the exception of shoes and jackets I buy all my clothes at Goodwill. It's awesome! Every couple of months I spend around $20 dollars and I always have nice new tee shirts, button ups, pants etc. You wont believe how many nice clothes people simply give away. Plus it makes me feel great knowing I'm contributing to reuse and giving money to a company that helps employee less fortunate people.
With the exception of shoes and jackets I buy all my clothes at Goodwill. It's awesome! Every couple of months I spend around $20 dollars and I always have nice new tee shirts, button ups, pants etc. You wont believe how many nice clothes people simply give away. Plus it makes me feel great knowing I'm contributing to reuse and giving money to a company that helps employee less fortunate people.
you're lucky it fits you. the only sizes i see at thrift stores are L-XXL
European here: when visiting my company HQ I was surprised how casual Americans dress for work. I am not saying devs should wear suit and tie, nothing like that, but even my bosses boss* was wearing what looked like a rumpled sweater with worn out jeans. And I don't mean like fashion statement rumpled and worn out, more like the "great depression" crumpled and worn out. Jules and Vincent in their new t-shirts would f…
I wish Germany was like that. I work as a IT consultant in a financial institution and we all have to wear suits here, even though most of the people have never seen a client in their life - they just sit behind their desks and do their daily work on a PC. So they do so - in a suit. I really don't know why Germans do this to themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That could be a factor. Casual office clothes (closely related to post 90s tech culture) probably halves apparel costs for a lot of people. In a suit and tie company, the average person probably buys 2 suits and a half dozen shirts/ties pa, in addition to their casual clothes.
You should not be buying 2 suits and half a dozen shirts per year. I wear tshirts daily and I don't even buy half a dozen tshirts per year. I have some that are over 5 years old. Spend more than the bare minimum on your clothes, and they will last you a long time. A suit should last you at least half a decade.
The color fades, the prints fade, they look tatty.
Same with suits, knees and bums get a sheen, stitching gets ratty, etc. Obviously depends on how expensive the suit was when you bought it. To quote Sam Vimes:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
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.”
I think this is very good news. Fast fashion leads to resource and people exploitation. This is great that people use their old clothes and refrain from buying new ones for no other reason than the old ones have become unwearable. (edit: typo)
> I think this is very good news. Fast fashion leads to resource and people exploitation. Not a fan of fast-fashion, but what does "people exploitation" mean? Should a Bangladeshi factory worker go back to begging in the streets instead of working a job at a factory? They provide value in terms of making a product that you buy.. what's the problem with that?
The jury is really out on if foreign manufacturers help third world economies or hurt them. One major benefit that is hard to quantity is that foreign manufacturing is a sign of a stable government and can increase the stability of the government.
Maybe I just live in a weird place. But I see a lot less branding when I walk around town compared to 20 years ago. My sister has 17 year old twin girls and they pretty much refuse to wear anything that makes them a "walking billboard". I live close to the university of Oregon and when I was in high school it was all Nike clothes all over campus. Now I still see some but not nearly as much. It is like "Likes" instead…
Article neglects to mention that healthcare spending per person doubled between 2003 and 2010 (before decelerating after the ACA). Soon all of our money will go to healthcare and housing.