Why It’s Better to Buy Expensive Clothes
By: Sadie Lee
Tags: Environment, Money, Fashion, Clothing, Saving

Why It’s Better to Buy Expensive Clothes

When I was a teen-something and even an early twenty-something all I ever wanted to do was shop. I loved the way clothes looked on me, the way they felt on me, and the way they made me feel. A new outfit was like a new me. Fashion gave me the opportunity to express and reinvent myself.

One summer I got a job at Victoria’s Secret. We watched this video about the now old man who created the company. The male CEO was talking about how Victoria was to be this beautiful woman who is always wearing fancy lingerie. I was listening to this old man’s fantasy, one that he turned into a billion-dollar company. Later, my boss at Victoria’s Secret was cutting up the bras and lingerie that were returned. “What are you doing?” I asked her. “We cut the bras up so they can’t be resold or used, it tarnishes the brand otherwise.” Here was perfectly good clothing that had been returned. Clothing that could have gone to a homeless women’s shelter. Just one small example of corporate waste. It was then that I began to look into the ethics of cheap clothing. I came to the conclusion that for ethics, cost, environmental reasons, and quality it was important to stop buying cheap clothing.

Ethical Reasons:

Pexels: Pexabay

Clothing is cheap. I looked at one of my sweaters the other day and wondered how the fabric comes together. If it's knit or sewn and how much time it took to make just one sweater. What I do know is that the reason I can buy a $5 shirt is criminal. Bulk fashion is part of this process. Clothing is cheaper to mass-produce. But thinking about the dye, cotton, sewing, labor, and shipping that goes into a shirt is a lot. The reason these clothes are so cheap is the fact that we are using cheap foreign labor to create these products. In Victoria’s Secrets case, this is prison labor that pays a prisoner pennies on the dollar for their labor. Cheap labor is how our products get made. Products made in impoverished countries where people can’t unionize over their treatment.

Quality Reasons:

Pexels: Kelly Lacy

I recently bought a pair of LuLuLemon leggings and they ripped the first day. It is important to take the idea of clothing with a grain of salt, a shirt is a shirt. But often the quality and material that the shirt was treated with is vastly different from cheap fabrics. An expensive clothing line is more likely to uphold a standard in their fabrics and even offer a warranty. When I buy cheap clothing I can’t expect the same use out of it. A $10 sweater has a different shelf life than a $50 one. This can often be measured. Expensive clothing has better material and fabric longevity. The cost of throwing out a shirt and buying a new one is a faster turn around than an outfit that’s more expensive and higher quality.

Environmental Reasons

The environment is something that suffers from fast fashion. I think of how many t-shirts I have bought, only to shortly give to Goodwill. I also think of how many times my cheap top ends up with a hole in it and in the trash. Cheap clothes are highly and easily replaceable. If I think of how many times my shirts end up worn up in under a year, and multiply that by the American population? It's atrocious. Buying cheap and easily replaceable clothing is not worth it. The production and consumption are unnecessary and eventually and quickly end up in a landfill. Not to mention the amount of pollution and materials it took to produce all the shirts.

Resale Value:

I often buy cheap clothing. If you buy expensive brand names you can wear them for the full lifetime of the clothing. When you’re done you can resell them to places that buy your clothing back from you. It’s arguably more financially feasible to pay extra for quality clothing that lasts, and can eventually be resold. Clothing done right is arguably a small minimalist rack of high-quality pieces you love and wear, and then at the end of their life can be resold for someone else to wear and love.