Yes, this is going to be one of those posts where I need to vent! Not exactly the world coming to an end but…
I bought a casual jacket to take with me to London in October, 2012. It’s cozy and warm but light, so perfect for the travel! It’s my everyday fall/winter grocery shopping, farmer’s market jacket. I wear it a lot.
I don’t want to sound like an old crank but for heaven’s sake, isn’t it possible to purchase garments with zippers that don’t fall apart within a year! What is it with all these cheap zippers? I have gotten rid of a number of jackets that are still in relatively good condition just because the zipper is falling apart and I can’t pull it up anymore! It makes me crazy, I remember when….
Hmm… I thought “maybe I’ll take it up the street to the drycleaner and have it replaced”…not! It would cost $50.00 to replace! So now when I wear the jacket I have to make sure that I don’t unzip it all the way otherwise I’ll never get it back together again. What this means is that I have to pull the jacket over my head when I’m leaving the house and pray to god that I don’t need to remove it when I’m out or I would have to very gracefully allow the jacket to fall to the ground and then with much elegance, step out of it and with aplomb, retrieve the jacket from the floor!
Is it too much to ask for well-made, longer-lasting zippers; is that too much to expect? Probably. I guess! But just try and find a casual jacket without a zipper!
Sorry, gotta wade in. Yes, it is unreasonable to ask for a quality zipper on our garments when the expectation is cheap, cheap, cheaper the better. A quality zipper costs sometimes 4 times the cost of an offshore brand and pennies saved are profit. If, as consumers, we were more concerned with quality than cost the stuff that falls apart after a couple of uses would disappear from the shelves. Places like Walmart and Superstore would not exist to keep pushing the prices down to unreasonable levels. Take a look at some of the products we buy and seriously think whether it really can be manufactured for the price we want to pay. I can buy white t-shirts for under $1.50 wholesale. Who can possibly manufacture it for that price? The fabric costs more than that. Consumers stop buying crap, it is more expensive in the long run.
OK, done now.
Well said and I agree with you totally. The expectations for cheap clothing prices is crazy and like everything else you get what you pay for. The thing is though, in most cases you will not find a medium level quality of clothing. I would prefer to purchase something that would last but surely we don’t need to spend $1,000 for a simple, casual jacket…can’t there be something between the two that will last? I totally agree that if we were to pay more it would be less expensive in the long run. Appreciate your comments…