I care about my health and sustainability. General advice is to check clothing labels, and I won’t buy underwear or whatever that has a large percentage of polyester. But they can just make it up and there isn’t recourse. Can’t sue em and I don’t have access to a lab that can analyze the composition. So how would one know?
Honestly there is a tangible difference in clothing made of synthetics. Like, literally, you can feel the difference. I thrift a lot, and am a clothing and textile snob, and through many years of groping fabric I’ve become able to identify cotton, silk, wool, rayon etc just by touch. In my experience textile labels seem to be accurate as long as they are present. The really shady manufacturers will not put a label on or will call polyester/acetate/acrylic some other name to pretend it’s fancier than it is. If something says it is 100% cotton I personally have never found it to be otherwise. There are methods to test, for instance burning a scrap and looking at the residue or using bleach on protein fabrics (wool/silk). Most often when I misidentify something though, I check the label and it’s like 2% elastane which is frustrating because that stuff wears out and is completely unnecessary in knit fabrics.
Anyway, my recommendation is to avoid feeding the fast fashion industry as much as possible, and thrift or get second hand as much as you can. Those heavyweight 100% cotton T-shirts from the 90s or early zeroes are made of way better quality materials anyway.
I used to thrift a lot but have been finding the value vs reward ratio off, and I can’t tell by feel, and I haven’t seen a lot of old cotton shirts that didn’t have a stain…maybe I just wanted to whine instead of find a solution. I might be doing a learned helplessness thing that I don’t like in myself…
Is it something you do as a hobby/interest or for a living? Bc that sounds like a lot
Yes to both. I have always been interested in clothes and fashion since childhood (dolls and sewing and crafting etc) and I like getting the most value out of my money, which led me to thrift shops and buying second hand. Thrift shops and the quality of their items are highly variable but for some time I lived in a place that had multiple fantastic shops. I would rotate through them and grab high quality items that were not selling there and sell them online. I moved and don’t pick as much to sell anymore, but I still buy for my family and self.
Thrifting is sort of like gambling, except it costs time instead of money to “play”. You only pay after you “win” by finding the Awesome Thing. Sometimes you will strike out and not find anything, that’s normal. If you only look at one thrift shop once or twice you will likely not find anything, and you usually will find something other than what you were specifically looking for. However when you “win” and find something truly special and exciting, it can keep you going back to the hunt.
Men’s clothes are harder to thrift generally, because as a group, men are more careful consumers and will wear their clothes out instead of donating them. However it’s still perfectly possible to find good things. You already know to look for natural fibers, but did you know you can dye stained shirts in your washing machine with dye from most grocery stores? If you have a an otherwise good quality plain shirt but it has some discoloration, you can spend $5 on a bottle or box of dye, and either throw it in a big cookpot on the stove or run it through the hot wash cycle with anything else you want to be that color. There are also other places to thrift, like online second hand marketplaces (Ebay, Poshmark, Vinted, Thredup etc), Church fundraiser sales, and of course good old yard sales.
Preciate the tips a lot. I’m currently wearing a tank top from god knows where, my brother’s old soccer t-shirt from over 15 years ago, and some sweatpants I have no idea the origin of. Doing my part lol.
I think I’ll set aside dedicated time, like 2 hours on Sunday, to carefully select clothes, so that I can look more put together. Will start with your comment, ty.