Many designer and luxury brands are not actually about the quality, but rather the brand itself and ‘status’ you’re supposed to feel by being a consumer of the product.
If you had any doubts about this whatsoever, the University of Leeds has just been working with Primark on a research project that found cheap clothes matched and even outperformed more expensive garments in durability testing, intended to set standards on how long clothing should last.
The uni’s school of design assessed 65 products, and found a £15 pair of women’s jeans to be more durable than their £150 equivalent.
Kate Morris, who led the research team at the university, said: “We have equipment that can mimic years and years of wear and tear of garments in a matter of hours.
“We had to consider how the garments are actually used. So, with jeans we focussed on things such as the fabric rubbing together and seam strength.
“For hoodies we look at pilling, which are the small bobbles that form on fabric.”
And the team were “surprised” by the results, which showed that price was not necessarily an indicator of long-term quality.
The second-best performer in the men’s T-shirt category cost only £5. Seventeen styles were tested.
Ms Morris added: “Historically people think that if you pay more, you’ll get a longer life out of the garment.
“We found no correlation between price and durability. It doesn’t mean that if you go out and buy something really cheap it will last forever, and vice versa. We are simply saying that there is no correlation between the two”.
Vicki Swain, Primark’s product longevity lead, added: “We developed the framework to ensure that customers know items are going to last, no matter how much they can afford to spend. We’ve been investing in making our clothes more durable and also making them with more sustainable materials.”
Primark supplied the clothing for the study but had no further input in the independent research.
Ms Morris said: “We did all of the testing, analysed all of the data, created a testing framework and fed that data back to Primark. They were not involved in any of the testing work.”
And so, it appears a lot of top brands are selling £15 quality items for £150, which shouldn’t actually come as a surprise to anyone, but nice to have this new study to back it up.
If you find actual good quality clothing it should last longer, and it turns out thrifting can be great for this if you’re looking in the right places. Obviously that’s not to say that every item in Primark is of the sort of quality you might pay £100+ for elsewhere, but it does make you wonder how many of these brands, luxury or budget, are using the same sweatshops to make their products.
Of course, a clothing item can cost £150 because it’s more comfortable or practical or designed better, so it doesn’t just come down to durability at the end of the day. Assessing 65 products from jeans to T-shirts hardly accounts for all the different reasons a product might be more expensive than an “equivalent”. Still, it’s something to consider when you’re next buying a new wardrobe.
