My dad still uses tshirts from the 80’s as rags
That’s exactly how I manage my clothes.
my best shirts and hoodies have the diablo 2 etherial tag on them
My favorite shirt is sitting on the top shelf of my closet because I can’t bring myself to downgrade it to a rag. It has a hole on the armpit that I could fit through😂
I’ve started retiring sentimental shirts early so they don’t wear down like that. They aren’t really shirts anymore, but shirt-like objects tied to memories.
They can also be turned into crop tops
This isn’t a gender thing, it’s a working-class thing. Let’s not get divided unnecessarily divided.
Huh? Which part is strictly a working class thing?
There’s a large spectrum between “I’ll wear it until it falls apart,” and, “I’ve never worn this but I need space for new clothes so it’s going to goodwill,” and working class people fall all over it.
Women generally tend to be the ones who will more frequently refresh their wardrobe. All you have to do is go to a thrift store to see the difference between genders. The women’s clothing section will be massive, and the men’s section significantly smaller.
My son loves the goodwill women’s section. I swear that kids gonna be a fashion designer or a runway model… if I can keep his ass outta jail lol 😓
I get what you are saying. But in this context this is kind of like a “dad joke.” Do we think being pedantic about the terminology is really reinforcing some kind of negative gender stereotype here? Or minimizing the working class?
Lemmy cannot stand jokes while we currently live in a world.
I will never cease to be amazed about what people on Lemmy can get offended at. Today it’s a lame joke about old clothes.
This is the cycle even for me and I’m independently wealthy. Wealthy as a horse, if you will.
(I have many leatherbound books.)
More like a manual labor thing tbh. Plenty of working class folks who are no less working class but don’t need to cycle through clothes
i still have tshirts i bought in my 20s. the collars of a couple of them are starting to detach but theyre still wearable
Meanwhile companies like Shein encourage their customers to wear their cheap synthetic clothing a single time and then throw it in the garbage as a sacrifice to the gods of super-fast-fashion
Encourage, or just enable?
I’ve never heard of Shein telling anyone to do it. I just know their prices are so goddamn cheap you COULD do it if you wanted to. Some people probably do. But I suspect a lot of people just want cheap clothes and will wear them until they have holes in them (which even for Shein clothes has to be multiple wearings usually I’m pretty sure)
In the German documentary I’ve watched a few years ago it definitely looked like their business model was selling their customers insane amounts of cheaply produced clothing by encouraging them to change their outfit super-often, hence the terms fast fashion. They even pay influencers to promote this wasteful trend as “Shein hauls”
Having gotten some Temu clothing as gifts, there are two main materials I’ve seen. One feels very much like a rough cotton, like the material harem pants are made of, and is mainly in the shorts/pants I’ve gotten. It’s a cotton poly blend, and one is the material of the shirts. They’re super stretchy and elastic, like a spandex almost. The pants and shorts end up with holes quickly as they rip near (but not on) the seams, and the shirts seem to actually last even if snagged because of how stretchy they are.
I wouldn’t advise buying from them or anything, just saying that they’re not exactly single use.
encourage their customers to wear their cheap synthetic clothing a single time and then throw it in the garbage
do you have a single fact to back that up?
spoiler
I just wanted to make the Deus ex reference. But I would like to see evidence
Here’s a video essay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6R_WTDdx7I
The fast fashion part?
https://time.com/6247732/shein-climate-change-labor-fashion/
The encouraging a single use part? Also in that article, but it revolves around influencers driving constant change. But also the clothes being really cheap and falling apart.
And anecdotally, there’s a pile of clothes in my wife’s closet that still haven’t gotten their first wear.
OK, I’ll put that under “exaggeration for emphasis”.
Yeah, I was a exaggerating a bit, but the waste of clothing and environmental damage is real. I saw it in a documentary. And Shein’s website is (or used to be) full of greenwashing.
Chew you havisfaction a singleicious satisfact to snack that up?
Which only further encourages the existing tendency for single-use clothing that some groups of people exhibit.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in the form of men’s clothing.
I’m a very middle aged dad, I still have t-shirts from high school that I wear on occasion. Granted, they are in the survivor pile now, but it’s a point of pride that I still have them, and still fit into them. Fun to dust off my old concert t’s every now and again.
You forgot the stage after garage clothes, that would be PJs. Then it gets turned into a rag.
I think PJs goes before garage clothes, not after
For me they are interchangeable. Garage clothes and PJs are often the same stage.
“Are those oily stains on your crotch, are you an octopus and happy to see me?”
“No, these oily stains are from the Italian sub I’ve been eating in bed, not the car I was working on earlier.”
“KISS ME YOU FOOL”
Man what the fuck, you live a wild life

One slightly different path here is socks. If a sock lives long enough for its elastic to wear out it can go to “garage clothes” category. Socks missing a mate can also go here being pair up with another sock with a missing mate. Another path for socks to “garage clothes” is if fashion trends finally evolving so far that wearing those socks will get admonishment from the gf/wife if worn out in public. However, as soon as a sock has a hole in it, it skips the “garage clothes” step and heads straight to the “rags” category.
Reading this thread has taught me that when I have a girl over and she tells me that I am not a normal male, I really had no idea how much I didn’t do as a male that other men do all the time….
I wear all of my clothes until they show clear signs of being worn out and then determine whether that it should be donated or trashed. And i have one shirt then I’ll probably never throw away and it’s one that I’ve had since the 80s, my goonies shirt.
And for underwear the path is “maybe I’ll get laid” then “still no holes so I can be seen in them” and finally “I’m not going out today so I don’t care that one of my balls fell out through the hole”. And then rags.
I don’t know what it is but no matter how nice of socks I get or how well I take care of them, they will get a hole in the big toe area within a year at the very latest. I’ve never had socks last long enough to have the elastic wear out
Also yes my nails are kept short so it’s not that
You’re probably walking wrong (like, in a requiring orthotics way)
Cutting my toenails shorter did the trick for me.
I’m here with you. Do you feel like you have exceptionally hard nails? I sure do.
I almost never wear out the toes. For me its balls of the feet holes or occasionally a heel hole. I’ll also say that my socks last a long time.
I bought a 12 new pairs of Adidas socks for a 2 week trip I took. Came home with 2 fewer socks because I put holes in the toes. It’s absolutely insane and it happens with all brands.
Really high quality brands like SmartWool last longer, but the big toe is still what fails first.
Depending on if the holes develop at the top of the toe (dorsum) or the bottom (plantar), you could either have too much range of motion on toe off(hyper mobile 1st ray), or too much rigidity (hallux rigidus).
A hyper mobile toe will allow too much dorsiflexion in the toe and wear the top of the sock down, some people will even wear a hole in the toebox of their shoes. Too much rigidity will cause the toe to act like an extension of a lever arm and create too much plantar pressure.
You could also just have a competitively long big toe compared to your lesser toes.
This is fantastic! I did some searching for at home tests for hyper mobile first ray, and I definitely see a difference in mobility from one foot to the other, and I feel like my hyper mobile toe is always the one I see sock holes on.
Dunno what if anything I’m going to do about it, but greatly appreciate your insight.
You could try purchasing a Morton’s extension to add to your shoe to see if that changes anything.
It’s a thin piece of carbon fiber that you add under the insert/liner of your shoe. It helps prevent the hyper mobile joint from exceeding its healthy range of motion, and helps load the ground force reaction across the medial column of the forefoot a little more evenly. You can usually find them on Amazon for like 10-20 bucks.
We just threw out a whole pack of adidas socks. After just a few house of wear, made both me and my wife’s feet smell like 3 day old road kill. We decided it was some shitty blend of plastics doing it.
I had to walk down an embankment to a river to wash my feet before bed on a camping trip because I didn’t want them in the tent with us.
I have that problem too with polyester socks. I may have those same adidias socks, and I primarily use them for gym/workouts. My daily driver socks are cotton in the summer and merino wool in the winter. Both of these are Costco branded and are lasting years and wearing well.
I bought some heavy duty socks, and so far the only holes they’ve gotten are from the dog. I still wear them because they’re on the top side.
Shoes too tight? Or maybe on one foot.
I’ll just get like 6 same pairs, if the old are out because of holes, so no problems with missing pairs.
“Garage clothes” is a peculiar way to say “make loads of cool sock puppets”
Nah, maybe how it once was and now I only wear Darn Tough socks. Lifetime warranty, basically a sock club. Most definitely buy once cry once and it doesn’t matter whether you pay full price or get them on sale. They always warranty the value of the sock on what they sell for on their website. It’s so awesome. I haven’t needed to buy socks since 2017 when I filled my sock drawer.
DT is the way.
Nah, maybe how it once was and now I only wear Darn Tough socks.
You’re wearing a $20-$30 pair of socks to mow the lawn or change the oil in a car? I’d be worried about messing those nice socks up.
I have about 25 pair, unsure exactly. I’ve paid an average $14 per pair and it’s 100% worth it.
And yes, I wear a fresh pair for work or daily engagement and then they get set aside and used when I’m working around the house for a day or two.
The wool blend makes them never stink, it’s pretty amazing. I bought the majority in 2016 or so from a now debunked website called MassDrop. They’d buy stuff in bulk for discounts then resell them at great prices. I just checked my old emails and paid two pair for $28 and three for $41. Later I bought a few more from GoBros.com for at least 25% off. Checking my emails I got most of them from MassDrop though.
Here’s the thing, DT doesn’t care how much you paid or how you got them, they credit the full value upon return and then you shop direct from their website for value credited. When I first started I’d used the rertuns like sock club, I’d send my thick winter ones back in the spring and get thinner summer ones. I’d do the reverse in the fall. My first few years I was swapping out socks twice a year. Now I have enough I wait until the ankle is loose on a few pairs then return in bulk to replace, every 3 years or so.
You don’t need any excuse or reason to do a return that they need. You don’t need a receipt.
I’d be worried about messing those nice socks up
That’s the best part, because they’re warrantied you can abuse tf out of them.
I avoid step two by just never wearing matching socks.
I avoid it by only buying the same type of sock so all socks are matching socks. One develops a hole, it gets thrown out but goes back into the magical pool of socks
Socks missing a mate can also go here being pair up with another sock with a missing mate.
I do not match my socks, I’ll wear two completely different socks at the same time. If one loses a mate, then that’s fine
I know it’s irrational, but I feel “off balance” if I wear mismatched socks 😭
Do women not do that? Where do they get rags from?
They get married.
I’m single, maybe some of You ladies need a good source of rags?
From rags to bitches
From bags to witches
By stealing my perfectly fine and wearable rough work clothes, claiming they are ‘unfit to wear’.
Some people have to realize that men usually don’t waste clothes. If it’s ruined in one way, we recycle it in another way.
















