It’s remarkable how much clothing manufacture changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the introduction of affordable synthetics and the broad acceptance of low-cost overseas manufacturing. Not only were craftspeople like tailors and cobblers almost completely eliminated (they’d been hanging on for their lives since the 30s or so), but the quality of mass-manufactured goods took an epic plunge. Allen-Edmonds are one of the best quality American shoes you can buy, but they were a full step better forty or fifty years ago. Similarly, legacy brands like Stacy Adams and Florsheim pump out lowest-common-denominator crap today, but if you handled their shoes from the 50s or 60s, you’d think you were holding Aldens (or better). Clothes are dramatically cheaper and more plentiful these days, but they’re certainly not better.
