In part one of this series on insights from Patrick Grant’s book Less: Stop buying so much rubbish: How having fewer, better things can make us happier we talked about the psychology behind buying clothes.
This time, I want to focus on his musings around quality and work. In the book section Quality, Grant laments that over time we have gone from striving to produce the best quality to simply create newness.
In a great analogy, Grant compares the decline in quality and price of clothing to that of the parable of the frog in hot water, “each small reduction is barely discernible. But compare a contemporary object with the equivalent from fifty years ago and the difference will be remarkable”.
He talks about what goes into making something with care; the skills required, the time taken, and how this translates to feelings of well-being when we use this product.
Quality brings value not just in the obvious sense of a well-made product lasting longer, but also in terms of the intangibles; we feel the difference in pleasure that comes from drinking from a handmade mug to a cheaply mass produced one, the pride that comes from making something useful, something meaningful. Yet we seem to have accepted that this is just how it is now. That having more of something of poorer quality is better than having less of something of better quality*.
Connected to this, Grant talks about how we have lost touch with knowing what is well made and what is rubbish. “Knowing how to make things arms us in the fight against being flogged low-quality stuff.” He notes that our parents and grandparents’ generations had a greater knowledge of whether an object was good or bad in part because they learnt how to sew, how to work with wood and with metal, and they might have also learnt bike or car mechanics. People handled tools regularly and gained an appreciation of materials and their properties. Today, textiles in school seems to be a token taster (I think I did 1 or 2 semesters at most myself). How many kids are leaving school without knowing how things are made? How are we to recognise a strongly sewn seam from a weak one?
And added to this it’s almost like we’re being gaslit. Have you ever found yourself wondering why your t-shirts don’t last like they used to, or why your coat doesn’t feel as warm as you remember years ago? You haven’t lost your memory, or your mind!
“Winter coats used to be made from 800g pure wool fabric; now they are typically made of 300g wool/polyester blend. Today many sweatshirts are made of fabric which is less than half the weight of that used in the past.”
I’ve noted this with the t-shirts from the 90s I still own; I can feel the difference in their weight.
And the kicker is the price going down…because things are so cheap, we don’t consider the cost of their purchase like we used to. In 1880 a dress would have cost about a week’s pay.
“In 1970, once the effects of offshoring and synthetics kicked in, it might have cost a day’s pay, and by the turn of the millennium we could get a dress for about four hours wages. Today, with the rise of ultra-fast fashion, we can buy a dress for less than half an hour’s pay, less than we’d pay for a cup of coffee”.
So, our clothing is made of cheaper materials, which means it doesn’t do its job as well, or last as long. And this of course adds up to…us buying more! I’ve no doubt that buying the cheapest option often ultimately becomes more expensive as it needs replacing sooner.
As well as not being familiar with how things are made, we’ve also become so far removed from the maker.
In the past, what people didn’t make themselves, they would buy directly from the maker in town or close by, and so you had more insight into the time and skill that went into things. Plus, the product needed to be of high quality should the maker want to stay in business. They weren’t an unknown on the other side of the world, only a few clicks away, yet how many steps removed? You’d likely see them at the bank the next week.
In the third section, Grant talks about Work, and for me I think this is a standout section as I think it’s often missed in conversations around fast fashion. I love the discussion about what makes ‘meaningful work’, and that in the quest to create the ‘knowledge economy’ he says that the UK has lost sight of what kinds of work make us happy. He talks about pride in one’s work; the building up of skills, mastering of fine movements and processes, of workplace rituals and relationships, of communities, families following in each other’s footsteps and working in the same factory. That making jeans in a factory is far more satisfying and builds more self-esteem and pride than processing packages in a warehouse.
There is discussion about offshoring, and online only retailers, such and Shein and Amazon, and what this means for local economies. “To simplify the outcome of our recent change in shopping habits: half as many jobs, a third as much tax to pay for things like the NHS” (Britain’s National Health Service, here in Australia, for Medicare and the public health system).
“In 2022 Shein sold over 1 billion pounds worth of their fashions in the UK with just 14 UK staff…When we buy from these empty online brands we are destroying economic value and jobs…”
Grant talks about what makes meaningful work, and how just seven per cent of people in the UK now make things for a living. “Most of what we buy is made by machines operated by poorly paid humans on the other side of the world”. He notes that as we become increasingly unhappy, “healthcare providers are prescribing time in nature and craft work as a cure for our rapidly growing mental ill-health. Our work could be our cure.”
As someone who now makes with their hands for a job, I know first-hand the mental health benefits that it brings. And it’s in unexpected, often intangible ways. When I’ve been making or repairing, I notice the benefits in my mood and feelings of well-being after I’ve stepped away. I’m calmer, happier, less stressed, when I’ve been making.
This chapter makes me question what we think we want, and what we actually need. We all want convenience; we’re busy, and we want more time for leisure, to relax and just be, when we’re away from often stressful jobs. But, are we getting this? Or are we just jamming more in? Is striving for convenience actually ironically killing our leisure time? And if we changed the way we produce and made things, if we allowed more time, would we feel less stressed, less worn out? Would we find that convenience isn’t actually all it’s cracked up to be?
We’ll explore this a little more in Part 3 of this series, along with tips on how we might all benefit from Less.
*Quality doesn’t mean perfectly made; wonky handles are just fine, as are missed stitches! Rather, high-quality materials and time invested brings character and substance, value, and pleasure to the purchaser.
