Quality: The Future of Fashion Marketing
Here’s what consumers should look out for — and how brands can tap in.
If you’ve seen me on Zoom or at school drop-off recently, you already know I’ve been reaching for the same few sweaters this whole winter. And I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not alone here. It’s been bitterly cold just about everywhere, and my current rotation of knitwear is hefty, lush, and perhaps most relevantly, old as hell. They’re pieces I’ve held onto for years and years or vintage-ish, scored from eBay. Because the sweaters I’ve acquired recently? Are so, so bad. Even the “nice,” expensive ones.
Here’s the issue: They’re just not made well! Synthetics like polyester are in everything, including in those clothes from the “nice,” expensive brands with hefty price tags that exclude the majority of consumers.
It’s not just me (and likely you, too) who’s having this experience. Price-per-garment has been consistently declining in most areas of the market, with a precipitous dropoff in the last 10-15 years. Michelle Gabriel, the program director of M.S. Sustainable Fashion at IE New York College (and one of my favorite reporting sources for stories like this one), described the current state of fashion products as “pretty sad.” Such is the impact of the last 30-plus years of fast- and now ultra-fast-fashion.
“The entire market has compromised quality, increasingly making it a marketable feature that should be leveraged,” Gabriel told me.
Is quality the future of fashion marketing? The experts I talked to for this piece think so, particularly for the next four years.
It wouldn’t be a huge departure. Currently, brands are hyper-focused on promoting the ways in which they “care” — about the environment, about the people making their products, about “authentically” connecting with their audiences. Emphasizing sustainability, leveraging user-generated content, creating immersive experiences online and off to foster community. AI is a thing, obviously, but my Spidey senses say that consumers aren’t prioritizing it enough for brands to be harping on stuff like AI-driven predictive analytics quite yet.
The concept of quality coalesces with all of the above, in a sense. When you make “better” stuff, your methods and the way you approach your supply chains have to be “better,” too. Or do they? Notice the quotations.
How did we get here?
First, we have to talk about tariffs.
Tariffs are a real threat, and they may stay that way for a long time — at least, as long as they remain a favorite negotiation tool of the new administration. In preparation for the costs of goods sold (or COGS) increasing, brands will almost certainly cut quality first. Economic pressures will continue to force companies to revise their sourcing and production strategies in pursuit of lower costs. This will impact quality.
“When price dominates those considerations, a production partner might be chosen not because they produce consistent, high-quality garments, but because they will guarantee a certain price,” Gabriel said.
In practice, this looks like a few things: the common use of synthetics where natural materials once dominated; less material at the seams to allow for alterations and tailoring; fewer high-end interior construction details, like linings, piping, buttons, and other hidden features that contribute to the quality of the garment.
This is as true for the Sheins of the world as for those luxury brands housed by big, fancy French corporations. The adage that you get what you pay for may not hold true anymore.
“If you own any older secondhand luxury items, you’ll see the difference between then and now on the label,” Gabriel said. “Not terribly long ago, slinky fabrics in luxury goods were always silk, wool, and cashmere, and you would rarely see polyester, nylon, acrylic, and spandex. Today, walk into a luxury brand store and almost everything, regardless of how high the price point may be, is blended fabric.”
Quality-based marketing is already out there
Shoppers care where their clothes come from. Or at least, they want others to think they do.
Back in October, an “X” post from @inceptstellar went viral calling out London-based “conscious and independent” label House of Sunny for promoting its “vegan” knitwear. Mind you, its signature “Tripper” cardigans are made from “100% acrylic” fabrics, per the product descriptions on its website. That’s just synthetic, babe! It comes from chemicals and fossil fuels!
In a repost, Haloscope Magazine’s Savannah Bradley called it out for what it is: Fast fashion brands are already padding their copy with ‘vegan’ ‘ethical’ etc. to shirk responsibility, posture as virtuous, and — most of all — soothe a kind of consumer who’d probably still order Shein if nobody ever found out about it. It makes for great marketing, she wrote, but not great clothing.
It’s not a great look for House of Sunny, but aren’t they just playing the game? I’m not excusing the behavior. I’m just saying! And do the lion’s share of shoppers actually feel strongly if brands are investing in quality — be it via the finished garment or via the supply chains that bring it to life? I’m not so sure. But like I said, they definitely do care on the surface.
Recently, the director of NYU Stern’s Luxury & Retail MBA Thomaï Serdari (another of my go-to industry sources) was telling me about a series of long-form, qualitative interviews they’re doing to research shifting consumer mindsets. Everything is pointing to the fact that yes, shoppers are demanding transparency in anything that concerns how the item came to be.
Now, this is a relatively recent change in consumer behavior. It’s especially apparent with college demos, she said, who favor quality over trendiness and “unique approaches to fashion over standardized looks that have been styled by brands or influencers with the goal to sell.”
“The numbers of those who seek quality in fashion are increasing,” Serdari said. “And these are the same consumers who have changed the rules of the ‘treasure hunt.’ Today, the treasure hunt is an item of great quality, timeless value, and fair price — at a discount.”
How brands can tap in (responsibly)
Serdari said brands should be doing two things: 1) reconsidering their value propositions, and 2) also reflecting on their relationship to the secondary market.
I can’t tell retailers how to approach their value props, because I don’t have an MBA and I also don’t work for you, but I can talk about secondhand.
Resale is the thing right now, and it’s a good stop-gap for brands that want to emphasize quality but can’t reinvent their whole supply chains just yet. (If that’s you and your brand, it’s my obligation to tell you to please just work on it. It’s the right thing to do and customers are learning that, to quote my parents, there’s no discount like quality. Misleading shoppers isn’t cool, and you only end up cheating yourselves.)
A recent recommerce report from online and mobile-first C2C marketplace OfferUp found that secondhand fashion offers better quality than new, and more than half of consumers surveyed are planning to buy more pre-owned apparel over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, resale is outperforming traditional retail, per new data from consumer insights firm Consumer Edge.
It’s hard, though, because quality is a difficult metric to measure. It’s all relative and in many cases, hugely differs per generation. For the vast majority of customers, particularly those Gen Z and younger, quality holds only relative sway over their purchasing decisions.
“These customers don’t commonly have a relationship to clothing like previous generations in part because they have only grown up in a world with fast fashion and in part because they didn’t have home economics, didn’t learn to sew, didn’t have family members who might work in garment production,” Gabriel said. “These are the same customers driving throw-away fashion culture: a button falls off, the garment is ‘ruined.’ Better to throw the whole thing away.”
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Gabriel shares an interesting anecdote that proves this point.
When you buy a “better” garment, one of the classic techniques used to ensure it makes it to the customer looking its best is to use a loose wide stitch to sew pockets and pleats or vents (i.e., the fold that opens at the center-back of a suit jacket) closed until the customer takes the garment home, at which point it’s intended to be cut and removed. This is a technique traditionally used on higher-quality garments and is less common on more mass-produced, lower-cost garments. It’s also a step that costs money and may be skipped when trying to save costs in production.
“Everyday I see at least one person on my commute who is unaware that this vent thread is meant to be cut and who wears their garment with the thread intact,” Gabriel said. “This illustrates a clear lack of awareness about what garment quality may look like.”
To be clear, this isn’t our fault! I don’t share this to be condescending, though I can totally see how it might be construed that way. I wanted to include it because this quality “crisis” in fashion extends beyond what the item of clothing might look or feel like.
We as customers should also be campaigning institutions and policy-makers to set actual baselines for production, waste, and labor practices. Such regulations have been cropping up in Europe, and statewide policies like S.B. 62 in California and the Fashion Act in New York (both of which I’ve written about) are happening here, as well.
We’ll work on it together. In the meantime, if you’re very, very cold and considering buying a chunky sweater that you later learn is made entirely of polyester, maybe don’t buy it and for now, look on a resale site, instead.