Why Do Clothes Suck Now?

For the maiden voyage of the Culture Study podcast, we’re taking a hard look at a problem that plagues us all: terrible clothes. Why are shirts falling apart or pilling after just a few wears? Why does Gucci charge $3200 for a polyester sweater? What happened to ironing and will we ever dry clean en masse again?

Amanda Mull, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins me for a deep dive into the past twenty years of fashion production (and consumption) trends.Show notes:

• The tweet I describe in the beginning of the podcast:

• Read Amanda Mull’s piece in The Atlantic: “Your Sweaters Are Garbage”

• Read Sarah Zhang’s piece in The Atlantic: “How I Got Bamboo-zled by Baby Clothes”

• Amanda mentioned: Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn: A People’s History of Clothing

• Some other Amanda pieces I love: Millennials Have Lost Their Grip on Fashion, The Free-Returns Party Is Over, How Shoppers Got Tricked By Vegan Leather

• You can see Amanda’s Jeffrey Dahmer glasses in the bio of her Instagram (which is private, so don’t friend request unless you actually know her)

• Paul Mescal’s rat tail situation (perhaps more appropriately called a mullet)

This week, we’re looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• Resurgent interest in early 2000s music (with Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan)

• The Mean Girls Trailer

• A deep analysis of Taylor and Travis Kelce discourse

• Kevin Bacon’s Hott Instagram and Gen-X/Elder Millennial Instagram in general

• “Little treat” culture

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here.

Now come hang out with us in the discussion — I’ve put a few ideas to get us started below:

• What’s your best made piece of clothing — and what’s the piece of clothing that SHOULD be well made but has evidenced itself to be shit?

• Did you go check the tags of your sweaters after listening WHAT DID THEY SAY???

• How do we think of this general decline in clothing quality as a symptom of deregulation?

• I’d love to hear your thoughts about the decline in ironing and “women’s domestic tasks” in general.

• PLUS ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LOVE TO TALK ABOUT

As is the case in the rest of subscriber-only Culture Study, this is a private space, and our expectation is basically: don’t be butts. In this case, don’t be butts about clothes and other people’s relationship to those clothes, and let’s keep this one of the good places on the internet.

And if you’re looking for the fancy subscriber-only-question-form that allows us to prioritize your questions: it’s here. And thank you so much for subscribing — you allow us to make the show we want (which is also hopefully the show you actually like) free of advertiser imperatives, and that rules.

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• Got a question to submit, a prompt for Ask Anne Anything, or an idea for a future episode? Tell us here.
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• Transcripts will be available here within 24 hours of publishing.

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