A Long List of Fashion Items That Won't Age Well

Hey y'all, hi. Okay, today we're talking about items of clothing that won't age well. How can you tell when you're about to buy something whether or not it's a good choice? I feel like that's one of the main questions of my channel right now and a core facet of that question is, will it age well? So this is a list of red flag items or red flag qualities of items that point to the fact that they absolutely will not age well. I hope you'll subscribe if you like content like this. I'll also leave my book linked at the top of the description box down below. Let's get right into the meat of the video. So fashion wise, everything that goes around kind of comes around. I remember having a moment in probably like the mid-20 teens. I was watching an old episode of Alias, you know, Jennifer Garner. She was wearing a baby tee because the show had been made I guess in the early 2000s and I was like, that looks so bad. I was basically repulsed by the silhouette of the t-shirt. I was like, I can't believe we used to think that that looked good because at the time tops were really long, like past the waistband of pants coming down over the hips. Well guess what I just wore out the other night? A baby tee. And guess what silhouette all my t-shirts are right now? That exact silhouette. And I think it looks so fresh. I'm really getting my life. If you wait long enough, something that has aged badly fashion wise will rise again. But something that has fallen out of style for a while coming back into style, it doesn't do you any good if the item hasn't aged well physically. If it's become literal garbage just because you wore it a few times and washed it or because of how you washed it. And a lot of clothing becomes literal garbage because of washing and wearing long before it's even had a chance to go out of style. So that is what we're going to be discussing today. And thrillingly, today's video sponsor is brand making clothes that will age well. And that is the brand Fabric. And actually, this is like a life update. You know how I used to never wear jeans? Fabric has single-handedly made me a denim convert because of these genuinely high-waisted and brilliantly structured jeans. The level of design is so high because Fabric collaborates with a rotating complement of top designers all over the world to produce limited collections that are priced more accessibly than traditional high fashion houses. It's a collective designer brand. For example, this pleated vintage wash pair is by Adriano Goldschmid, who's like the legendary denim pioneer, founder of Diesel. And this pair with the hook stitch detailing is by Ksenia Schneider, which is that design duo that made the denim shirt that I fell in love with last time, if you remember. These perfect gray jeans are by Amanda Garrell, who previously designed for Acne Studios. And look at this white pair. They have that barrel leg silhouette that's everywhere right now, but it's subtle. They're by Megan Roche, who used to be a lead designer at Proenza Schooler. I have been wearing them constantly. Fabric also just released a collection of bags by Valeria Massai, who has done accessories for houses like Prada, Miu Miu, Jill Sander, Helmut Lang. That's just some of them. This is her Rialto bag. I love the soft structure of this bag. The size is the perfect mid. Spacious but not oversized. I just feel like this is the one. The daily black designer bag that's very polished but not ostentatious. It kind of turns heads, but people aren't really sure why. It just has it, you know? There are a bunch of options for the straps, but for me just this one is perfect because over the shoulder it tucks right under my arm, leaving my hands free even though I'm tall. The silhouette is impeccable. It kind of reminds me of the original Celine all soft bag or those totes from Kate and the Row, except it's like one-fifth of the price. So the jeans in the back are the pieces I've worn the most, and there's this oversized barn jacket with curved sleeves, which has really gotten me together. But look at these floatier, more feminine pieces. These have really challenged my current laid-back minimal style, but when I started to work with them I found that they have so much aesthetic intention. It's like they're weighty with the talent and taste level of the designers, and that has made it so easy and enjoyable to style them. I've said this before, but fabric kind of reminds me of a cross between a fashion house and an art school. It really gets me going. So I'll link all of these pieces. Everything at Fabric is small batch and limited edition, but I think that everything that I'm showcasing today is currently available, but a lot of it is on mid-season sale right now. And I have a discount code with Fabric, which I will put in the description box down below. So moving on from beautifully made clothing that will age well, let's talk about things that sadly won't age well. And the first one is kind of a doozy. I'm sorry to drop this on you right here at the beginning of the list, but it's the thing that kind of rankles the most when I see it, makes me the saddest, and is the most pervasive. Flimsy synthetic knits and blends. I feel like the shops are full of clothing that is like exciting when you see it. The silhouettes are maybe fresh. They're pulling on some kind of string that is ringing some sort of bell that everyone wants to hear. And then you get up close and it's like really flimsy jersey knit. They come in different kinds. Some of them have that sort of soft cottony hand, depending on what's blended into the fabric. Those get really pilly. They get super pilly the first time you wear them, especially if it's just not well made. Like thin, kind of barely holding itself together. And then there's like that slick, the industry term for it is ITY. Actually I know this from when I used to make clothes. That like slick polyester, almost swimsuit fabric type of jersey knit. Like a thin matte swimsuit fabric. You see a lot of dresses made out of that. That gets really smelly really fast. It doesn't pill as badly as this sort of cottony type, but it gets really smelly. It absorbs sweat and smell and hangs on to it and you can't wash the smell out. And it also gets quite dingy quickly and the edges get kind of yucky. Nothing made out of those flimsy, cheap synthetic knits is going to age well. And a lot of it doesn't even look that good to begin with. Like it doesn't age well through one wash or like one time you wear it. For a knit, like a jersey knit of any kind to age well, it has to be incredibly well made. And they do exist. Look for weight, heft, thickness, almost a sense of chunkiness about it. 100% cotton. Thick, chunky cotton rib knits tend to age pretty well. Look at the finishing, like the cuffs. The way that the fabric has held up to the trial of being sewn, like being finished and sewn around the edges of the garment, will often tell you a lot about how the body of the garment and the fabric there is going to hold up to being worn and washed multiple times. But ugh, those flimsy, drapey things, they just, they tend to look a lot worse after being washed one time than we really realize. It's like you're drawn to it in the shop, you buy it, and then it starts to look so bad so quickly and to fall apart and you just keep wearing it because you don't like assess it with a critical eye after that first time you bought it in the shop. I need to move on. I need to not rant and move on because I have kind of a long list. Okay, another kind of knit. Sweater knits that are made entirely out of plastic. So that's acrylic. Acrylic is an ingredient in a lot of chunky knits. So before I was talking about jersey knits, like a smooth fabric, but when you look really close it's actually a knit, like stretchy fabric. Now I'm talking about sweater knits. When a knit sweater is made almost entirely out of acrylic or is made entirely out of acrylic, it's just made out of plastic. It's plastic fibers that are really thin and stretched out and wound together and made to look like yarn, but it's not really yarn. I mean I know it is, it's acrylic yarn, but it's just plastic. And it doesn't just pill like crazy. All chunky knits pill some, and sweaters can be brought back from the edge with depilling, and I recommend depilling all of your sweaters because you can make a sweater that looks like it's aging badly look absolutely like new with just a little bit of garment care. But it's not just that. Acrylic sweaters, they pill and they just gather grunge and dirt and yuck. It's almost like the edges start to melt, become dingy, like the dirt of the world gets integrated into the plastic. It's like it's dyeing the edges and it gets pilly sort of from the inside out. Not in a way where you can just remove the pills and then it looks smooth, but the whole thing sort of starts to pill from within. Like it has a sickness. After a season, especially after a couple of washes, there is just no way to bring an acrylic sweater back. And they also hold on to stink the way that synthetic jersey knits do. Acrylic sweaters can be so tempting because sweaters made out of natural fibers are expensive, especially if you're looking for something beefy, chunky, really satisfying. And when you're sweater shopping, you see one that looks so beautiful and thick and luscious and the price is like amazing for that much sweater. Inevitably, it's because it's 100% acrylic and it can be so hard not to just be like ah but it would look so cool and it would feel so chunky and dramatic and that's exactly the look I want. That is all potentially true when it first arrives, but it will not age well. And so at what cost, my friends? Okay, this is an interesting one I feel. Leather, real leather ages beautifully. A lot of people have reasons for not wanting to buy leather goods. If you exclusively buy synthetic leather of one kind or another, they're not all created equal. That's what I want to address here. So I'm not saying like you should definitely get real leather. I'm saying that if you are purchasing a bag or a pair of shoes that is made out of some kind of leather look or synthetic leather, there's synthetic leather that is like a puffy material that's coated with something that will eventually peel or crack. And then there are other synthetic leathers that are like fully integrated. So the material is the same all the way through the top layer of it, if that makes sense. Faux leathers, synthetic leathers that have like a coating on them, they age terribly. And you can usually tell just by looking at it, you can kind of tell that it will pick or peel. Anything that you buy that is made out of a synthetic leather is meant to get kind of worked over, right? Shoes, jackets, bags, those kinds of things, the bags get opened and closed, the jackets get taken on and off and you put your hands in them and they rub up against things. There are always like seams and places where the material folds back and forth back and forth a bunch of times. If it is that sort of puffy stuff with a really thin layer of coating of treatment on top, it will be a very short time before it starts to peel, pill, and crack. And that looks bad, it loses its integrity. Sometimes the peely stuff gets everywhere, which is like so gross. Those things have such a short life, those kinds of synthetic leathers have such a short life. There are some synthetic leathers out there that because they're fully integrated, because the material is whole all the way through, they just don't peel like that. They might eventually show wear and they won't wear in the same way as leather, like wear into kind of an increased beauty, but they will last a lot longer, a lot longer than those kind of coated synthetic leathers. Oh, next on the list, anything white if you wash it with dark colors, my friends. And I'm not going to go on at length about this because I've talked about it so many times before and it's also a pretty simple concept. White clothing, which I love. My white clothing is aging beautifully, okay, because I'm taking really good care of it. I only wash it with other white clothing. I have seen a beautiful white t-shirt that would have aged gorgeously and lasted essentially forever become rag adjacent, like so bad looking that it is nearly a rag, in spirit at least, within one short hour because my husband put it in the wash with his blue jeans and it died at this like dingy gray color that is the color of the wash water of blue jeans. It was a Buck Mason shirt that I had bought for him. It was so sad. You shorten the life of your white clothing immeasurably if you wash it together with your colorful clothing. And I mean, I guess you can keep wearing it. It's not like it's lost integrity, but it hasn't aged well if it gets dyed by dingy gray blue jean water. Oh, this is an interesting one next on the list. Tensile linen blends. This is kind of specific. I have this pair of pants from Kos that I really love. It's 100% cotton. They're like oversized sort of trouser pants and I was wearing them essentially on repeat for like an entire summer, a couple of summers ago, washing, wearing, washing, wearing. They held up beautifully. They look gorgeous. They were 100% cotton. Kos released the same pant, exact same silhouette in a tensile linen blend. So tensile is like viscose essentially. I think it's another proprietary form essentially of rayon. So it's a natural fiber, but because it's a natural fiber, because it's breathable, I was hoping that the tensile linen blend version of these pants would hold up just as well as the cotton pair. So I got a pair. They're dry clean only, but I was like, but I know that tensile can go in the wash. If you wash it on cold and hang it out to dry, that it can be fine. And I know that linen can as well. So I was like, well, what's the worst that could happen? And that was a true assessment. Like the worst that could happen is just that they would sort of lose their punch. Like they just would fade and the edges would get a little bit rubbed raw and that they just wouldn't age well if I washed them myself. And that's exactly what happened. It's interesting. Cotton pants made the exact same way would age beautifully through a bunch of washes and being hung out to dry. 100% linen pants made the exact same way would age beautifully. But the addition of tensile into the linen, and a lot of brands out there are making like tensile linen blends. Just a way to market something as linen, but have it be a lot, lot, lot less expensive. Because a tensile linen blend is a lot less expensive than 100% linen. The pants still fit fine. Like they're fine. They're not aging well. That's all that I can say. And it's because of the fabric being just a bit flimsy. And that's why it says on the tag to dry clean them. Because if I dry cleaned them, they wouldn't be aging so quickly. It wouldn't be aging so badly because the fabric is just kind of delicate, right? It is, again, technically all natural fiber, but it doesn't have that integrity. It just doesn't age quite as well. So it's something to keep an eye out for. I wash a lot of my dry clean only clothes in the wash, and a lot of them are aging just fine. This is sort of a side note, but it depends on the garment. It depends on what it is about the garment that is causing it to be labeled dry clean only. And maybe that merits its whole own video. In this case, I knew what it was, right? I knew that it was the fabric. I knew that washing it in water was potentially going to take a bit of the crispness out of it, a bit of the shine off, because it's just a weak fabric. Like, that's the thing. A tensile linen blend is just kind of weak, especially lightweight. Sometimes you can tell that something is dry clean only because it has details on it that will actually be destroyed by the process of washing in water. In that case, you might not want to risk it. But what I like to do is sort of assess the reason for the label. Make sure, based on my knowledge of fabric, that it's not because it's going to shrink or, like, get ruined by contact with water. And if it's not, I take a calculated risk, usually. And sometimes it goes fine. Sometimes, in the case of these tensile linen pants, it doesn't. Then they made it on this list of things that don't age well if you wash them in water. Rayon wovens, viscose wovens, in my opinion, usually don't age well. I know it's a little bit controversial. Some people love those, like, lightweight rayon wovens and viscose wovens for blouses. In my experience, the edges just get really squished up and, like, the seams, they just, with one wash, they get all seized up and squished up. They get wrinkled in this way that is just impossible to get to look good unless you spend a lot of time ironing or seaming them. But even then, it just makes them sag and be sort of floppy and flimsy. I just find that those lightweight rayons don't age well. I will link my video about, I think it's about why your clothes look frumpy because I went into detail about this type of fabric in that video and I showed some examples. There were a lot of comments in that video from people being like, I love my rayon clothes, which is totally fine. If you take care of them well, they can look decent if you know what you're doing and if you choose them well. I just think the world is awash in flimsy viscose wovens and rayon wovens that look terrible essentially from the jump because they're not aging well because it's a weak fabric and it hasn't taken well to being sewn in the way that it's been sewn for the garment. Ah, another one that I talk about a lot. Almost anything if you put it in the dryer, my friends. Here is something that won't age well. Almost anything if you put it in the dryer. The dryer is like a time machine for clothing. You take a t-shirt, like a great sturdy cotton t-shirt, one of the good ones, and you put it in the dryer and dry it on high heat. You've essentially like fast forwarded its life, the timeline of its life, by like four years. You've just made it into something soft and sloppy and something that feels like it's at the end of its life or getting near the end of its life just with one trip through the time machine of the dryer. I do put some things in the dryer, but the vast majority of my clothes I hang them out to dry and that's because I want them to age well. Ah, sort of, well, I don't know if this is, I don't know that super thin, those super thin sweaters. This is another thing I talked about in the video about why your clothes look frumpy, but this is more specific. Those super thin, like, cashmere and merino sweaters that often get really popular around the holidays and a lot of times it's like, ah, you know, a $50 cashmere sweater. Like, you can go to J.Crew and get a cashmere sweater under $80 for each one because they're on special. But then the fabric, it's, it's a really lovely soft knit with bright colors, but it'll be so thin, like, almost like a tissue tee, but made out of merino wool or cashmere. And it's natural fiber, so usually you'd think I would be really into it, right? It's 100% merino wool. They just pill, they pill so fast and it's harder to depill them because they're so thin and fine. I think that those kinds of sweaters can add to some people's wardrobes and again, if you take care of them, if you're willing to do the labor of pilling them, that to me is just the classic example of something that won't age well. It looks great in the shop and it's like, yeah, but how's it going to look at the end of the season? If the answer is like garbage, then it's probably not a good choice. Okay, let's go add some shoes. Ballet flats, if you wear them too much, especially those thin ones, like if you wear them every day, if you wear them to walk through the city or to, you know, walk from the bus to work and then back every day in a very short time, those sort of single layer flat sole flimsy ballet flats will become garbage. Also, your feet, if you do that, your feet will also not age well. If you put them through wearing essentially what is not a shoe, but just like a flat piece of rubber held onto your foot with a thin layer of probably like peeling faux leather, you know what I mean? Those aren't actually shoes. And so, and usually they're doing nothing except for squeezing your foot, right? Like they're doing something bad to your feet by squeezing them this way. They're doing nothing for your feet structurally in the other direction. So I've said before that I think a really sweet, soft, flexible glove flat can function as kind of like an indoor shoe for work, like a work slipper. But if you wear it outside, if you do heavy walking in ballet flat like that, it won't age well and it will probably not end up having been worth what you paid for it. The hard-soled ones can be good. I know there are some flats on the market that are called ballet flats that have that shape, but they are actually real shoes. A sole with some integrity and a shape that maybe accommodates the natural shape of the foot a little bit better. I'm talking about those very, very flimsy ones. Generally not a good choice. Also, UGG boots. I've never had a pair, okay? So I know there must be some sort of appeal, like you put them on and you feel like you're walking on clouds or something like that. I admittedly, I don't know everything about UGG boots, but what I do know is that they age so badly from the outside. From an outsider's perspective, watching people walk around in them, they look so bad in such a short time. It's like they're not designed to withstand elements. It feels to me like disposable footwear. Like you buy a pair of UGG boots at the beginning of the winter and they are completely destroyed by December or January. You throw them out and then you like get another pair of the following year. That's an example of something not aging well. That's just what it looks like to me. Again, I have never worn UGG boots. I've never even discussed them with anyone who has worn them. I just see them and I see them aging so badly. Oh, this is sort of specific. As the list went on, I started digging into the vault and coming up with these like really specific things. You know that stretch cotton poplin that has a ton of lycra in it? This is actually really just a shoot, an offshoot of the discussion of plastic, acrylic, nylon, lycra, polyamide, depending on the garment. Because sometimes those things can be pretty well made, especially if it's active wear and made to withstand a lot of washing and wearing without too much pilling. Sometimes the balance is just right. A lot of times if there's a lot of lycra in something, even in a cotton poplin piece, it'll just get smelly and weird over time. It just soaks up smells and gets kind of crunchy and hangs funny and pulls weirdly around the buttonholes if it's like a button-down shirt. I came across a really lovely looking at first glance button-down shirt in a thrift shop the other day and it was like a white button-down. I was like, that's beautiful. And then I put it on and I was like, oh, there's something just weird about this. And I looked at the tag and it was cotton poplin, but it was like 15% lycra or something. And it just made it hang so strangely. It made it so that it had aged sadly. Whereas if that same exact shirt had been made out of 100% cotton, it would have been in beautiful condition after whatever life it had lived before it arrived at the thrift shop. Okay, that's all I've got today. You might have your own though. As you can tell, I brainstormed kind of like a loose cannon here all over the place. And you know, some of them might be at cross purposes to mine. So for example, some people feel like white clothes don't age well ever because they get stains on them. I tend to just immediately treat the stains, wash them. And I find that they actually, my white clothes are some of the clothes that look the freshest and loveliest over time, even as they kind of go through the ringer. You might feel differently or you might have a different personal experience with white clothes. But let us know in the comments, in your experience, what are the like really specific red flags, things that don't age well, things that you avoid like the plague, things where you learn from experience. You got something and you're incredibly disappointed by how it aged. Let us know. I feel like it's important to make a point here at the end that signs of age on a garment don't necessarily mean that it aged badly. Like something doesn't have to stay looking brand new or looking pristine in order for it to be aging. Well, I talked about this recently. It was in that video about tricks to make your outfits look polished. I think tricks to make your outfits really sing. And it included a discussion of kind of changing the sense of what makes them look high quality to include beautiful signs of aging and like an accessory or a garment. It kind of goes hand in hand with that. It's like things to avoid buying. If you want your garments and your accessories to age beautifully, to gather those signs of age that show that the thing is well made over time because the things on this list, they'll go the other way. They'll age badly instead of aging beautifully. For other ideas of what will age well, I'll link all the videos I've ever done about investment pieces because that's something that I love to talk about, like how to spot something that will age well. So check the cards or the description box for links to those videos. Thank you for spending this time with me. I kind of went on at length. I hope that it wasn't too much. I hope you enjoyed it. And I really hope you're taking extra good care of yourself so that you can be the most effective version of yourself.