I don’t know much about him I’m afraid. Certainly no personal experience

Thanks Ramon, and yes very good point.
I still have one of those Arnys knives – you can get them elsewhere of course, but it felt symbolic that that was what they carried, and nothing else similar

Thank you!

I think it’s more complicated. Educating is one step, but it’s not the first step.

The first step is making people want to wear a certain type of clothes (or perhaps, clothes made a certain way). How do you do that? You make those clothes cool. I’m sure some people will object to my choice of words here, but if you want a larger market do adopt a style, you got to give it some cachet. I think the “Mad Men” effect illustrates it quite well: young men didn’t start wearing tailoring because they wanted to be “dapper” or “respectable”, or because they wanted to look like their grandfathers. They started wearing it cause Don and Roger were cool.

Once people WANT to wear well-made clothes, educating the consumers makes more sense.

Sadly, there are both financial and market challenges to make this work:

It might be financially viable to make things in the west, if you’re making the highest level of quality. There is a small market that’s willing to pay $600 for a sweater. And selling enough $600 sweaters lets you pay for the higher costs of doing things high-cost countries. But at lower (but still high) price levels, you need volumes to make up the costs. And high volume manufacturing requires more people, which is where the high labor costs in the west becomes a real problem. Making and selling 1 000 $600 sweaters can be profitable, making and selling 2 000 $300 sweaters is harder.

But if you can’t manufacture medium level (good but not great) things in the west, it’s hard to maintain the skilled workforce in the long run. Those knitters, cobblers and tailors who can’t make things to Savile Row standards won’t find much work, which again makes it risky for people to invest in mastering the craft.

The government might help out with this, but they probably won’t. It will annoy too many voters to hear that the government is bailing out companies that make $300 sweaters!

If you go the luxury route and inflate prices enough you can eventually afford to train the next generation yourself (watchmakers seem to be doing this, to some extent). Or you can go the high fashion route and limit the most desirable goods, and make your money on simpler goods: I don’t know how much Hermès makes on every Birkin bag, but I’m guessing most of their revenue is from selling scarves and small leather goods to the people who couldn’t afford a Birkin even if they were offered to buy one.

RL might be the only #menswear guy who has cracked it, having one (or two with RRL) line for cachet and then several more accessible ones. But of course, RL is a brand, they don’t do their own manufacturing, so I don’t know how applicable this is.

Exactly.

I guess that’s the best way, continue to support businesses such as those featured on PS, keep speaking to people and spreading passion and knowledge. Thinking about it that’s how I developed a love for clothes very early on with my Aunt taking me to tailors in India and showing me a world of linens and cords etc etc that I had no idea existed.

And I too have managed to influence people I know to dress with more thought and interest just by speaking about what I am wearing etc etc.

Re your last sentence above – it’s the flywheel effect over time.

Thanks Simon.

Many thanks Simon.

I think certainly one can dress inappropriately for a place, but I think that’s something different to what you’re asking.

I think you can care too much, which is probably closer. That’s something we all battle with, because we care, but also don’t want to be fussy about things, or judgmental of others.

I don’t think I know enough to answer that in detail, Yash, but I do still think that buying well and educating others about doing so will still help. For example, even if somewhere like Jamieson’s struggles with capacity, there are other Scottish mills that are good and have gone out of business with lack of demand. And the more factories there are, the more they create training etc and there is more longevity