> My naive theory is that clothes are designed to break faster and faster and some older clothes have a quality you can’t find anymore, hence vintage has an aura of good quality old stuff.
Two things going on here. First just the general race to lower prices means you have less material used in most brand's items and it's designed to be manufactured cheaply not to last. Which is different than designing it to break fast. Breaking faster is a side effect of saving money during manufacturing, not the goal.
Second is survivorship bias. There were plenty of junk products in the past but those are already at dumps. The vintage items you see in stores were either high quality in their day or were not used before sitting on a shelf for a very long time.
Two things going on here. First just the general race to lower prices means you have less material used in most brand's items and it's designed to be manufactured cheaply not to last. Which is different than designing it to break fast. Breaking faster is a side effect of saving money during manufacturing, not the goal.
Second is survivorship bias. There were plenty of junk products in the past but those are already at dumps. The vintage items you see in stores were either high quality in their day or were not used before sitting on a shelf for a very long time.