IS CLOTHING GETTING worse? As I sifted through the racks at Myer recently, I was disappointed to find static, lifeless fabrics. A few days prior, a friend told me her year-old jeans had split at the thigh. I’d heard murmurings of the quality crisis, noticed things here and there in my own purchases. But it wasn’t until I consulted shopping subreddits, TikToks and Instagram comments that the scale of the issue became apparent. Brands of all sorts were implicated. Items were stretching out, losing their shape or fading after a few washes; jumpers were rapidly pilling; dresses turned out to be sheer in daylight; shirts would refuse to relinquish oil stains. Everyone seemed to agree: clothes were better a decade ago. 

In one discussion, shoppers traded names of brands that have succumbed to enshittification, the creeping force blamed for the current proliferation of subpar fashion. The Macquarie Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year, ‘enshittification’ was coined by British-Canadian journalist Cory Doctorow to describe the declining quality of online platforms (think Elon Musk’s takeover of X/ Twitter), but its use now seems to extend to any service or product deteriorating ‘as a consequence of profit-seeking’ – mass-produced fashion included.