Now that these clothing brands have become large companies, some publicly traded, the focus shifts. Mass manufacture leads to much quicker manufacture, if a given line assembles a given piece, such as a pocket or buttons, therefore less money can be paid in labour per item. Rephrased; more items can be made in a set time period.

Two other caveats happen to jeopardise what was supposed to be a way to know the good from the bad: the corporate groups that own the brands also learned that some materials, cheaper to source either by being easier, or by hiring in locations with the lowest available legally mandated wages, also provide a kind-of suitable similar form and function to the expensive, original materials. This is because the capitalist economy drives people insane and everyone in business management positions are groomed to consistently minmaxx their I/O. MORE money gained; LESS spent.

The second downside to this trend is that, undeniably, the overwhelming majority of consumers are more than content to continue spending their dwindling expendable money on recognisable brands regardless of quality. This behaviour -- preferring the short-life, 75% viscose, plastic and synthetic clothing at £10 a shirt over organic materials at £30+ a shirt (depending on your regional economy, prices differ) -- enables these megaconglomerates that control the corporations to exploit the workers through labour conditions while exploiting the end users through paying for the brand whose quality no longer exists.

Doc Marten, a few years back, ended their 'lifetime guarantee' range of boots. Around the same time they weakened the manufacture process, resulting in rapidly deteriorating (sometimes one month to one week) products, including the glue on the soles, the seamlines, the finish on the boots being made of a thin material that gets damaged by heat from the sun and humidity in a 60%RH climate. But at least they don't charge more money for these, what I would call experimental failures or bootlegs, except they passed QC, are original, and are mass-marketed now.

Advice: When shopping for products new or uncommon to me, I always spend at least a couple hours on the internet looking for local and national sources, researching average prices; popularity markers like reviews and ratings (though it can be skewed/falsified); and evaluating price differences in materials and feature inclusion; which companies damage or take advantage of the least lives (ethics); and finally which offers the best for the least, because while I also have to minmaxx the money my life is forced to revolve around, I refuse to sacrifice product quality, nor sacrifice the people involved in its production, and the former usually indicates the latter.

(Well, this is going in my 'Monologues' notebook.)

To conclude, I do not implicitly trust well-known brands, or the generally most popular brands, because they charge for the brand itself, but often provide lower quality. Nor do I trust the no-brands, or the Chinese clone companies on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Alibaba/AliExpress, and definitely not Temu, Shein and TikTok, because they almost certainly do always exploit labour and use the absolute worst materials that can be used for the product - the differences being they only look for a much lower profit margin than the conglomerate brands; and instead of avoiding state taxes by donating comparatively less to charities (that they sometimes own), the no-brands avoid state taxes by dodging below the usually recommended regulatory requirements. For example, on customs labels for imported tobacco, it can be listed as "assorted vegetables"; for electrical gadgets containing batteries, "cables/small toys". I avoid ≤£2 and ≥£200, I instead stay between £10 and £100 for clothing.