Originally Posted by GGJudy
I do believe our fabrics are over priced. I took sewing in school for six years (7-12 grade). I am 73 years old. It use to be profitable to make your own clothes. You could make a classy dress or suit at far less than you could purchase one of the same quality. Not many people make clothes any more because it's simply not worth the cost and effort unless you are going for some special look. I'd like to know what fabric prices look like if you are buying wholesale. Most of our quilting fabrics are NOT made in America.
A bespoke shirt from Turnbull & Asser starts at $1200 (last time I checked; the minimum order is 10 shirts). I can buy the same fabric for $150/yard, draft a custom pattern and make a close facsimile, for a total investment of around $400 (excluding my time).
I can't make a good shirt for the same price I could get the best shirt available at Wal-Mart. Those shirts are made to standard patterns, with messy seams, poor sewing, plastic buttons and poorly designed collars. The shirts I make are much closer to Turnbull & Asser.
Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. At a level attainable by a home sewer, the true manufacturing competition is bespoke tailors, not Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart will probably never go out of business catering to the lowest minimum standard. Turnbull & Asser will never go out of business catering to the top standards.
And just a note: the US has never made top quality cotton fabrics. We've always had more success exporting raw cotton to other countries. So we're not really losing anything by importing cotton fabrics.