The Disappearing Middle in Fashion

Nothing sucks more for a fashion lover than finding a top, clicking the link, and discovering it’s $118. The top isn’t designer. It’s not hand-beaded from Italy. It’s just a top. My immediate reaction is almost always the same: For that?

And then, usually within the same second, I think about how I could find the same thing, or something really similar, on SHEIN for $7. Maybe $11 if we are really splurging.

Which raises a question I have realized I genuinely do not know the answer to:

What is a shirt supposed to cost? Seriously.

Somewhere between the $6 going-out top and the $600 designer version, fashion seems to have lost its middle ground.

There was a time when clothing prices existed on a spectrum that made at least some sense to me. There were cheap clothes, moderately priced clothes, expensive clothes, and then the things you admired from a safe distance because they cost about one month’s rent. You generally had some idea of what those prices meant. Now, I can open three tabs and find basically identical black mini dresses for $15, $150, and $1,500. There might be differences in fabric or construction, but from the photos alone, good luck figuring out what the extra money buys.

We talk constantly about how fast fashion has changed the way we shop, but I think it has also skewed our understanding of what clothing is actually worth. When you spend enough time seeing $8 tops and $15 dresses, those numbers stop looking unusually cheap. They just start to feel normal. Everything else starts looking expensive by comparison, even when the price might reflect better materials or the work involved in making it. It becomes harder to tell whether something is overpriced or whether we have gotten used to a price that barely seems real.

SHEIN did not invent cheap clothing, obviously. But platforms like it have pushed cheap to an entirely different extreme. Shopping on them can feel less like investing in clothes and more like playing a dopamine game with Monopoly money. Each addition costs so little that you barely have to consider whether you want it. By the time you check out, you have an entire order of things you might have thought twice about at full price.

For people who genuinely love fashion, there is always another piece we want to add or another version of our style we want to try. I know I’m someone people constantly come to for clothes and accessories. I love statement pieces. And, admittedly, I never really want to be seen wearing the same thing twice. The problem is, I’m also a college student. My love for clothes and my bank account are not exactly operating with the same ambitions.

So shopping on SHEIN starts to feel like being a kid in a candy store. If you can buy one candy bar or leave with an entire bag overflowing with candy, obviously you want the bag. More feels better. And when you love clothes, why buy one top for $70 when that same $70 can get you five tops, a skirt, earrings, and probably a completely unnecessary pair of sunglasses? Maybe you don’t even really love the skirt. But it’s nine dollars, so why not?

Somehow, that mentality has followed us all the way into the thrift store.

Thrifting used to feel like the loophole. It was where you went when you wanted something original without spending an absurd amount of money. You could dig through racks and find a vintage jacket, an old pair of Levi’s, or a nicer piece you never would have paid full price for. Half the fun was not knowing what you’d find. Now I go thrifting and find SHEIN…

Rack after rack seems to be filling up with the same fast fashion pieces we bought because they were so cheap in the first place. Except now I’m standing in a thrift store holding a used SHEIN top with a price tag somehow higher than what it probably cost new.

There is something almost comical about that. A shirt can sell online for $7, be bought because $7 feels disposable, worn a handful of times, donated, and then placed back on a rack for $10.99. At that point, what are we even pricing?

The secondhand market used to feel like one of the places where the middle still existed. It was a way to access clothes that might have otherwise been outside your budget without sacrificing quality or originality. You could find better materials, designer labels, or simply pieces that felt different from everything hanging in a mall. You were trading newness for something that actually felt worth the money.

Now you can trade newness for…used fast fashion.

And after enough exposure to those prices, $80 for a sweater begins to feel, well…criminal.

But then I started thinking about what actually has to happen for that sweater to exist. Someone designed it. Someone sourced the material. Someone made the fabric. Someone cut and sewed it. It was packaged, transported, photographed, marketed, and eventually shipped to whoever bought it. So maybe the strange price isn’t $80. Maybe it is $8.

Of course, this would all be much easier if expensive automatically meant good and cheap automatically meant bad. It doesn’t. A $200 shirt can still be poorly made. Luxury fashion sells exclusivity and status alongside craftsmanship. Paying more does not magically make something sustainable or worth the money.

And that is exactly why the middle has become so confusing.

On one side, fast fashion has pushed prices so low that anything above them can feel excessive. On the other, luxury prices can be so far outside my budget that I barely bother evaluating them. Somewhere in between are the brands asking $60 or $100, and somehow those are often the prices that make me hesitate the most.

Too expensive to be an impulse buy. Not expensive enough to be considered luxury.

Just…expensive.

There is also an uncomfortable privilege in telling people they should simply stop buying cheap clothes. Not everyone has $150 to spend every time they need a dress. Cheap fashion gives people room to experiment with trends they might otherwise be priced out of. As someone who loves clothes and has a limited budget, I understand the appeal.

The problem isn’t that everyone suddenly needs to start buying $200 pants. It is that I’m not sure I know what a reasonable price looks like anymore. I know what feels cheap. I definitely know what feels expensive. But deciding whether something is worth the money takes more than looking at the number, and shopping online doesn’t always give me much else to go on.

Maybe the disappearing middle is also about how we value clothes in the first place. When a dress costs $15, it's easy to treat it as something temporary. Wear it once. Take the picture. Post in it. Replace it with another $15 dress. Clothing starts to feel like content we cycle through, and I can hardly pretend I’m above that when I’ve already admitted I don’t like repeating outfits.

I still don’t know if I would spend $118 on that top. Honestly, probably not. I am still a college student, and unfortunately, writing an entire article about clothing price hasn’t added any money to my bank account.

But I think I will look at it differently now.

Maybe $118 only feels so outrageous because I have come to expect an alternative that costs $8. And maybe $8 only feels normal because I have seen it enough times to stop questioning how something can be designed, made, packaged, shipped across the world, and delivered to my door for less than my lunch.

I started this wondering what a shirt is supposed to cost, and I still don’t really have an answer. Maybe there isn't one number that makes sense for every shirt. But somewhere along the way, I think we've gotten so accustomed to the extremes that everything in between has started to feel like a bad deal.

And maybe that's the real problem with the disappearing middle of fashion. It isn't necessarily that moderately priced clothing has disappeared entirely. It's that we've lost our ability to recognize its value. Somehow, we've reached a point where $8 feels reasonable, $800 feels aspirational, and $80 feels like we're being ripped off.

Strike out,
Writer: Garrett Di Scala
Editor: Alexia Cretoiu
Graphic Designer: Isabella Mangano
Tallahassee

The Disappearing Middle in Fashion

How I practiced more yoga when I had less time