Was this thread started by some one from howies? As yesterday I wore a howies shirt and today I am wearing a howies T and Jumper…. mmmmm and I even found myself surfing their www earlier.

The plot thickens!

Bought a coat in their sale maybe a year or less ago. Its a nice coat, no way its worth the full price though. Not worn it all that much over the summer and washed it once on a gentle wash. It has almost no resemblance to its original colour though which was a lovely bluish (it faded before washing, I was trying to brighten it up). Its just a dull flat grey as its dye is such poor quality that all the colour tone has gone from it, so it looks dirty all the time now even after I washed it. I have never had any other coat fade in such a way. Wondering if I should try re-dying it, but really, a product should be better than this.

What bollocks. We just expect everything to be cheap since manaacturing got shipped to Asia where the lack of environmental and social regulation means people are paid pennies to do what a UK workforce legally requires a minimum wage for. Sure its expensive, but as Tim's post says it is also justified. Make your choice, but there's no need to keep harping on about it.

sums it up quite well for me. Thanks.
It's not overpriced. It is our perception of cost and value that is skewed.

Just buy less of it – we don't really need so many clothes in the shops. Most of it is crap anyway, at least Howies 'try' to make smaller ranges of clothes that last longer. (IME). My Levi's – same price as my Howies jeans are rubbish, falling apart in less than 10 months so actually A LOT more expensive than my Howies ones long term.

A well, it's a circular argument again, everyone feels differently.

3 times in the last month I've called howies about a business matter and no one has answered the phone

They're reading your posts on here and deliberately avoiding you, what with your ethics and all.

I've contributed enough times on Howies threads, so I'll shorten my general response:

1. Howies carved out a niche, selling a certain style of casual clothes using lifestyle as branding

2. Outdoors sports types (including mountain bikers) take their fashion cues from others around them and the magazines they read

3. Howies features in the magazines they read. Howies seems cool, beacuse it "makes clothes for people like us"

4. Howies founders eventually exit their business – everyone shocked that people in business want to make some money out of it

5. Howies gets a kicking from the nichemonger MTBers who've moved ontt he latest brands-so-cool-they-don't-even-exist-yet

Some of Howies quality is good, other stuff is less so. Caveat Emptor. You don't *have* to buy the stuff. Mountain biking is only a lifestyle "sport" anyway.

I've got quite a lot of howies stuff, it's kind of accumulated over the years. Lots I bought in sales, some I didn't. I quite like what they do in terms of the wider philsophy etc, as it's my field of work. But it's just clothing, if you don't like it/ think it's too expensive, whatever, then don't buy it.

What bollocks. We just expect everything to be cheap since manaacturing got shipped to Asia where the lack of environmental and social regulation means people are paid pennies to do what a UK workforce legally requires a minimum wage for. Sure its expensive, but as Tim's post says it is also justified. Make your choice, but there's no need to keep harping on about it.

Bollocks back, I can go out and order a custom made ventile jacket, cut straight from a roll of ventile (which all comes from one or two small factories anyway) and sewn in a mill in Lancashire for half the price of a jacket from Howies – the 'howies premium' is all about a fashion label, nothing else

Z11 – surely they are only doing what businesses do… supplying a good or service at a profit. Fashion labels such as Prada etc do this a lot 'better' than Howies who actually take the time to make sure what they are making fits in with the principles of the business.

If those principles are important to you then thats what you buy. If not then you have options, thats the joy of a free market economy.

I bet they work on harder margins than just about any other fashion label. Plus, the jeans make your arse look well hot so they are well worth buying! 😀

imo their stuff is good. expensive but good. if you are concerned about the ethics of your clothing, and you earn enough to choose to pay more, then Howies is good stuff.

personaly I want my clothes to last, and to have been made by people who care about sustainability.

I don't buy fashion, since the fashion goes out of fashion. well designed and well made stuff is always stlishly functional.
I try to buy localy designed and localy poduced stuff.
why buy 3 pairs of cheap jeans that wear out and cost the planet, when a single pair of well made jeans does the job with less impact to the plant?

Was this thread started by some one from howies?

No, but it had been dead 2 months before someone from Howies revived it and bumped it up the page.

today I am wearing a howies T and Jumper…. mmmmm and I even found myself surfing their www earlier.

The plot thickens!

And only 2 weeks until Christmas too…

I've got two of their merino tops, it does wash better than the other merino I have. (doesn't shrink and keeps it's shape)

Tim march – perhaps you could get someone to reply to my email regarding the Alder short – thanks.