On talking about old clothing being less durable – that was the significance of the “dirty hippies” adopting bluejeans as a signifier - denim, which was originally used like canvas for tarps and tents, made for durable clothing that could go relatively long without mending or cleaning, which meant that traditionally it was for low-class hayseeds and manual laborers (consider the archetypal farmer’s denim overalls)

Of course at the time you bought them stiff as a board and had to wash them a few times to even fit into them, then your body heat and moisture would sort of adapt them to you as you wore them

Which, as jeans became popular, became the basis for style - ‘70s girls putting them on in the bath so they’d dry skintight to their ass. And then the “designer jeans” boom of the ‘80s, a lot of which was about pretreatments – stonewashing, acid washing – that softened the denim enough to allow for particular style.

Which weakened the denim, leading into to the ‘80s-‘90s style of jeans ripped at the knee like slashed doublets