An Aritzia customer expressed her disbelief at the wear and tear of a $200 jacket she purchased from the clothing brand after just 18 months of ownership.
In a viral TikTok that’s garnered over 38,000 views as of Sunday, Lauren (@laurr_renn) showed off the damage her Ganna jacket sustained in the clip, which led several users to question how something like that would even happen.
“Do you want to know what my last straw with Aritzia is?” Lauren begins. “It’s this jacket, the Ganna jacket around $200 I got it a year and a half ago.” Lauren smiles into the camera with a “hmph,” and then lifts her elbows to reveal that the jacket has been worn entirely through, revealing two holes in its sleeves.
“What the f*ck is that?” she asks as the video ends.
One commenter suggested that Lauren hit up the clothing company to mend the product, stating that they’ve contacted Aritzia in the past for repairs on worn-down items.
“Aritzia has repaired stuff for me before! Def worth trying to contact them,” they advised.
Another person recommended that the TikToker take matters into her own hands by fixing the jacket herself with a customized little touch. “THE WORST! But you could add some real cute iron on elbow patches,” they said.
@laurr_renn $200 for 1ply toilet paper #aritzia #aritziahaul #aritziaoutfits #aritziadupe ♬ original sound – Lauren
Someone else highlighted how steeply discounted “out of season” clothing items are, expressing that it’s a gut punch whenever they see the revised pricing. “And then they put this 29.90 at warehouse sale nah that would be my 13th reason,” a user shared.
Others were just astounded by the perceived poor quality of the item, wondering how two holes in the elbows even formed after just 18 months of wear.
One TikToker who said that they owned several Ganna jackets claimed they had never seen that type of damage on their items. “Wait I have 4 of these and they never look like this,” they wrote.
But another said they also experienced the same damage Lauren did, writing, “That happened to mine too!!”
Aritzia isn’t the only clothing manufacturer/retailer that’s being accused of selling clothes of a diminished quality. Another TikToker slammed Old Navy for shilling what they deem to be poorly made items in its stores with its latest offerings.
A Vox article simply titled “Your stuff is actually worse now,” delved into a phenomenon that a lot of American consumers have complained about: a marked dip in craftsmanship of items that were made with higher standards. The piece explains that the Industrial Designers Society of America routinely focuses on three qualities when crafting designs: “appearance, functionality, and manufacturability.”
Matthew Bird, who is a professor of industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design, told the outlet that it’s this third trait of design that has changed significantly over the years, and it has to do with the massive scale of manufacturing products all at once.
Bird states that when designing and manufacturing products decades ago, the manufacturing batches of each iteration of the product were much smaller. This gave companies opportunities to adjust the designs that are more functional and attuned to consumer needs, ultimately improving their quality with each “round” of manufacturing.
However, nowadays, bad designs are often produced en masse from the get-go, leaving businesses and consumers with a surplus of these items chilling on store shelves.
The piece states that price points and the cost of materials and labor have significantly increased over the years, and consumers need to understand that if they want higher-quality items.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with Lauren’s $200 Aritzia jacket, however, which became significantly damaged after just 18 months of use. There have been reports from users online who have complained about a dip in the quality of the fashion brand, like this one Reddit user who penned, “Aritzia’s quality and service is on the strongest decline.” The upload also called out the company’s Sculpt Knit tanks as once being a “must have” item that is now, they claim, suffering from quality issues.
Another TikToker named Mel cautioned shoppers against purchasing specific Aritzia items, stating that while the retailer used to be her “go to store for the last 20 years,” something changed in the manufacturing process that altered her opinion on the brand entirely.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Aritzia via email and Lauren via TikTok comment for further information.