Primark quality tests find £15 jeans as ‘durable’ as £150 pair

Cheap clothes have outperformed more expensive garments in durability testing conducted for the discount fashion industry.

The University of Leeds has worked with retailer Primark to test items such as jeans and T-shirts to set “standards” on how long clothing should last.

The university’s school of design assessed 65 products, and found a £15 pair of women’s jeans to be more durable than their £150 equivalent.

Primark will incorporate the findings of the study into its guidelines and the chain said it hoped the results would help give customers better value for their money.

Kate Morris, who led the research team at the university, said: “We have equipment that can mimic years and years of wear and tear of garments in a matter of hours.

“We had to consider how the garments are actually used. So, with jeans we focussed on things such as the fabric rubbing together and seam strength.

“For hoodies we look at pilling, which are the small bobbles that form on fabric.”

And the team were “surprised” by the results, which showed that price was not necessarily an indicator of long-term quality.

The second-best performer in the men’s T-shirt category cost only £5. Seventeen styles were tested.

Ms Morris added: “Historically people think that if you pay more, you’ll get a longer life out of the garment.

“We found no correlation between price and durability. It doesn’t mean that if you go out and buy something really cheap it will last forever, and vice versa. We are simply saying that there is no correlation between the two”.

Primark, which has faced repeated criticism for its “fast fashion” approach, said it hoped its new Durability Framework would help people get more wear from their purchases.

Speaking exclusively to BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme, Vicki Swain, Primark’s product longevity lead, said: “We developed the framework to ensure that customers know items are going to last, no matter how much they can afford to spend.

“We’ve been investing in making our clothes more durable and also making them with more sustainable materials.”

Primark supplied the garments for the study but had no further input in the independent research.

Ms Morris said: “We did all of the testing, analysed all of the data, created a testing framework and fed that data back to Primark.

“They were not involved in any of the testing work.”

She added that the University of Leeds planned to conduct more of its own studies to determine what factors cause clothes to last.

“We’re doing a lot more research to find out what dictates durability within a garment, but that’s not something we’ve found out yet.”

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