I believe clothes are much cheaper now than they have ever been. I can remember as a teenager in the 1980s I would generally pay about £10 for a skirt (which was all my Saturday job money), and today although you can obviously pay much more, you can still get a skirt for £10 in a lot of places. Underwear is cheap enough to be effectively disposable, and you can get a whole school uniform for £10, both of which would have been amazing in my youth. The cost of school uniform was a huge burden to many families. We have amazing performance fabrics now, completely waterproof and warm without weight. I grew up without lycra, fleece or breathable waterproofs. Lycra makes a huge difference, the crotch of our tights used to drop down to our knees ...