My tiny contribution here is to look things aimed at commercial use, not consumer grade. For example, next time you need to buy a can opener, buy it from a restaurant supply shop instead of Amazon or Walmart.

I am suspicious that a lot of what is claimed as ‘BIFL’ has been enshittified

Sadly, I’m sure this happens a lot in the name of “marketing”.

There are a few things that I look at to help ensure the best chance of getting something that’s BIFL:

• Does the company or product have a good track record? I’d trust my Leatherman to be BIFL over whatever no-name clone you see on Aliexpress.

• Does the company offer a lifetime warranty (or one that’s 20+ years)? If so, has the company been around for decades?

• Is the item repairable and easy to maintain? Even if something isn’t marketed as BIFL, you can likely extend the product’s life by decades through simple maintenance and care.

• Does the item have any built-in planned obsolescence features? Proprietary built-in battery? Components that are glued in place? Sealed shut so you can’t open it without destroying the item? etc…

• Is the product simple or complex? The more complex, the more likely it will fail, but this isn’t always the case if you are able to maintain/repair components.

• Textiles can be tricky, but not impossible to keep going for decades if the quality is good enough.

Sadly, I do think that many companies aren’t interested in making BIFL products because PROFITS!!! I think the market for BIFL will be more with custom fabricators and small businesses.

i think one thing to keep in mind with BIFL is that it’s gonna be painfully expensive, and we tend to have a skewed perspective since a lot of what people buy these days is second hand and thus nowhere near the original sale value.

Like has been said for new BIFL stuff you want to look for business/industrial stuff, or handmade things from passionate people, which is not cheap.

I think it’s pretty unrealistic to expect most of your things to be BIFL unless you can get second hand/inherited things, i’d say think about what things are most important to you and try to invest your money into those few things and find ways to make everything else as minimal and sustainable (and cheap) as possible.
For example people in the medieval era and before generally just wore simple leather turnshoes in the warm seasons, which were fully expected to wear out and they’d need to slap together a new pair every now and then. But that’s fine because literally all you need to make them is some crummy leather scraps!

I was told the rotring 600 was bifl. Nah I put it through the ringer and it didn’t last a year. The metal pusher thing just flew off because it’s poorly designed.

American Giant (i think) grows and mills their cotton in America and the garments are made in the US as well. Last I checked. I don’t wanna say it’s BIFL, but I have an American giant hoodie I bought probably 9 years ago that I still pull out every fall and wear until spring. It’s got holes in the elbow patches, but the elbows are double or triple layered, so it’s still warm.

I use Goodonyou.eco to check out fashion and beauty brand’s ethical standards. It’s not perfect but it gives a pretty good ‘quick view’ of whether they’re dog shit or not.

In terms of BIFL, other than my Sunbeam Coffee filter machine, we’ve taken to buying second hand or locally made furniture.

I am coming down from a migraine, so please forgive me being jumbly, but I have a few points:

You say that many BIFL posts feel like marketing, and I agree, but I also think there’s also an additional, more pernicious aspect to it all. By that, I mean that many of the “genuine” posts felt like they were inducing in me the headspace of having been marketed to. This is largely a me thing, in that when I went searching for recommendations, I was aiming to buy something. Idk, something something commodity fetishism. But in the end, I found that I was questing for some perfect product that would be reliable, but I needed to stop thinking so much in terms of products.

In practice, this meant that my quest towards BIFL would have been better served by not buying stuff at all. Don’t feel obligated to watch if you’re not someone who enjoys 40 minute YouTube videos, but this guy considers “what the hell is ‘high quality’ in fashion?” and many of his points apply more generally than fashion, imo. One of the big points in that video is how the language we use to try to describe high quality will inevitably be appropriated; for example, I bet you would be dubious of any jeans that describe themselves as being “high quality”. So one phrase that became popular a while back was jeans made of “selvedge denim”. However, because people treated “selvedge denim” as being equal to quality, there were a lot of shitty quality jeans made with selvedge denim that I don’t trust that phrase anymore. Maybe once upon a time, selvedge denim jeans were, on average, higher quality, but that’s not true anymore.

I think BIFL was about this quest for quality is doomed to failure. Product quality is generally worse nowadays, but also the language we use is a bit rubbish. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any shortcuts.

Regarding tailoring, unless you’re already proficient at sewing, you should consider finding a local tailor who can do minor alterations. Even this is difficult though, because finding a good tailor can take multiple attempts. People I know who have a good tailor are almost fanatical in their loyalty, likely because of how useful it is to have one. This is why learning to tailor one’s own clothes can be smart, but good quality fabric is super expensive and it may be best to practice on clothes you already own. (N.b. I am using tailoring to mean something different than making clothes from scratch. I can semi do both, so I don’t know how hard it is to learn one skill but not the other)

For finding good fabric though, word of mouth is a big thing. I went to a craft fair a while back and I asked a knitter where she gets her yarn from. She advised a big site that I was already aware of, but also spoke of a place that she buys from when she’s being self indulgent. A friend spent a while trying to find authentic fabric for historical re-enactment, so I asked her where she got stuff like that, and got a few more recommendations. I go for crumbs of recommendations wherever possible, and I really enjoy asking people for advice, even for things I don’t necessarily, because it makes me feel more rooted into a community; when I started crochet recently, I already had a bunch of yarn intel. Also, before then, I really relished having advice if anyone asked me about yarn advice. I kept notes on what people said was good.

But also, if you do get into making and tailoring clothes, a lot of this is knowledge that you’ll gain gradually. I think there is some notion of what “objectively good quality” means, when it comes to textiles and the like, but it’s also fairly loose and subjective. I found this tricky because I too, have nothing to inherit (besides a sturdy ice cream scoop that my mum stole from the military), so I am very familiar with shitty quality stuff. When I first started indulging in higher quality materials and products, it was splendiferous, but it took me a while to learn that I could go too far with chasing value; after a certain point, cost comes down to exclusivity and rarity.

Once I’ve woken up more, I’ll share with you some examples of what looks good quality textile stuff near me, in case you find the perspective useful. I understand why you didn’t want to say roughly where you are, but perhaps if you said your country/state, I could point you towards community resource type things, because there truly is no replacement for getting intel from people local to you, if you value local production. But also, a big strategy for finding local stuff is to consider the concrete material conditions of how things are made: I went to a local fabric shop, and made notes whenever I found things that looked nice. Local shops are also nice, because whilst they are obviously there to sell stuff to you, I feel far more free to ask “I’m looking for some high quality wool to make a coat with, what would you recommend?”. It’s okay to make notes and go away and research (it’s even okay to purchase the wool elsewhere if necessary, though good to support local businesses if you benefit from their knowledge). Some of the fancier bolts of cloth will have a brand on them. This is how I found out about Linton Tweeds, a fabric mill in the North of England that has a lot of history. Another time, I saw a large mill on my way up to Scotland, and I later googled that mill. This is a clunky way of saying that although a heckton of stuff is imported and the products are separated from their context of being made, that there are still crafts people making high quality stuff. It’s often a heckton more expensive (and the more expensive, hand made stuff isn’t necessarily better quality than stuff made with more industrial methods), but it’s nice nonetheless to feel more connected to things. Building up things is gradual, especially if you don’t have much high quality stuff to start with, but don’t be overly precious about things. Ultimately, you don’t need high quality stuff to be able to care about things enough to repair or modify them. Part of how you can undermine fast fashion is by making the most of the lower quality products you currently have now.

To a large extent I tend to think the same way I was taught with cars, simple is sturdy. Skip the fancy features and WiFi widgets and you’ll replace things a lot less often. It’s not always practical, but I’m willing to bet my cast iron cookware is going to be in roughly the same shape far longer than some stamped sheet metal with anti stick coating and a glass lid.

good advice for finding sustainable, local textile production

There largely isn’t any of this. There’s really very, very little in the way of locally-sourced textiles, and what there is is going to be art rather than functional. I don’t know where you live, but in the US, there are only a handful of mills that remain, and you’d need to be placing a mill order (e.g., hundreds or thousands of yards of fabric) in order to do business with them. OTOH, there are often local tailors that will be able to order high-quality textiles to make bespoke garments for you. The downside is that this is REALLY expensive. For instance, I’m a bit slow at patternmaking, and not the best at fitting, and if I charged only $25/hr, you’d be looking at around $100 for the initial sloper, and probably another $150 to tune the fit. From there, patterning for a specific garment can take a day or more, depending on what you want, and that’s not including cost of materials and sewing time. For a bespoke suit, you’re starting at about $5000 from an experienced tailor.

That aside, there are certainly a large number of things that are buy once, cry once. Take kitchen knives; if you buy a Yoshimi Kato nakiri, a good set of Shapton glass stones (…which, TBF, will probably cost well over $1000), and take care of it, it will easily last your entire life. If you buy furniture from highly skilled carpenters, you’ll likely be buying something that will last over a century as long as it’s not abused; my grandfather made Craftsman-style furniture and cabinetry in the 20s-30s, and I know for certain that a number of his pieces are still around and in use. But buying the kind of quality and craftsmanship that will allow certain products to last for a lifetime is NOT cheap. While expensive doesn’t always mean quality, high-quality is almost never inexpensive.