Don't you hate it when your favorite of whatever garment type is discontinued/a one-off?

[cimorene]

• My favorite underwear are some random Star Wars branded ones for apparently little boys, Wax swears, that she picked up from a clearance bin that I didn't see at Prisma, a hypermarket in the next town, a couple of years ago. Don't even know the manufacturer. Have made four attempts to find duplicates and none of them are quite the same shape.



• My favorite long-sleeved shirt was a "loungewear"/pyjama top bought on clearance from one of Sokos's house brands years ago (Actuelle, which is now a Prisma brand) that wasn't available in any other sizes and wasn't reissued by that brand at any point afterwards. This shirt has since had to be thrown out and I've never found one like it.



• My favorite tank top was bought on vacation in Alabama at Old Navy, but on clearance, like... 6? years ago. I have searched without ever finding a close approximation of the cut, although last summer I scored one that came sorta close.



• My most comfortable jeans (not my favorites because they have fake pockets though) are Esprit but bought at a thrift store and I've never found another pair with the same lightweight fabric with the same level of stretch.



• My favorite jeans are from JC Jeans Company, which went out of business in 2019. On the plus side, they were found by asking the salesperson if they had something as close as possible to the cut of vintage unisex Levi's 501s, and she sold me a pair of button-fly 100% cotton no-stretch jeans from the men's side... so assuming she was correct, there should be plenty of other imitators out there, if I only knew how to go about finding them. The fit is basically perfect, but the amount of times I really want to wear jeans without any stretch is very low.



• My favorite fitting tshirt is a random Guns & Roses tshirt (I'm not even a fan, although I don't hate them) that I bought for Wax, which is not my size (S, but I often buy Ms for looser fit): it's SUPPOSED to be hers (XL), but it's too small for her. It's made by Amplified, but that's just a music merch brand with a billion cuts/styles and I don't actually want a huge wardrobe of band tshirts anyway, so finding duplicates wouldn't be all that helpful by itself.

...But this series kinda has a happy ending, I guess?

• My favorite bra is a sport bralette with a 100% cotton body bought, you guessed it!, on clearance some years ago and made by a brand called A-Z by a European football star named Zlatan Ibrahimovic which went out of business in a storm of bankruptcy immediately after I bought it. (This bra is also a beautiful warm forest green and the bottom elastic is extra-wide and firm.) However, a couple of years later I got a very similar Puma sportsbra on clearance from Zalando, and although it's not as nice a color and cost more, it's functionally equivalent. Unfortunately, since then all the Puma sports bras I've been able to find have racerbacks, which I don't like. I finally caved and ordered a two-pack of CK ones because that was the only example of the style I've been able to find in the last couple of years. They are inferior to the A-Z and the Puma examples both because the bottom elastic is narrower and weaker, and because they had big itchy tags on the inside right in the seam. This is my biggest peeve with undergarments, since screenprinting on the tag info has been widely available even in cheap brands for years now, but some brands are still doing this. They print those little scissors on the tag as if you're meant to cut it off, but that just makes it itchier. I have to deal with these by unpicking the seam with the tag using an Xacto knife or seam ripper and then hand-stitching the hole, which is just stupid. But at least they're an acceptable substitute. Now they'd just better not discontinue the style.

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

That's the worst!

A particular style of button down dress shirts I really liked (they fit me well, had a nice fabric feel/quality, and came in a variety of interesting colors) were discontinued a while ago and I haven't found ones that are a good replacement yet.

I'm glad you found an acceptable substitute! (the tag stuff is so annoying)

[ironymaiden]

I don't know what kind of price premium it would be to get them in Europe, but my all-time favorite soft bras are tomboyx. no tags, fun prints, broad elastic that never cuts into me and provides enough support for my needs (I am a US D or DD cup). they also do briefs that are cut like boys underwear

[cimorene]

I'm jealous of all the cool smaller brands in NA, and I've definitely heard about them before! I'm not hard enough to fit to be worth ordering from outside the eu customs area though.

My favorite underwear are similar to their boyshorts style, but the key is they have just a slightly longer leg inseam than most of the brands that make that style while still being shorter than the 4,5" "trunks". There are a few brands that sell the latter style here, like Diesel and DKNY, and many more of the former, but tending to cut the leg a little too high. Sloggi basic shorts are probably the best, but their elastic is just a bit too narrow - it tends to flip or fold.

[krait]

I feel this post!

My favourite pyjama pants of all time are a pair of cheap men's pyjama pants that I bought maybe 10 years ago (maybe more). They're hideously gaudy - the pattern consists entirely of the Mountain Dew soft drink logo, repeated in all directions - but they are the world's most comfortable garment; roomy, all cotton, and the perfect weight for warmth without being stifling.

They perished last year, and when I went back to the store where I got them they had nothing remotely similar.

[cimorene]

Ohh, that is agony! I used to make my own pajama pants, because woven flannel by the yard is fairly cheap and the basic shape so simple, but I'm too lazy to want to sew deep hems and pockets and so on and now I'm extremely devoted to Lands' End's flannel ones. Of course, your description sounds like your weight requirement is more unusual than hefty cotton flannel.

[cimorene]

They always discontinue stuff somehow even if thwre doesn't seem to be any good reason to do so. Wax's favorite nightshirt went that way too, and the shop still makes nightshirts, just inferior ones.

[krait]

Ah, and I somehow forgot to mention that they had deep pockets, too! I miss them so much. :[

Yep, flannel is far too hot for the climates I'm in; I could wear it for maybe a month, at very best. Cotton all the way for me, I fear, or else I'd have to stop using blankets. :D (And cotton anything is getting rarer and rarer in the clothing industry; it's all a fair percentage synthetic, or if it's nearly all cotton then it's thin enough to see through.)

Sewing my own has definitely crossed my mind, but the limits of my sewing skill is pretty much "mending cat toys by hand," and the hems and pockets and drawstrings and so on that I admired so much in my old pyjama pants are beyond me, even if I could find the perfect fabric (which I probably could, by one means or another, so it's still in the back of my mind!) But "learn to sew and then buy a sewing machine" is a hard sell for pyjama pants problems... so we'll see.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that does seem like a bit much!

My summer pajamas are all woven (pure) cotton poplin, but that exists in different weights. I have two pairs. You may have more luck with a specialized shop that sells lingerie and nightwear, maybe, since pajamas are a traditional garment. Or maybe you could find some crunchy/hippie sources for imported Asian trousers - Indian and Thai ones come to mind and are sold from yoga and incense type stores sometimes.