What people nowadays tend to forget is that until recently any sort of clothing was not cheap. You didn't stroll into a mall and pick a cheap suit off a rail. Instead you visited a tailor, maybe even took your own cloth along, and he made you up a suit. Many farmers kept a black sheep in their fields precisely to make up a dark cloth for their suit. And because this tailor didn't employ child labour in some low-wage sweatshop in some third world country his suit didn't come cheap. It did last a lifetime, however, so you didn't have to spend that kind of money often. The only people in those days, and I am only going back to the 1950's, who had many suits were the seriously rich ones and they would have had a wardrobe full to reflect their status in society. Just think how fortunate then we are nowadays when we can clothe ourselves for such little cost. But to whom?