People often talk about millennials not repairing anything, but where could we go to do it? There is nowhere you can go to get shoes repaired in a way that doesn't look terrible--and even if you could, shoes aren't built to be repaired. No extra material to sew anything back up after a tear, hollow soles that are glued on with the cheapest possible glue, fake leather, synthetic fibers that tear easily... What are we to do?
You can still buy quality footwear made of quality materials, it just costs more. And I’m not sure athletic footwear has ever been easily repairable, for one thing. Optimizing for weight cancels out many of the affordances you mention.
It's hard to even find well-made stuff. There are tons of things I'd gladly pay a 2x markup for if it were built to last, but in the vast majority of cases it's buried under a mountain of cheap garbage and nearly impossible to discover.
Most old reliable brands are now churning out the same type of garbage. Doc Martens is a notable exception in that they do still make and prominently offer Made in England boots.
There are plenty of quality shoe makers, they just cost more. Red Wing, Allen Edmonds, Rancourt, White’s Boots, Quoddy, Alden, Viberg are made in the US/Canada. Loake, Church’s, Trickers, Cheaney, Edward Green, John Lobb are made in the UK. Meermin and Carmina are made in Spain.
If you're not going to do that, then realize that buying a $100 pair of Florsheims every two years is actually a pretty good deal compared to what we used to do back in "the good 'ol days".
You're not wrong. The cost of cheap mass-produced clothing, relative to consumer income in most industrialized countries, puts such clothes in the range of being effectively disposable to the middle class. A t-shirt can be had for under $10, less than the cost of a decent meal in a restaurant. A cheap pair of shoes for $30. Such abundance would have been unthinkable even a century ago. Of course there are ecological implications to our disposable attitude to clothing.
I'm in New Zealand, and I had some boots re-soled a few months ago. Probably a lot easier with the boots (Timberlands) than the shoes I had done a few years ago.
For the shoes they sliced the bottom off the foam-rubber soles, then glued solid rubber sheets back on.
There are still shoe repair shops, you know. Like just bring the stuff in and you can actually get a lot of stuff fixed (just like it's possible to patch a shirt, even a badly made one).
One can whine about the costs relative to buying a new pair, but that's your decision.
