The bespoke stuff is expensive, since there's literally only 1 customer. Think mega yachts.
The 'almost everybody can afford this' is because it's sold to everybody, and thus economies of scale _allows_ it to be affordable.
The old 'middle ground', to me, is a pre-industrial idea that locally sourced craftsman and materials can be used to serve just the local region. It no longer exists because it _can_ no longer exist (except as a sort of cottage industry, or artisanal industry which is hugely inefficient and thus barely anyone buys such things).
In furniture, for example, the old middle ground (20th century) was hundreds of factories, churning out regional furniture that was shipped to cities that had multiple showrooms with reputations based on their curation. This wasn't as expensive as bespoke furniture, but much more than Ikea, or ChinaDirect.
In the US North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, all had furniture industries. I don't know if that was better, but it was definitely different, much more diverse, less affordable, but higher quality. Clothes worked pretty similarly.
Within a brief time, the company employed 32 people and manufactured tables, chairs, and a bedroom set. The solid-oak bedroom set sold for nine dollars and included a bed, dresser, and washstand.
In 1886 the average daily wage for a laborer was about $1.47 ( https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015059385339&vi... ). So that bedroom set would be a week's wage. That's a really good price, even today. And it was solid oak (harder to come by these days given the decline in old growth forests).
The thing about clothes is they were made to last because of the high price of labor for their making. Once automation really took off following WW2 they became a lot cheaper, and so were treated cheaper. And also weren't repaired nearly as often.
what would be such a middle ground?
The bespoke stuff is expensive, since there's literally only 1 customer. Think mega yachts.
The 'almost everybody can afford this' is because it's sold to everybody, and thus economies of scale _allows_ it to be affordable.
The old 'middle ground', to me, is a pre-industrial idea that locally sourced craftsman and materials can be used to serve just the local region. It no longer exists because it _can_ no longer exist (except as a sort of cottage industry, or artisanal industry which is hugely inefficient and thus barely anyone buys such things).