Yesterday, at approximately 8.23am, I spotted a hole in my daughter's school tights. Time was of the essence, so I grabbed her, stood her up on the kitchen table, threaded a needle and darned them. The whole process took perhaps a minute and half (it would have taken less had she not wriggled and got a jab in her thigh), and by 8.30 we were out the door as usual. A little tear-stained, I'll grant you, but essentially unharmed - and with fully functioning (i.e, not showing her pants) hosiery.

It is not, I suspect, a common scene at many breakfast tables. Given the price of children's tights (roughly a pound a pair, less in some supermarkets), it seems hardly worth going to the bother of darning them - after all, they're cheaper than a cup of coffee. And yet I do. Mostly because my mother taught me how, so I can; but also because I just don't subscribe to the ideal of rampant consumerism that has permeated the high street in the past few years. Nor do I want my daughter to.

I would like her to appreciate her possessions, and not just because of the usual middle-class guilt about child labour in Bangalore; because I consider it a basic principle that children should know the value of things. Someone's worked hard to make those tights, and if they can be mended, they should be.

In reality, of course, there is very little one eccentric mother can do to fight the tide of mad consumerism, as I am reminded every time we walk past Woolworths and the children scream to be let loose among the cheap toys. But now it seems help may be at hand.

Britain is falling out of love with the 'It' bag

New research predicts celebs will be ditching £23,000 handbags for £40 high street versions

• Death of the It bag

• The politics of an 'It' bag

• How to get dressed: the Chanel bag

Earlier this week, Chinese clothing suppliers issued a warning that they would be demanding a 10 per cent price increase from British high street retailers, including Debenhams and French Connection. The cause? Higher wage costs in China and a sharp rise in the price of cotton. At the same time, Mintel, the retail forecaster, predicted that sales of so-called It bags were on the wane. That curious paradox of modern dressing - the £800 celebrity-endorsed handbag worn with the £2.99 high street T-shirt - looks to be on its way out.

Cheap - and I mean really dirt cheap - clothes have, over the past few years, contributed significantly to our increasingly frenzied disposable culture. The Chancellor may have decided to tackle plastic bags in the Budget; but what about the carbon footprint of the piles of fashion-frantic garments shipped halfway around the world? And what for? To be worn three or four times before being chucked in favour of an imperceptibly different but vital new version. No one even bothers cutting them up for rags any more.

This substitution of quantity for quality has led us to what we are now: a nation of fat, poorly dressed, greed monkeys with massive debts and the collective attention span of a gnat. I am not so stupid as to romanticise the make-do-and-mend culture of our grandmothers (although I do remember very fondly my gran's endless boxes of buttons, a constant source of delight as a child); but it seems that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

A society whose every desire is immediately indulged has very little to look forward to. Nothing, or very little, is truly special any more. Just as sweets are no longer treats but everyday comestibles, clothes are no longer something covetable, long desired and much appreciated when finally worn.

If you drink nothing but port, you end up with gout. Cheap high-street rip-offs have been touted as the democratisation of fashion, a people-empowering sartorial revolution; but it's been a false dawn. We no longer give a fig about workmanship and quality; we just want more, more, more. We are like the spoilt child who cares only how many presents he gets at his party, not what they are or who they're from.

Too much choice doesn't enrich us; it impoverishes us. The delight of a really special party frock, of a pair of shoes kept only “for best”, of the special outfit that you've saved up to buy and the intense satisfaction when you finally step out in it - all are swept aside by the tide of cheap tat. Why take time to plan and care for your wardrobe when you can just go out and get a whole new one. It's a distinctly hollow existence.

During the last recession, I was working as a translator for a mid-market clothes retailer. The company boss, a wily old gentleman, said something that has always stuck in my mind. “When times are hard, people buy less but they buy quality. They may only be able to afford one new pair of shoes - but they care about them more than all the many pairs they bought when they had money to burn; and they enjoy wearing them more too. Quality, not quantity, my dear, that's what it's all about.”

Shortly afterwards he demonstrated this fact by laying me off. But you get my drift.

Make your clothes last longer

Always hang things up after use

Buy two pairs of trousers with a suit, and alternate wearing them

Roll ties up, don’t hang them

Wash your tights inside a pillowcase

Never wear the same shoes two days running

Cut your toenails so that they don’t snag your socks

Wash clothes on a low temperature — 30 degrees is perfectly fine for most things

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