Faust, great article! "Here, the paradox of providing an air of exclusivity without excluding anyone is key." This is definitely a thing right now (you can find a parallel in music - bunch of vinyl releases limited to "200" copies.) but also, it has a lot to do with who the brand is attached to. Celebrity culture is thriving, and hype is what is important. If someone is 'cool' or 'known' is wearing, buying, following, liking it (whatever it might be) then people are immediately are all over it.
Regarding the quality itself, companies have been lowering the standards over time and they see that sales are not being affected by the quality of the product. The industry is mostly interested in profits and infinite growth, so CEOs are making decisions that will make the shareholders happy. People consume more, for higher prices yet production costs for these companies went down (since quality has dropped significantly), more money is being earned and everybody can "keep their job".
As mentioned by Zamb and Upsilonkng - Musicians should know how to play music, painters should know how to paint etc' etc'. Today you can throw some garbage on a canvas and suddenly you're "an artist", buy a small Eurorack case and a microphone and you're a musician making "experimental noise". In the last couple of decades it went from "I wish I could do that" to "My 5 year old could do this". There are of course experimental artists that make things different, but it just became an easy way out for most. If you want to make clothes you need to know how to and understand the process, unfortunately it is no longer like that. Today its basically people telling others what they want and then they take all the credit, or simply people produce utter garbage and be praised for it. People want everything immediately and everything needs to be accessible, skills take years to develop so everybody just pretend and the standards drop.