They used to use cloth with patterns on it you could make clothes out of.
Thank you for sending me down a delightful little rabbit hole looking into this
I came here to mention this. What a lot of us fail to realize is that businesses weren’t always seeking to cut corners to simply benefit shareholders. There used to be a more varied model of looking at what made a good business and part of that was being a bro to your customers and a good citizen of your national community. They didn’t just print flour bags with patterns for reuse, they had multiple patterns to choose from because they knew that stigma would arise for people clothed in repurposed flour bags if it was one specific look so they did a range of fabric patterns to ease the stigma of people just trying to get by.
The concepts of social responsibilities of business has fundamentally changed to a model of performative abstention of harm rather than an actual visible bettering of anything other than the lining of pockets
Yeah, I was quite surprised by this as I’m so used to how capitalism ruins everything.
https://adirondackgirlatheart.com/feed-sack-fabric/
This is what I read and it was a shock to me that companies not only improved the quality of the cloth when they realised people made garments from sacks, but also strove to provide fashionable designs and wash-off labels. There are some really gorgeous prints on here.
Nowadays, it feels like they would make the original packaging more coarse, then sell the product with nicer packaging at a premium, whilst making sure their logo was indelible.