I was about to make an edit regarding this to the page (in retrospect maybe this would have been better posted on the page's talk page? Nbd tho), but given its a point of discussion I'll open it up to the floor rather than make unilateral changes.
Re "there is no 'bad' or 'good' apparel" that is kinda true it also makes some key assumptions. Instead I'd put the axiom as: There is a spectrum between the extremes of max value/work and max value/material. The optimal for a given colony is as close as you can get to the max value/material without leaving material unused, and only if you intend to sell the material instead of holding it in reserve for your crafters to catch up on. If you're willing to put material in reserve, the corsets (dusters in core) remain the optimum.
Explanation which I think you both already know but jic: Work per material varies significantly and it makes significant differences as to what is the optimum object to craft. If you are limited by material, then a corset makes you more money for that stock of material. The value of the work itself doesn't change, but you can't put work into nothing so stretching out the amount of material you "spend" to get that work is optimal. Meanwhile if you're work limited then quality factors matter. You can could still make corsets and sell the extra material but while you are still are getting the same value out of the work either way, all that material you're selling without making it into something isn't getting the value multiplier from quality. So again, there is an optimal selection
Presenting it as a binary choice is flawed as you say, but there are still optimal choices and the spectrum isn't all equally valid or equally likely to be the optimal choice.