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[Trappington]

Well I'm not a clothes expert, but I do have some idea as to how washing affects the wear of clothes.
Washing clothes is sort of a double edged sword.  On the one hand, it removes dirt, dust, and other abrasive material that speeds the rate at which the garment breaks down.  In addition, unwashed clothes harbor bacteria or other microbes which, at least on natural materials such as cotton or my fortresses famous xhemp plant fiber mittensx, will cause the material to break down as well, albeit slowly.
On the other hand, as already mentioned, washing a piece of clothing causes wear itself, mainly through the scrubbing process, so washing clothing isn't entirely without its negatives.

Perhaps a hybrid form of the "resetting the degrading time" idea would be in order.  For instance, when washed, the degrading timer for that piece of clothing could be reset, but the time until degrading could be reduced by some fixed or random amount.  For instance, sock A has 3 months left before it degrades to xsock Ax, and had a total time of 8 months before it was degraded when it was first made.  Sock A is washed and the timer is reset, except this time there are only 5.8 months of time before it becomes xsock Ax.  In this way, no piece of clothing would last forever, but washing would have a tremendous affect on the overall durability of clothing.

[Shazbot]

I wouldn't want all that data tracked. Back in Ye Olden Days, doing the laundry included such tasks as patching and sewing. If soap and thread combined to clean and repair articles I would have no problem with them continuing to maintain an article indefinitely.

Historical solution to clothing wear? Asbestos felt tunics and tablecloths! Throw it in the fire and burn off tough stains!

[Trappington]

This wouldn't really require any new tracking.  The amount of wear left until a piece of clothing degrades is already tracked by the game, so all that this would do is provide a way for it to be backed up some.  In addition, if degradation was essentially eliminated from the game via clothes washing then the clothes industry, a very integral part of the game, would become essentially obsolete.  Just buy some extra clothes off of the first few caravans until you hit the population cap and BAM, your whole textile wing becomes deserted.

However, the idea of asbestos clothing sounds very !!FUN!!.  Maybe asbestos should become a mine-able mineral?  Anyway, that's for a different thread...

[Deboche]

If it's implemented where washing doesn't make it the same as a brand new item of clothing, you'll always need to produce more clothes.

The clothes industry is pretty annoying right now though, it requires too much micromanagement. Something like auto-plant processing and dwarves making requests for new clothes from the manager would go a long way.