Formerly a type of cheap cloth the word has become an adjective to mean anything cheap, run-down. In "The Gondoliers", Gilbert and Sullivan's biting satire on republicanism and egalitarianism, the Grand Inquisitor sings the following:
"When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care —
Up goes the price of shoddy."
The full text of the song can be found here; to my mind as relevant now as it was in the 1880s.
http://math.boisestat...web_opera/gond16.html