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OwlFancier posted:I always figured hipster was what you get when you throw a teenager into a charity shop and they walk out with whatever fit off the rails. Which is normal for teenagers. We should probably stop this derail before it is too late, besides it is somewhat related to the point of this thread. Hipster has a derogatory label and cultural phenomena is 12 years old now. Like, even in 2005, we were getting a little tired of it as a generic label. In 2017, talking about "hipsters" is if you were to go to Woodstock and talk about all the doo-wop rockabilly kids. Or, if in 1981, you were complaining about flower children. Its more than a decade past its relevancy. And its especially weak because "hipster" can connote exactly opposite things to different people. For some people, "hipster" means someone who likes the newest fashions, likes spending money on expensive meals, has a lot of disposable income, etcetera...or "hipster" means someone who is critical of consumerism, works and shops at small/independent/community places, probably has social or political concerns, etcetera. I mean, they aren't ironclad differences, but the young marketing executive who goes to trendy bars and drinks 10 dollar martinis is not really in the same demographic as the flannel clad Linux programmer who is drinking draft beer. This is relevant to the purpose of this thread, because one of the biggest problems with retailers and younger consumers is trying to sort out the different needs of young people who aren't traditional consumers. People in their 20s don't want to go to JC Penneys for clothing, but is it because they are spending 100 dollars on a shirt at a boutique store, or is it because they are buying T-Shirts for three dollars at Goodwill, or for $1.69 a pound at a Goodwill Outlet store? These are very different things, and yet they are kind of piled together as one thing.
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May 2, 2017 19:52
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WampaLord posted:Yea I'm talking about the "3 purses on a blank wall" fake store bullshit. I used to get involved in the shipping of mega-yachts regularly. Most of these big yachts only have the fuel capacity to travel a couple hundred miles. They can't cross an ocean. So the wealthy have them loaded on containerships and general purpose vessels break bulk. They get shipped in seasonal patterns around the world following good weather. Am I lying to you? You probably have no easy way to check.
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May 2, 2017 19:55
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BrandorKP posted:Listen to this poo poo about $60,000 purses: And that's only the medium-high end of the handbag game. Some weird poo poo has been going on with the accessories industry since the boom in the early 2000's. A lot of Asian and Middle-Eastern women joined the market, which horrified the staid old European brands, so they started putting up barriers around their "it" bags to make it harder for non-approved customers to buy one - now there are waitlists and a vetting process and purchase limits. Everyone's afraid of becoming Burberry or Gucci, so strongly associated with tackiness and poor people that they can scarcely use their trademark designs anymore. There was an accessories bubble that's in the process of popping now. It was probably at its peak during the Sex and the City days, when middle America suddenly found out about Manolo Blahnik shoes and Fendi baguette bags. It was fueled by the same flaws in the clothing industry we've discussed a lot here - the sizes the overwhelming majority of women can fit into simply aren't for sale, not on the high end. A woman with money to burn but without a supermodel's body can only flaunt luxury brands through conspicuous accessories. The brands liked the money at first but hated being associated with fat uncool people, and now they're scrambling to retreat from the market and regain that air of exclusivity, although some brands like Coach, Dooney & Burke, and Tory Birch will probably never leave the department store tier again.
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May 2, 2017 20:00
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:And that's only the medium-high end of the handbag game. Some weird poo poo has been going on with the accessories industry since the boom in the early 2000's. A lot of Asian and Middle-Eastern women joined the market, which horrified the staid old European brands, so they started putting up barriers around their "it" bags to make it harder for non-approved customers to buy one - now there are waitlists and a vetting process and purchase limits. Everyone's afraid of becoming Burberry or Gucci, so strongly associated with tackiness and poor people that they can scarcely use their trademark designs anymore. I'm posting a picture from the Goodwill Bins just to clear my palate after reading all of that:  
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May 2, 2017 20:02
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glowing-fish posted:I'm posting a picture from the Goodwill Bins just to clear my palate after reading all of that: a place where real, honest pants come from
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May 2, 2017 20:07
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BrandorKP posted:I used to get involved in the shipping of mega-yachts regularly. Most of these big yachts only have the fuel capacity to travel a couple hundred miles. They can't cross an ocean. So the wealthy have them loaded on containerships and general purpose vessels break bulk. They get shipped in seasonal patterns around the world following good weather. Huh http://www.yacht-transport.com/
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May 2, 2017 20:16
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What I'm gathering from the last few pages is that the extremely rich are extremely stupid, and we should be putting them up against the wall and redistribute their vast wealth so that it may serve the People.
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May 2, 2017 20:16
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"Hipster" will only be discontinued once portlandia stops airing.
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May 2, 2017 20:17
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DrNutt posted:What I'm gathering from the last few pages is that the extremely rich are extremely stupid, and we should be putting them up against the wall and redistribute their vast wealth so that it may serve the People. Caveat: Vast wealth may consist primarily of out-of-date handbags.
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May 2, 2017 20:20
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That's kind of neat, I used to board Spliethoff’s s-types all the time that carry thier yachts. They'd (Spliethoff) load yachts after loading kaolin in savannah. I know the port captain that would handle this stuff. I've evrn checked yachts on flats for Sevenstar. This is still more the mid sized yachts, not the really big ones. This damned internet thing continues to surprise me.
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May 2, 2017 20:30
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Hoity toity fashion makes me angry about capitalism. Like, more aggressively angry about it than normal.
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May 2, 2017 20:31
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Back during its run, Kramer was the sitcom version of a hipster, which Elaine made fun on him for. It is a nebulous term that can mean whatever you want it to mean and depending when and where you are saying it will mean something else. But that ties with what glowing-fish was saying about marketing to teens and 20somethings at a brand level. JC Penny could try to market to the naughties version of hipsters by stocking flannel and/or plaid poo poo without radically departing from their established identity, but how much would that actually bring in, and how well can some of these chains continously pivot to chase consumer dollars?
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May 2, 2017 20:34
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OwlFancier posted:Hoity toity fashion makes me angry about capitalism. It's really effective for that and I think it's an underutilized tool for propelling Americans leftwards. Put up some Chanel ads with pricing, hand out pitchforks and maps to the 1%'s homes and let nature take its course.
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May 2, 2017 20:34
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Dameius posted:Back during its run, Kramer was the sitcom version of a hipster, which Elaine made fun on him for. It is a nebulous term that can mean whatever you want it to mean and depending when and where you are saying it will mean something else. It's meaning has changed a lot over the years.
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May 2, 2017 20:38
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duz posted:It's meaning has changed a lot over the years. Yeah when people were using it in the early-mid 90s they were doing an anachronistic reference to the 50s sense of "hipster," the way you might call someone a "hippie" now. A lot of youth subcultures are named after previous subcultures.
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May 2, 2017 20:44
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OwlFancier posted:Hoity toity fashion makes me angry about capitalism. Go price a yacht Like, just watch that accompanying video and tell me you don't lust for the crew to rise up and keelhaul the owners.
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May 2, 2017 20:47
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Hipster is kinda like beatnik in that it had a very particular stereotype (the beret, the bongo drums, etc.) representing a big vague continuum, so that the stereotype meant a lot more to middle-of-the-road TV shows than it did to real people's lives. Like, no self-identifying goth actually dresses like [googles] Abby Sciuto to go to work. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 21:00
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ReidRansom posted:Go price a yacht And then think about the fact that many of the richest people in the world could still buy a hundred of them at once, if they wanted to really blow their money.
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May 2, 2017 21:02
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ReidRansom posted:Go price a yacht A yacht is by design a silly expensive thing that does stupid expensive things. Clothing is stuff you put on to look nice, thermoregulate, and cover your vitals. There's a pretty quick limit on how well it can do any of those things and it's only proximally priced accordingly. At least if you showed me a stupid expensive yacht I could probably identify it as such.
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May 2, 2017 21:09
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ReidRansom posted:Go price a yacht
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May 2, 2017 21:10
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I would like one of these. You can buy a containership for that much money.
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May 2, 2017 21:14
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BrandorKP posted:You can buy a containership for that much money.
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May 2, 2017 21:19
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If I pay $60k for a handbag it had better be a loving bag of holding.
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May 2, 2017 21:19
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OwlFancier posted:If I pay $60k for a handbag it had better be a loving bag of holding.
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May 2, 2017 21:36
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ReidRansom posted:Like, just watch that accompanying video and tell me you don't lust for the crew to rise up and keelhaul the owners. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...mqg0aRrR6nED5oQ "They had a young, female, Arab boss, a very sweet woman who they adored and who never ever went in the water. But one day she was in the mood to go for a swim, even though there were jellyfish," she explained. "So what they did was jump in the water and clear everything in front of her -- they got stung to pieces. It was a sign of respect from them. I just think it's a nice story."
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May 2, 2017 21:39
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BrandorKP posted:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...mqg0aRrR6nED5oQ They probably screen for Marxist and/or mutinous tendencies. I mean, that's just safe practice, honestly. Can't fault them there. Still, those poor, poor deluded people
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May 2, 2017 21:46
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BrandorKP posted:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...mqg0aRrR6nED5oQ otoh this sounds like an amazing way to employ a bunch of white knights
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May 2, 2017 22:07
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OwlFancier posted:If I pay $60k for a handbag it had better be a loving bag of holding. Its funny because you know they just wont sell it to you either, right? You have to earn the privilege to be offered your one bag a year by buying their other useless tat like Hermes rocking horses and chess sets that cost 600-6000 dollars a piece.
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May 2, 2017 22:15
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Barudak posted:Its funny because you know they just wont sell it to you either, right? You have to earn the privilege to be offered your one bag a year by buying their other useless tat like Hermes rocking horses and chess sets that cost 600-6000 dollars a piece. Yeah, to underline this, Barudak's not being hyperbolic. To get on the buyer's list for certain handbags you have to prove your worth by buying anything the manufacturerer tells you to, sight-unseen, for years. But that's only if you're Not Their Sort. Beautiful rich white women whose husbands and fathers made their money in the proper ways can buy whatever they want.
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May 2, 2017 22:21
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I suppose it's just engaging with a desire, need, or positive feedback loop that is completely alien to me. Yes it's nice getting some good swag to show off to people sometimes but like, if you just forked over thousands of dollars for it then who the hell is going to think you're anything except a massive gullible idiot? The fun of fancy stuff is when you get it cheap, it's good fortune, and you have a genuine good quality item, if you can buy good quality items all the time then I don't understand it. I don't get what this high end retail is doing, why its customers buy things, what fulfillment they get out of it, how it fits into their social lives, it seems so utterly disconnected from my experience of consumption-as-leisure.
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May 2, 2017 22:31
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They're empty people who have a hole to fill. It's not complicated.
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May 2, 2017 22:33
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That seems an excessively simple explanation for such an apparently complex little microculture.
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May 2, 2017 22:34
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People have obsessed over their clothes and stuff for pretty much all of recorded history.
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May 2, 2017 22:36
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OwlFancier posted:Yes it's nice getting some good swag to show off to people sometimes but like, if you just forked over thousands of dollars for it then who the hell is going to think you're anything except a massive gullible idiot? Because to a truly rich person, buying a $5k handbag isn't something they have to budget in. It's something they can do just as easily as I could go get a $20 handbag. That's not gullibility, that's real wealth. I could put it another way - I lived in Dar es Salaam for nearly a year and my take home pay was 900€/month and I lived in a company apartment and had no real expenses, so that was all money for me to play with as I pleased. There was a mall but the clothing stores in it generally had really cheaply made clothing and there was a big market in the center of town where stuff off of shipping containers ended up for sale but it was chaotic and I had to go with my driver if I wanted to make sense of anything. There were also some fairly nice shops downtown that would have an employee help you with the dressing rooms and go fetch a shirt in a different size if you needed it (like a higher end place in the states) and I got a clothes there that cost what the equivalent quality clothes would cost in the states and I didn't even really think about it, it was just the best quality for the greatest convenience. One of the blouses I bought was the equivalent of $90 USD - you can imagine it would have taken your average woman over there ages to save up enough to buy something like that. I imagine that if you scale the prices up, that's what it means for someone who really is wealthy to drop a few thousand on stuff that has less expensive but still serviceable equivalents that are much cheaper. It's barely a blip on their radar.
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May 2, 2017 22:42
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HEY NONG MAN posted:They're empty people who have a hole to fill. It's not complicated. And bullets can fill them as well as anything else.
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May 2, 2017 22:46
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OwlFancier posted:I don't get what this high end retail is doing, why its customers buy things, what fulfillment they get out of it, how it fits into their social lives, it seems so utterly disconnected from my experience of consumption-as-leisure. You're looking at this from the wrong side of things. It's not that the handbag isn't worth the money, it's that the amount of money we're talking about is effectively valueless to the person spending it. I don't worry about the difference between a cup of coffee that costs $1.00 and one that costs $1.50 because that $0.50 has more or less zero value to me.
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May 2, 2017 22:46
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Relative cost is understandable but again, a ten bazillion dollar item is not going to be better than a thousand dollar item and is apparently far less convenient because you have to subscribe to the newsletter for a decade to get it. The culture is bizarre.
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May 2, 2017 22:48
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose it's just engaging with a desire, need, or positive feedback loop that is completely alien to me. Actual rich people - not just overpaid techbros or mere millionaires, but the proper capitalist class that lives off the investments it pays other people to make for them, have no reason to care. Anything even remotely useable in day to day life you can just afford to buy on a whim, and getting a really loving good deal on a $5k item so you only pay $3k is just wasting time unless your hobby is specifically getting good deals on things. So the only way to show off cool purchases to your similarly rich friends is to get things that are hard to get or exclusive by metrics other than price tag. Hence, you go to places with an ~exclusive~ shopping experience to enjoy together, or get an ugly-rear end custom phone with T-rex bone dust in the casing (an actual thing that exists) that's a worse phone than a regular iphone or galaxy to show off at the next party over a $500 glass of champagne. Of course, rich people actually care about getting a good deal if they put a meaningful amount of money on the line, but for them that's when they add another multimillion dollar company to their portfolio. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:57 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 22:52
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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OwlFancier posted:Relative cost is understandable but again, a ten bazillion dollar item is not going to be better than a thousand dollar item. And it doesn't really explain the weird culture around it like subscription based shopping. 1. You gotta separate out the spending habits of the truly wealthy with people who essentially want to copy the superficial markers of wealth. For the latter, those markers may gain them more prestige within their own social circles which is what makes sacrificing for luxury goods worth it to them. 2. to go back to my Dar es Salaam analogy, on the weekends I would sometimes go to the beach (particularly since internet speeds sucked rear end so I had to find something to do with my time.) at first I tried going to a public beach but they were often crowded and I got harassed a lot, but there were private beaches that cost about $5 to go to so I'd go there for convenience because $5 was a trifle. Yeah I paid money specifically to separate myself from people who couldn't afford to pay money. I imagine a lot of super wealthy people shop in high end places so they don't need to shop with "the rabble" and the price differential is again a trifle. And, similar to in item one, some people will pay what is to them a huge amount because of the perceived prestige attached. Like me in college paying way to much to get into nightclubs 
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May 2, 2017 22:57
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OwlFancier posted:Relative cost is understandable but again, a ten bazillion dollar item is not going to be better than a thousand dollar item and is apparently far less convenient because you have to subscribe to the newsletter for a decade to get it. The culture is bizarre. You don't buy the ten bazillion dollar item because it's objectively better at performing some function, but because it's hard to get without playing silly games that require you to dedicate effort similarly to (but sillier than) how normal people would have to put in effort in the form of actual work to afford the thousand dollar item. Also only rich people have the time, money and inclination to do this so that makes it even better. If you primarily needed it to perform some function you'd tell your staff you want it done and have them buy the thousand dollar item to do it.
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May 2, 2017 23:02
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