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OwlFancier posted:That seems an excessively simple explanation for such an apparently complex little microculture. It's super complex and I could yammer on forever about it, so you guys weigh in if it's getting too off-topic or boring or making you too murderous. A big thing fueling the influx of foreign luxury buyers is how relatively recent it is that they've been able to participate in the western retail scene. Literal royalty was always able to buy European luxuries, but in the late 20th century there start to be all these oil barons and factory owners crowding the ranks of the ultra-rich, who need to show off that they aren't old-fashioned home country wealthy with a traditional house and a lot of servants, but new modern wealthy. Global wealthy. That's also why (and caveat, talking about the luxury goods industry at all means voicing odious opinions, to the wall of all of them, this isn't me talking, just the perspective of the market) the foreign buyers that traditional European brands publicly reject while quietly embracing, tend to focus on the established hits, not the cutting edge stuff. They want a Birkin bag because everybody back home knows what a Birkin bag is and how much it costs. An avant-garde bag by a new designer might have a lot more cachet in western high-fashion circles, but it's useless for its purpose of showing off that you've Made It. America has its own mini version of this happening right within our borders, where a Tory Birch bag is corny to the New York Cool Girl set, but still the very mostest if you're trying to establish who's HBIC at your sorority in Tennessee.
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May 2, 2017 23:12
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's super complex and I could yammer on forever about it, so you guys weigh in if it's getting too off-topic or boring or making you too murderous. I guess the biggest disconnect I have with this is the concept of consumption as competition. Everyone I know even in niche fashion scenes is generally very inclusive, to all appearances. People who do goth stuff for example tend to like their own individual items but a lot of the social aspect is a celebration of the mutual enjoyment of it. More generally, if you get something nice people tend to be happy for you and you would tell them how you got it (cheaply, because you did get it cheaply or you wouldn't have it). Competitive consumption versus collaborative consumption is strange and kind of detached from retailing as I have experienced it, all the places I've worked and shopped are about getting everyone in to have access to the things on sale, the thing I noticed recently in a lot of the womens' retailers is they have mirrors with some kind of computer in them to take photographs of you in the changing rooms if you want to, it's about getting people to participate and also share that participation with others. The whole idea of "I can have this but you can't" just... doesn't work in my social circles. I don't know if it's poverty related or not. There's sometimes "I can have this because I got lucky" but flaunting wealth would get you kicked out fairly sharpish because nobody likes a snob. I can't help but feel it's a deeply miserable thing to build social interaction around and it's difficult to jam into your brain that it could be economically sustainable. Though I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised that institutional victimization is profitable. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:25 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 23:23
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OwlFancier posted:I guess the biggest disconnect I have with this is the concept of consumption as competition. Everyone I know even in niche fashion scenes is generally very inclusive, to all appearances. People who do goth stuff for example tend to like their own individual items but a lot of the social aspect is a celebration of the mutual enjoyment of it. More generally, if you get something nice people tend to be happy for you and you would tell them how you got it (cheaply, because you did get it cheaply or you wouldn't have it). I think the point of all the responses to your post is that this kind of stuff happens in social circles other than yours.
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May 2, 2017 23:28
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Badger of Basra posted:I think the point of all the responses to your post is that this kind of stuff happens in social circles other than yours. Yes I gather that thank you, in this, the retail thread, I find it interesting to hear people's expertise in areas outside my experience concerning retail habits.
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May 2, 2017 23:32
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OwlFancier posted:The whole idea of "I can have this but you can't" just... doesn't work in my social circles. I don't know if it's poverty related or not. There's sometimes "I can have this because I got lucky" but flaunting wealth would get you kicked out fairly sharpish because nobody likes a snob. I can't help but feel it's a deeply miserable thing to build social interaction around and it's difficult to jam into your brain that it could be economically sustainable. Though I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised that institutional victimization is profitable. Oh it's definitely miserable. It also doesn't really center around overt social interaction. It's more about sending unspoken signals. You carry the Birkin bag on your arm so the person manning the buzzer at the Fendi store knows to let you in, or so the girls back home know you just got back from a shopping trip abroad. That's one reason I like the streetwear scenes so much better. As annoying as the Supreme kids are, at least they aren't afraid to act like fans and actually talk about the stuff they love.
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May 2, 2017 23:32
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OwlFancier posted:I guess the biggest disconnect I have with this is the concept of consumption as competition. Everyone I know even in niche fashion scenes is generally very inclusive, to all appearances. People who do goth stuff for example tend to like their own individual items but a lot of the social aspect is a celebration of the mutual enjoyment of it. More generally, if you get something nice people tend to be happy for you and you would tell them how you got it (cheaply, because you did get it cheaply or you wouldn't have it). Yeah but that's because you're actually restricted in what you can have if you're a twentysomething goth fashionista or whatever, and the same goes for your friends, and there isn't very much to be gained from conspicuously outconsuming your friends. Note that this isn't universal though, there are ridiculous examples of conspicuous consumption even among poorer people, e.g. people who buy Tide detergent to seperate themselves from the store brand detergent buying plebs, which is apparently a thing in many poorer US neighbourhoods  Now imagine you're a twentysomething billionaire's kid. Having loving everything you could possibly want this side of a private 747 is your normal state of being because burning ridiculous sums of money shopping every weekend isn't a meaningful expenditure. You can't really socialise with regular people because even if they aren't turned off by you being a rich brat they can't keep up with you financially unless you blatantly buy everything for them all the time. Normal people hobbies that people socialise over also have less of an appeal if they in any way involve solving real-world problems unless you're really specifically into that poo poo. Since that tends to restrict your social circle to other billionaire brats (and maybe politician brats) even before the "ughh i don't want to spend time with those smelly poor people" part comes in, you're surrounded by people who have just as few social hobbies apart from the weekly money burning spree. Basically, Badger of Basra posted:I think the point of all the responses to your post is that this kind of stuff happens in social circles other than yours.
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May 2, 2017 23:43
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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OwlFancier posted:The whole idea of "I can have this but you can't" just... doesn't work in my social circles. I don't know if it's poverty related or not. There's sometimes "I can have this because I got lucky" but flaunting wealth would get you kicked out fairly sharpish because nobody likes a snob. I can't help but feel it's a deeply miserable thing to build social interaction around and it's difficult to jam into your brain that it could be economically sustainable. Though I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised that institutional victimization is profitable. We're really just talking about a form of conspicuous consumption here, and that's honestly a thing at most social levels. The vast majority of people who buy high-end luxury cars don't actually care enough about cars to get any real, practical value out of them compared to something a little more reasonable, but people do it anyway because it sends a clear signal about social status. High-end fashion isn't any different. You might not realize that someone is walking around with a $5k handbag, but you also aren't really the intended recipient of the social cues that person is sending.
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May 2, 2017 23:44
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When we talk about the very rich, who are we talking about? Because I think there is some confusion about what the term means. Are we talking about people who are making $200,000 a year and own a million dollar house, or are we talking about people making 5 million dollars a year with 20 million dollar houses? Because those are two quite different groups of people. People in the first are also numerous enough that you can look at them as a class, talk about general patterns. And retail marketers probably do that, market to people in the 100-500,000 dollar a year range. Above a few million dollars a year, most retailers probably don't have a single marketing strategy because that group is going to be too diverse.
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May 2, 2017 23:46
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blowfish posted:Yeah but that's because you're actually restricted in what you can have if you're a twentysomething goth fashionista or whatever, and the same goes for your friends, and there isn't very much to be gained from conspicuously outconsuming your friends. Note that this isn't universal though, there are ridiculous examples of conspicuous consumption even among poorer people, e.g. people who buy Tide detergent to seperate themselves from the store brand detergent buying plebs, which is apparently a thing in many poorer US neighbourhoods Well, for Tide in particular, you're forgetting this: http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ The brand is so respected that people are willing to accept it as payment for various illegal things, including drugs. Fuckin' Gain or store brand detergent just isn't going to be the same for that sort of thing. glowing-fish posted:When we talk about the very rich, who are we talking about? Because I think there is some confusion about what the term means. Are we talking about people who are making $200,000 a year and own a million dollar house, or are we talking about people making 5 million dollars a year with 20 million dollar houses? Because those are two quite different groups of people. We're talking people who don't HAVE a yearly income figure from normal means, because they have so much wealth that direct pay is a rounding error in their bank account. fishmech fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 23:47
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glowing-fish posted:When we talk about the very rich, who are we talking about? Because I think there is some confusion about what the term means. Are we talking about people who are making $200,000 a year and own a million dollar house, or are we talking about people making 5 million dollars a year with 20 million dollar houses? Because those are two quite different groups of people. If you work for a living instead of paying someone to work for your living, you aren't rich. So at least several ten (more likely several hundred) millions in investments/stocks.
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May 2, 2017 23:49
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blowfish posted:
You can always take your exclusive ballet training and go off to learn real dance on the street, horrifying your father until the break-dancing performance you give using a group of struggling young urban teens makes him realize he shouldn't bulldoze the community center to build luxury high rises.
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May 2, 2017 23:49
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blowfish posted:people who buy Tide detergent to seperate themselves from the store brand detergent buying plebs, which is apparently a thing in many poorer US neighbourhoods That's a great example of something that trips people up when they get the rare chance at social mobility in America too. The things that signal wealth when you're poor signal low-class when you're rich, and the things that signal high-class are things you've never even heard of when you're poor. I try not to be an awful consumerist, but I live in LA and rub shoulders with a lot of Gwyneth Paltrow types, so my first thought at seeing Tide mentioned was "ew, all the dyes and fragrances." To be really cool around here you have to buy the unscented, undyed refill soaps you can only get in out-of-the-way "general stores" in trendy neighborhoods. That makes you better than those plebs buying Seventh Generation at Target. These attitudes can turn really ugly when kids get involved. Junk food's popular when you're poor because it's exciting to have anything name-brand, but of course to middle class and up it's tantamount to child abuse. glowing-fish posted:When we talk about the very rich, who are we talking about? Because I think there is some confusion about what the term means. Are we talking about people who are making $200,000 a year and own a million dollar house, or are we talking about people making 5 million dollars a year with 20 million dollar houses? Because those are two quite different groups of people. Well, for the Birkin bag discussion, we're really talking about people who make 5 billion dollars a year and don't own any houses because the palace is technically government property.
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May 2, 2017 23:50
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fishmech posted:Well, for Tide in particular, you're forgetting this: http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ My grandmother was a millionaire, she probably made several hundred thousand dollars a year (she never told us directly, I just knew that she could buy a house with a cashier's check). She was a writer, wrote several dozen New York Time's best sellers. She raised me to believe that shopping trips to Value Village where you spent a couple hundred dollars were the best way to spend money. Well, and Costco as well. (People in arts/publishing/media/etc. are a very specific subset of rich people, but it is the one I know about) (I am not doing this to brag, just kind of showing the source of my slanted view on these things) (Although it wouldn't take much to guess who she is)
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May 2, 2017 23:53
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glowing-fish posted:My grandmother was a millionaire, she probably made several hundred thousand dollars a year (she never told us directly, I just knew that she could buy a house with a cashier's check). She was a writer, wrote several dozen New York Time's best sellers. She raised me to believe that shopping trips to Value Village where you spent a couple hundred dollars were the best way to spend money. Well, and Costco as well.  Fiction or nonfiction?
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May 2, 2017 23:54
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:
To me, I can't imagine really rich people needing to advertise it with consumer goods. I think that level of tackiness is only in underdeveloped places, like the Gulf States, parts of South America or New York City.
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May 2, 2017 23:57
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glowing-fish posted:To me, I can't imagine really rich people needing to advertise it with consumer goods. I think that level of tackiness is only in underdeveloped places, like the Gulf States, parts of South America or New York City. That's where the international angle comes into play. Non-western buyers of luxury goods aren't so much advertising that they're rich, there were always ways to do that. They're advertising that they're modern.
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May 2, 2017 23:58
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glowing-fish posted:To me, I can't imagine really rich people needing to advertise it with consumer goods. I think that level of tackiness is only in underdeveloped places, like the Gulf States, parts of South America or New York City. There is always another rung of the ladder richer than you, and your goal is to make it look like you are on that rung, not your real one right below it.
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May 2, 2017 23:58
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glowing-fish posted:You can always take your exclusive ballet training and go off to learn real dance on the street, horrifying your father until the break-dancing performance you give using a group of struggling young urban teens makes him realize he shouldn't bulldoze the community center to build luxury high rises. Yeah but that means you're really specifically into breakdancing and/or actual charity (not the "dress up and write a check in front of cameras/other rich people, then go home and do nothing further about it" kind). Tiny Brontosaurus posted:That's a great example of something that trips people up when they get the rare chance at social mobility in America too. The things that signal wealth when you're poor signal low-class when you're rich, and the things that signal high-class are things you've never even heard of when you're poor. That's probably true everywhere with even moderate inequality. Even in places where the super rich make a point of not conspicuously consuming (e.g. Germany to a large extent), you will have cultural cues to signify you're "one of us" and not some jumped up high-paid lawyer or nouveau-riche shitbag who still acts like a pleb with too much money. Such as, in Germany, normally using a nice but not too nice car (e.g. a second-tier Audi/Mercedes or first-tier VW/Opel, not a Lambo) and shopping at middle to upper middle class but not blatantly upper class stores regularly and only doing the really tacky poo poo in private/on holiday. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 00:03 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 23:57
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glowing-fish posted:My grandmother was a millionaire, she probably made several hundred thousand dollars a year (she never told us directly, I just knew that she could buy a house with a cashier's check). She was a writer, wrote several dozen New York Time's best sellers. She raised me to believe that shopping trips to Value Village where you spent a couple hundred dollars were the best way to spend money. Well, and Costco as well. I do my shopping in an area that pulls from both Rye and Greenwich and I can confirm this mindset....and the stuff about Junk Food..and a whole lot of other things. It's interesting to see Stop and Shop on certain Sundays when you have all the EBT cards refilled and everyone from the PJ's is mixed in there with people from across the border. And then you have Whole Foods down a ways. I never thought I'd feel inadequate listening to teenage girls prattle on, but yeah...wow...and they're all taller than me and I'm not short.
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May 2, 2017 23:58
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glowing-fish posted: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. Shirts cost $4. People got real mad about that change.
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May 3, 2017 01:10
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SHY NUDIST GRRL posted:Shirts cost $4. People got real mad about that change. You can buy a bad shirt for $4 or a bad shirt for $400 but nobody's really selling a good shirt for $40 anymore and they're all wondering why retail is dying.
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May 3, 2017 01:12
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What we need to do is cut costs
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May 3, 2017 01:26
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If there's a massive unfilled niche of decent quality clothes at reasonable prices that is just totally open, why isn't anyone trying to fill it?
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May 3, 2017 01:59
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Badger of Basra posted:If there's a massive unfilled niche of decent quality clothes at reasonable prices that is just totally open, why isn't anyone trying to fill it? That's a huge topic! For one, it's really expensive to make quality clothes. Fabric is expensive, and the looms that good-quality fabric used to be made of are gradually going offline, and natural fabrics (which make better clothing in most use cases) are affected by rising costs of agriculture and labor. Clothing also doesn't automate as well as other things might, since well-draped and tailored pieces have lots of fiddly little details that need a human touch - that's why cuts are getting simpler and boxier like I was complaining about earlier. Clothing purchases are also, as we discussed a lot today, motivated by a lot more than cost and utility. A lot of people are locked into a cycle of purchasing fast fashion, because they want something current-looking but can't afford designer clothes, so they buy some flimsy garbage from Forever 21, but then it falls apart after a few wears and they haven't had enough time to save up for something nice so they buy cheap again, and repeat. Then you factor in brand loyalty, how customers see themselves, what brands they have heard of/have access to, what occasions they dress for, on and on. It's some of the most complex marketing in the world. There's illogic on the manufacturer side too, largely focused on who they want to dress and what they want their customers to think about the brand. The vast, vast, vast majority of clothing brands want to sell to slim young white people and no one else. Even if you point out that they could have another niche of the market virtually to themselves, they won't touch it. Brands would rather sell a lot of things to a small market than a few things to a large market.
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May 3, 2017 02:09
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Pulling it out of my arse but there is a prevailing perception in mass retail work that workers should not be too motivated, they are there to carry out mechanical functions and nothing more and are paid commensurately, it doesn't gel well with finding people who can actually help find you good stuff in a store and who are motivated enough to look after a kind-of-expensive-but-worth-it store. You tend to either get the shelf drone or the "salesperson" type of assistant but I've rarely seen many places pull off something in between, you either get people underskilled trying to be helpful and struggling because it's outside their job role, or people who are skilled at selling things but not actually providing a helpful service. I think you'd need a different kind of staff and business philosophy to do mid range fashion retail, because generally mid range stores now are just low range stores with more expensive stuff in them. If you want somewhere that can get people into good clothes at a commensurate price, that takes a degree of staff expertise and organizational flexibility, to deal with on the ground feedback and customer assistance. I'd be looking more like the place I get my trousers from which is a men's suit outfitters that does regular massive sales, which means they tend to be staffed by old tailory-type geezers who actually will spend a bit of time with you to get you something that fits well and which is cheap, and being a specialized store they actually do have a million variations on black trousers to go through until you find one that fits you at the price you want. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:17 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 02:10
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Badger of Basra posted:If there's a massive unfilled niche of decent quality clothes at reasonable prices that is just totally open, why isn't anyone trying to fill it? Because most garment labor is exported to places where the labor is dirt cheap (see: Haiti, Bangladesh, China but it's on the up-and-up so not so much soon). Not to mention private interests lobby governments to ensure that the labor stays dirt cheap as well. If you want to roll your own you're going to need to change how you source cotton or whatever other fibers you use, how you find labor, all the way down to how you distribute and market your product because the whole industry is an exploitative capitalist race to the bottom. I know American Apparel tried and went bankrupt but I have no idea what their story was (aside from a bunch of questionable marketing strategies).
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May 3, 2017 02:12
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:Because most garment labor is exported to places where the labor is dirt cheap (see: Haiti, Bangladesh, China but it's on the up-and-up so not so much soon). Not to mention private interests lobby governments to ensure that the labor stays dirt cheap as well. Sexual harassment.
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May 3, 2017 02:13
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Badger of Basra posted:Sexual harassment. Astonishing feats of sexual harassment. And bizarre side effects like Dov putting teens he wanted to gently caress in executive positions and having them run stores into the ground.
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May 3, 2017 02:16
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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. Welcome to the human race. See why there's never gonna be full communism?
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May 3, 2017 02:19
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God drat if reading through the last few pages in this thread isn't doing more to raise my blood pressure than the Right Wing Media thread. What the gently caress rich people.
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May 3, 2017 02:19
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hakimashou posted:Welcome to the human race. See why there's never gonna be full communism? I mean the suggestion has been made several times to shoot all the rich people and traditionally that has been a starting policy of most would be socialist governments, I can't say I'm in particular disagreement.
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May 3, 2017 02:23
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Nice/exclusive/fancy/luxury type stores are also just more pleasant to shop at. It's like a fine dining restaurant, the food is good but the service makes up a big chunk of the price tag and the value as well. Everyone likes to be catered to and paid attention to and have their ego gratified. I don't think the internet is going to replace truly high end retail.
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May 3, 2017 02:23
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OwlFancier posted:I mean the suggestion has been made several times to shoot all the rich people and traditionally that has been a starting policy of most would be socialist governments, I can't say I'm in particular disagreement. A good portion of the people doing the shooting just want to be the new rich people.
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May 3, 2017 02:24
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See that's also weird because the one time I went to an upmarket restaurant I didn't like it because although the food was good I found being waited on extremely unsettling. Going somewhere for expertise though, and expediency accessing stock, that I do like. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:31 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 02:29
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All this mall talk bums me out that my mall is slowly dying both from losing the big anchor stores and people being scared away by it being "unsafe" after a shooting and that big brawl that happened a couple of years ago. Its a historically important mall too since Dawn of the Dead was filmed there 
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May 3, 2017 02:51
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:That's a huge topic! For one, it's really expensive to make quality clothes. Fabric is expensive, and the looms that good-quality fabric used to be made of are gradually going offline, and natural fabrics (which make better clothing in most use cases) are affected by rising costs of agriculture and labor. Clothing also doesn't automate as well as other things might, since well-draped and tailored pieces have lots of fiddly little details that need a human touch - that's why cuts are getting simpler and boxier like I was complaining about earlier. Also I do most of my clothes shopping at Uniqlo and after reading your post find myself curious how they rank on the third-world-labor-exploitativeness scale.
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May 3, 2017 02:51
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hakimashou posted:A good portion of the people doing the shooting just want to be the new rich people. Nah at this point most of us just want healthcare and our basic needs met. Well, in a sane country those are one and the same.
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May 3, 2017 03:08
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OwlFancier posted:I mean the suggestion has been made several times to shoot all the rich people and traditionally that has been a starting policy of most would be socialist governments, I can't say I'm in particular disagreement. There is a decent documentary by one of the Johnson heirs called "The One Percent" the best scene is when he is talking with a poor black taxi driver. It's worth watching the whole movie for that one scene. I won't spoil it. The is a lot to find truly pathetic in the very, very, wealthy. There is no freedom or salvation in extreme wealth. It's all vanity.
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May 3, 2017 03:59
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Cicero posted:You seem to know a lot about clothing manufacture, so is there any sizable chain that sells well-made non-niche clothes for reasonable prices? Carhartts/Columbia? Although that is outdoor/work clothing. I bought a pair of Carhartts under the idea that 60 dollars for a pair of pants that would last forever made more sense than buying 10 dollar pairs of pants from Goodwill every three months. My Carhartts lasted four months before I ripped the crotch open. I don't know how I managed to do that.
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May 3, 2017 04:06
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What about Filson? Is that too niche for this discussion?
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May 3, 2017 04:18
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