High end fashion is woefully overpriced items that predominantly largely priced on their brand rather their functionality and material. While yes, you could make the same argument with technology, I can at least get a lot of value out of premium I've paid for Apple products like my seven year old MacBook Pro or five year old iPhone.
And after working briefly in the fashion industry as a developer, I found a lot more people involved in the field to be incredibly snobby and superficial, as in literally judging people by their looks which shouldn't be surprising given that is what the industry is about.
The whole premise is incorrect, so the conclusions are incorrect. The hardware is not the same, and even if it was, clearly the software makes a difference to the user.
The whole Apple fashion status trope is tired and has never been true. The amortized cost of an Apple device in my 15 year + experience with them has always been less than the competitors. Especially if you add my troubleshooting time.
Not to mention they’ve been selling iPad Minis for $400 for 7 or 8 years, and they now have an iPhone at $400. Their stuff works, they offer physical stores you can get technical support at, and they seem to be the best offering for privacy conscious users.
Speaking as someone who has spent a fair share of money on Apple products, It really doesn't. Apple is in the business of selling Veblen goods, and unless you are in a niche domain that requires niche software, Apple does not offer anything that makes a significant difference when compared with what ships with other platforms.
This is specially true nowadays as the bulk of the work done by anyone is performed through a browser. I mean, Finder works but no one spends $2k on a laptop just because you can open files like a champ.
In order to understand the appeal of Apple's product line, all you need to check is the rationale of companies who try to entice potential hires by advertising how they make available flashy Apple hardware to their employees.
My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
My time doing tech support going down to zero because the solution is either power cycle the device or take it to an Apple store is not a Veblen good either.
You are being disingenuous if you believe that Apple Facetime is the only or even dominant voice and/or video call system. WhatsApp alone has between 4 and 5 times the market share of Apple's FaceTime.
You need to come up with another explanation.
> My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
Quite frankly, that's complete bullshit. The majority of web users, whether they are computer illiterate or not, don't worry about "malware links" at all, and that concern simply doesn not register in the mind of the Facebook+Instagram+WhatsApp+Twitter crowd.
And I guess I must be imagining the hours I spent removing malware from windows computers before iOS came along. The stage was set a decade ago when the best option was iOS. My grandparents aren’t going to learn a different system nowadays.
I love (and almost exclusively use) Apple products for many of the reasons you listed. But I think it's disingenuous to deny that there is an element of Apple's branding and design that is based on fashion.
Exhibit A: Laptops and phones getting thinner and thinner at the expense of battery life and other features (headphone jack).
Exhibit B: “A computer absolutely can be sexy… yeah, it can” – The glorious ways Jony Ive has described Apple products
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/sophisticated-intuitive-...
Spending extra on design isn't the eco disaster that spending on throwaway fashion is.
Just about all of them, from cars to ski equipment.
But that's not what's happening here.
Usually "fashionable" items (be it clothing or others) are quite noticeably different from year to year. To the untrained eye, my 7 year old mbp doesn't look all that different from a brand new 2020 one. If I open it up in public, I'll look like "a guy who uses apple". People won't know that I'm out of style because I rock an "ancient" laptop.
This seems true for iphones, too. The models before the X look somewhat different because of the button, but aside from the cameras being changed, I can't easily tell apart the newer models without a home button.
I think you might have missed the fact that what you value is not what other people value.
At the 'high end' of fashion, there's an incredible degree of artisanal effort, and FYI most of those items are well made and will last a lifetime.
Using 'Apple' - which takes its design and pricing cues literally from the world of fashion and design, is actually an argument in favour of the industry, not against it.
Yep, their Total Cost of Ownership can make them very appealing. I’ve made significant contributions towards my MacBook Air upgrades by selling the old one part-for-part.
But even an old broken MacBook Air can get $100+ depending on the specific model, not parted out at all.
Yep, all the proprietary parts work out well as long as you don't end up needing them yourself.
Those thousands of years of human history spent on emotionally-driven aesthetic pursuits like art, fashion, music, culinary tradition and architecture...what a waste of time and resources. If only we could be more robot-like and efficiency optimizing! Good riddance indeed.
Music, Art, Food, Literature and Architecture generally don't go out of style every 6 months (although companies are trying harder and harder to make it so).
Nor do they have the same toxic effect on the environment (possible exception: food?) and personal self esteem as high fashion.
Also, the NY article is not about fast fashion (Zara, H&M), it's about high fashion (Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Alexander Wang).
I agree I could have made the distinction between high and fast fashion clearer in my comment though.
For the record, the handbag example is an extreme outlier and not at all illustrative of the how the industry actually functions (makes money).
>Besides being a reductio ad absurdum[0] argument
I'm not sure how your failed attempt at pedantry adds anything useful to the discussion.
Also, Architecture, music and movies also have trends.
Not a lot Brutalism projects are started today and westerns have been replaced by superhero movies. It does not make any of these projects pointless either.
Still-functional products being discarded on a whim is basically the history of architecture.
The fact is, all of human culture is “arbitrary” and bad for the environment. Food, architecture, fashion, and civilization itself. Just because you don’t care about clothing specifically, doesn’t make it somehow worse than everything else we do.
The only thing that is good for the environment is becoming a nomadic hunter-gatherer and living off the land.
As for food trends, they are indeed changing faster than ever but they're more on a 3-5 year cycle at most. Certainly not 6 months.
Let's examine the word arbitrary. The "in" colors, styles and cuts (the entire make-up of clothing) are undeniably arbitrary and change every 6 months. There's nothing remotely comparable in food or architecture.
Based on your other comment, you seem to take great offence at fashion being disparaged here. It's okay to like fashion. It's the industry that's being attacked, not you personally. And yes, other industries are bad, some even more so. But that's irrelevant.
miner garments invented 150 years ago are a staple of nowadays fashion.
Hell Levis from 30 years ago and todays Levis jeans are recognizably different.
First, gp comment just give a basic example (chinos or tshirts, or lots of other clothes would have been admissible too) showing that your assertion is pretty weak.
But let's not focus on that one.
Let's see what the thesis is :
- there are new trends (dictated by celebrities and designers)
- these trends only sow insecurities and environmental destruction.
Let's disregard the first one, even though as shown above it could be debated.
but focus on the second part. You assert that fashion work only sow insecurities and environmental destruction but provide nothing to prove that point. You can repeat as many as you want that an art form brings nothing, you will be no closer to have an actual argument.
I am really not a fan of fast fashion and its environmental practices but if anything it is more of a parasitism of the work of fashion designers. By a large margin, the bulk of what fast fashion companies produces does not come from well known designers and for good reason : there is a lot of work on materials, techniques and fitting that get into such pieces. This is just not doable at any scale.
If anything, a better argument would be that late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
"these trends only sow insecurities" is a very sad statement. Clothing choices is way of self expression for many people. The world would not be a better place if we all worn black pants and grey tshirts, only a less interesting one.
As for the second part. My quote was actually 'New "trends" dictated by celebrities and designers every year do nothing but sow personal insecurities and environmental destruction.'
Obviously the phrase "do nothing but" is an absolutism that I should not have used, since it makes it easy for someone to provide a single counter-example to disprove it. I don't deny that self-expression and "art" are positive things. The question is whether those positive effects are worthwhile considering the negative ones. My opinion is that it's not even close. Not by a long shot.
>late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
Agreed. But, I think the fashion industry itself is largely morally bankrupt. It preys on peoples insecurities, and environmental externalities more so than (almost) any other.
at last we agree. That's your opinion and nothing else. you also seem to confuse/conflate fashion with fast fashion. It seems just as fair and interestined as conflating movie making with the worst money grabbing by the numbers movie ever made.
Marvel movies always have that one shot of the protagonist impossible pecs and abs. It fuels insecurities for sure for some men. It is not a reason to stop making movies.
Look at history and you find plenty of examples how cultures and trends emerged and spread within parts of societies, then got dragged into the spotlight by people wanting to maximize profit of off it, selling soulless disposable shells of the originals.
Fashion is designed to be "consumable" in the sense that it has a totally made-up expiration date. An expiration date largely dictated by the very industry that created the product.
>It also ignores the fact that many people derive pleasure from 'dressing up', or 'looking their best'.
No it doesn't. That feeling can still exist in a world where clothing lasts two, three or four times as long. The entire premise of the (luxury) fashion industry is built on making a person feel bad if they aren't "in style". Where "in style" is a completely arbitrary standard made up by a select few extraordinarily rich people.
Besides, I'd argue that people use cooler/sexier/more fashion-forward clothing as a crutch for what might be a more serious issue with their self esteem. But I digress.
If you are a man, whatever looked good on Steve McQueen in the 70s would still give you the look today.
Is that not an effect of marketing though? The only time i've ever felt like i've 'stood out in a crowd' is when I'm walking around in something utterly ridiculous, or filthy work clothes or something.
To be honest, all the high end designer brands blend in to me and I can't be bothered to tell them apart from the lower end brands. When I do recognize one though, my thoughts tend to be something huh, look, someone spent $500 on a shirt/purse/other small singular item of clothing.
Then i'll look at the person next to them wearing less than that over their entire outfit in budget clothes and i'll think, hmm that person doesn't like to waste their money. They have some sense.
Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do, than some crap made in china I buy at the store at overinflated prices. Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
I'll agree with you about shoes though, a high quality pair of shoes is worth investing in. As long as their actually high quality and not just 'paying for the name' high quality.
Above a given level, for sure. But you can tell the difference of a $20 shirt and a $100 from a distance. I am not sure about the $100+ range. If you check the brands I mentioned, they are not overly expensive (in London, UK you can find them at 50% now, at outlets even less), yet they are considered hard-to-beat.
> Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
The fabric, maybe, but the amount of time some workpiece requires can be vastly different and might require more experienced hands. This can be especially true for tricky materials, such as leather and wool.
> Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
> I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do
Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
The thing is, for things like high quality clothes from leather and wool, I'm going to hit up a leatherworker's shop or something like the sheep wool clothes store they have in town here. Those things cost a bunch, are unknown designers or whatever but they're made locally out of high quality materials and are the kind of thing that should last a decade or more.
I'm not adverse to spending money on good expensive clothes, I'm adverse to spending money on expensive clothes where you're paying for the name of a designer.
If I'm going to drop that much money on a shirt or something, it's going to be from a local tailor or seamster. It's going to be fitted to me and it's going to be made of high quality long lasting materials. It's the kind of shirt that gets passed onto the grandkids or something.
>Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
What i've noticed is, except under very certain circumstances, most people are too worried about what they're wearing and look like, again unless you're overly ridiculous looking or something, to really notice your clothes. The exception being unless it's something they want themselves, or they're trying to find something flattering to say to a date or potential date.
>Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
First impressions are overrated. As long as you can make it to the second impression. The second impression is the one that counts. It's the one that's judged more thoughtfully and rationally, the one where your guard's down and such. This is why we have probationary periods in jobs, even for candidates with excellent first impressions and why once the honey moon faze of relationships end, problems tend to start.
Not faze...phase
I have no idea what i was thinking there.
I'm sure there are reasons but I'm actually a bit surprised that more customization isn't a more normal thing on the internet for a modest premium. I assume some combination of the economics and the way customization has to happen don't work in some way.
When you say this, do you mean Loakes, or Trickers/Church’s, or Edward Green/John Lobb? Just curious what you mean by high-end, US would be something like Allen Edmonds, Alden, (?? Not sure for top-tier US makers)
I have Cheaney, Barker (I know it is not high-end by pricing, but I'm very satisfied with their quality over the years) Paul Smith, Attila Shoes, Vass Shoes and some workhorses that are worn enough not to care to walk 10-20km a day or if I am on holiday.
I'm always surprised when people say these are not comfortable as much as a trainer. I have to disagree.
https://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wi...
(...off to scroll YouTube's infinite list of tech reviews..)
When people can freely go out and socialize again sales of fashion items will roar back.
Every pound of vehicle mass that you've purchased beyond what was absolutely necessary to 'get from A to B' and every unnecessary bit of travel or vacation has produced considerably more 'waste' than anything a the 'high end' of fashion.
Seriously - this moral concern coming from the 'land of a billion not-necessarily-even-useful plastic gadgets'?
The 'high end' of fashion is mostly art and artisanal, paid for by the rich. Not essential, but not a big deal.
Furthermore, the article is not about even 'high end fashion' - it's about basic attire. If people want to walk around in branded underwear then fine, but this is literally 'Idiocracy, 2008' coming to life.
If there is possibly an issue with 'waste' it's definitely not towards the 'upper 1/2' of the industry wherein such pieces could be worn for a lifetime, rather, it's 'fast fashion' i.e. H&M and Zara. This is arguably wasteful.
The reason I called out high-fashion is that it sets the trends and expectations for the rest of the industry. H&M and the like model their lines based on what the high end fashion industry says is in-vogue. They change this every season for no good reason other than to drive (false) demand at the mid and high end.
Other than that, nothing you wrote contradicts anything I wrote. Automobiles, travel and single use plastics are also valid issues but that's not the focus of this thread.
www.businessinsider.com/fast-fashion-environmental-impact-pollution-emissions-waste-water-2019-10
'Fast Fashion' is not even 'fashion' - it's literally just 'clothing'.
So yes we wear 'cheap clothing' and it has pollution effects, which are greater than 'aircraft' but not nearly as big as other industries.
And as to the premise of the article, making 'stretchy pants' is in no way more environmentally friendly than making 'more formal attire'.
I'm not clear why you would call fast fashion, "not even fashion". That sounds embarrassingly elitist.
To be honest I'm not sure what point you're making that relies on their being a clear distinction between the two? I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're trying to say high fashion is not as culpable or "bad" as fast fashion is?
Sure, not directly. The lower volume and having more money for better sourcing probably makes it slightly more sustainable.
But, high fashion sets the dangerous expectation that you have to update your wardrobe regularly in order to fit in. That's the crux of the problem. They also directly profit off of fast fashion churn [0].
[0] https://www.thefashionlaw.com/just-how-successful-is-your-fa...
Its just a manifestation of human need to be in a hierachy. Makes no sense to me to attack a particular symptom.
I can think of a lots examples more destructive than fashion
expensive cars
single family homes with 5 bedrooms and 4 toilets
yatches
driving/flying vacations
suburbs/ need for "space"
overeating meat
I think its a common kneejerk reaction against fashion in nerd circles because we never found it useful and something that played to our negatives. A complait that has very little to do with the environment, really.
There is nothing kneejerking about being against 'fast fashion'.
The fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply. [0]
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions. [0]
For comparison it produces more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. [0]
The wastefulness of it all is even more dismaying. 85% of the world's textile production ends in a landfill every year.[0]
I agree that all the things in your list are as non-essential as the fashion industry but none of them (except maybe for the meat industry) have the business volume and carbon impact of the fashion industry as it currently operates. None of this is sustainable.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.nl/fast-fashion-environmental-im...