[1]https://www.adidas.com/us/adilette-comfort-slides/GZ5892.htm...
[2]https://www.gucci.com/us/en/pr/men/shoes-for-men/slides-sand...
I myself, am of an unusual size, just slightly too tall and skinny for off the peg designer stuff in most shops, none of it fits me properly and looks terrible. But i do know shops with off brand stuff that actually fits.
So whenever i buy stuff i like and feel comfortable in, i’m “wasting my money”, but is happy when i pay three times the price for something that doesn’t fit me, is uncomfortable, and can’t actually clean without taking to a dry cleaner so i end up wearing once they seem happy. It drives me up the wall.
I do buy brands i like, eg, converse shoes are oversized compared to all other shoes so i can pick up the largest size in most shops and they fit me, but they aren’t the “right” brand and therefore “a waste of money”. I once spent an entire day trying to find some dress shoes that fit, they cost a fortune, are, tbh, dangerous to wear in real world conditions, and i’ve worn them three times, this, apparently is a good investment. I can’t bloody resell them, wtf?
As long as you are buying reasonable quality and comfortable, I don't think an adult has to explain their choices. ;-)
For the price of an off the rack Armani or Prada suit you can have one custom tailored from a really good tailor. For the price of a LV purse, you can have five or more from a solid local artisan. Higher quality (or exactly the same because this is where these large manufacturers often order stuff), full customization, an actual professional to advise you but people choose a soulless megacorp logo instead.
Stylish, though, is much harder to attain. A truly stylish person can look incredible in clothes they bought at the Goodwill, because they have an aesthetic sense potent enough to create visually pleasing combinations that are actually novel. A good example of someone like this is Tavi Gevinson. If you’re not familiar, she started a fashion blog called The Fashion Rookie at age 11, and she caught the attention of the fashion world by styling inexpensive clothing in novel and interesting ways.
I'm probably dating myself by saying that I used to work at Barney's New York when there was only a Barney's New York (the Womens's Store was still being built).
The first stop the salesmen (they were all male) took the customers to after picking out their suits was to the tailor (Attila on my floor) to get them altered for a perfect fit, which was included in the price.
Of course I get your point about cost effectiveness, but the average person dropping a few k on a single item of clothing really doesn't care about that.
In my case, if someone has a LV (or similar) bag/purse etc. I have no interest in interacting with them.
Interestingly, this 'signal' applies whether the bag is real or a cheap knockoff - I don't need to check whether the item is genuine, I assume I want to avoid interaction in both cases.
Or other things. Unless I missed the memo where they are paid in fake Birkin scrip that can only be exchanged for other fake Birkins.
You know who never has to swap between wheels because he always has a grinder that already has what he wants on it?
This guy.
Ditto for basic socket sets placed at typical work areas, tape measures all over the fuckin place, etc, etc.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
But do you scrape the stickers and replace them with ones that say "Milwaukee", just to pretend you can afford the expensive brand? Because that's what we're talking about here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cSiI9MB9MA
I've watched a few of these and the upshot is that there's definitely a quality difference between HF and name brands. I've burnt out a HF angle grinder (which they replaced under warranty). For the most part, HF tools work fine for hobby use and sure they're cheap. But when this angle grinder dies again I'll buy a name brand one (for probably $50) - it gets a lot of use and driving to HF is annoying.
If you're not sure how often you might use something: Buy the budget Harbor Freight equivalent tools, if you use it enough to wear it out/burn it up, upgrade to a better brand. If you never push it so hard it dies, you're perfectly fine with the HF version.
>The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
There is some relationship between price and quality (and I find this to be most true with things that are short term consumables vs longer term ones like clothing, home goods, etc). Namely you never get more than you pay for. But even assuming you're not getting less than you pay for (which happens a lot) the relationship is still rarely close enough to linear to work out in favor of anything but the cheapest goods or the cheapest goods that meet some specific criteria or feature that yields longer life.
Rich people's stuff lasts longer in large part because they can afford to over-provision and objects that are getting used at a fraction of "what they're good for" whereas poor people are buying the bare minimum and using it at 10/10ths right out of the gate.
Think about where a clipboard warrior on a construction site goes and what they do. Of course their clothing lasts longer than the general laborer who's climbing/crawling all sorts of places over all sorts of things and moving all sorts of material. They could buy the crappiest boots money can buy and still have them outlast anything the laborer wears.
The wealthy person buys a premium mixer that's more than up to the task of mixing what they want to mix. The poor person mixes bread dough with their Amazon-China special and hopes it's good enough.
The wealthy person pays for delivery or rents a truck. The poor person paid for the bump stops he's gonna use the bump stops.
And by wealthy here I mean HN white collar class people vs mid range blue collar type stuff.
It's not at all uncommon for the cheap thing to be much cheaper in total cost of ownership (TCO) than the "quality" item. Take a look at Edmunds TCO numbers for cars, for example. And back to Harbor Freight: I've heard of shops switching to Harbor Freight air tools because they're 1/10 the cost of the good stuff and last, I forget, something like 1/4 as long.
Cars are actually a great example. $30k will set you up with a Camry hybrid for >20 years. If you can only afford to finance a $15k econobox, you'll end up paying extra on interest, maintenance, and fuel while your car spends more time in the shop.
IMO this theory gets unfairly maligned by a strawman of "price == quality".
It's still possible to be too cheap however.
Different colours?
It's their time and money.
Second, you're assuming people whose income isn't from employment aren't subject to taxes.
Third, you're assuming consumption is not contributing to society.
Fourth, how do you propose wealthy people redistribute to the masses ?
Five, you're assuming wealth is unproductive. Should wealthy people just hoard their wealth in cash and gold instead of income generating assets?
You seem to be arguing against something the GP didnt actually say.
And so, the reasoning goes, you want to spend it on less stupid stuff, such as fakes, because, for the same amount of money, you can own 10x more fakes than the real thing.
But why do you need 10 fake Birkins?
There is something profoundly sad about people who spend time buying stuff; it's even sadder when they argue that they're being clever because they buy cheap stuff, so they can buy more of it. They are, in effect, hoarders.