At some point you have to decide something is in good taste or bad taste.
We’ve had threads on her about lower-class conspicuous consumption, and there were surprisingly few people coming out in favor of dental grills, owner modified vehicles, brightly colored fake nails, etc. People had no problem saying they were ugly, a poor use of money, etc.
People have no problem trashing the aspirational purchases of classes lower than them, while remaining extremely defensive about their own aspirations (look how defensive Bridget Burke is at one mention that Hermes scarves don’t please their personal aesthetics. Honey, I honestly wasn’t trying to be pretentious. If I were showing off my travels I could do a lot more pretentious than Paris.)
I guess that’s how the whole “creating, defending and aspiring to social classes” keeps going, but if you need to play out this drama by spending a few hundred bucks on literally a scrap of leather or a 12 page coloring book, then yeah, I’m not going to be too impressed.
For me, aspirational purchases like dental grills or Louis Vuitton handbags or pimped out cars tend to make me think the user is more nouveau riche and thus trying very hard to show they’re rich. They’ve got something to prove. Despite what rachellelogram said earlier about wearing consumption outwardly, I don’t really feel that way about an Hermes scarf.
I noticed that many of the designer mens’ clothes in Macy’s (Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren Polo, etc.) has the designer’s name or logo imprinted or embroidered on it (e.g., the polo player on the Ralph Lauren polo shirts). I really don’t care to be a walking billboard so instead I wear polo shirts from the Gap, LL Bean or Lands End that don’t have a visible logo. I’d be happy to buy the famous name shirts if the fabric quality and stitching were noticeably better and the logos were absent, but the fabric seems just as thin and the logos are tacky.
Isn’t that just an example of them successfully marketing to your demographic? I’d venture that the reason why it doesn’t seem aspirational to you is because it’s so seamlessly aligned with your aspirations that it seems to “make sense” to admire or want them. The price hits that sweet spot where it isn’t an impossible dream, but it’s also a purchase you’d have to put some thought into. Where that exact spot hits is just a matter of income and demographics. I dream of Anthropologie dresses and Macintosh computers. Someone else may see that Anthropologie as mall trash and Macs as ordinary work machines.
If it really is about fine workmanship, what’s with the tacky keychains and baby bibs? Like any luxury brand, they are in the business of selling dreams and lifestyles as much as actual products. The range of products offers a way to “buy-in” on several levels.
I was wondering the same thing myself. I really like [this scarf](http://i.ebayimg.com/14/!CErydtw!2k~$(KGrHqMOKiUE0p6iuBIPBNSrIo62K!~~_12.JPG) and if I had the opportunity to buy one, I would (though I would display it at home rather than wear it, as wearing it would be a sure way to ruin it. I’m a walking dirt and stain catcher). The artist clearly knew his subject and the detail is exquisite. But as I was reading this thread I wondered if some people would take less umbrage to thousands (and more likely tens of thousands) being spent on the original drawing than $400 on the scarf itself. Because one item is art! while the other is apparently a status symbol and nothing more.
Well, that’s a point as well. Someone who spends $500 on one Hermes scarf (or, over time - twenty of the darn things), that gets passed down to a daughter adds a lot less to the trash stream than someone who buys $500 worth of “as seen on TV” junk that hits the landfill within two years. Or someone who does their shopping at H&M and Forever 21 and throws out their wardrobe every six months.
There are layers to luxury. There is the sort of “I spent a lot of money and I want everyone to know it” that goes with carrying a LV bag. There is the “I spent a lot of money and unless you are the sort of person who can spot it (which are a pretty small subset of the general population), you’d never know” that comes from carrying a Birkin (a purse made by Hermes that can run $50k). Hermes scarves tend to run closer to the second group than the first.
Athena - how many times has anyone looked at your scarf and said “Is that a Hermes?!” Bet you its few and far between.
Never. Nor have I ever volunteered the information, other than showing a few friends shortly after I received it, but I don’t think I mentioned the brand, only “you should see this gorgeous scarf Mr. Athena gave me for my birthday!”
Seriously, in my friend demographic, I don’t think most of them would even know what Hermes was. We’re a working-class town, high-end fashion doesn’t really exist here. I think Mr. Athena got the idea to get the scarf for me after we visited France (yup, there I go, bragging again! I been to Yurp!) and I happened to remark on how beautiful I thought they were when we window-shopped at the Hermes store.
I guess if I lived somewhere else and belonged to the “right” crowd, it might be a status symbol, but I can assure you, around here, it’s just a scarf.
I read this rather funny article in some women’s magazine (probably at the dentist) after Devil Wears Prada or Sex in the City came out. The freelance writer/soccer mom was sent on an expensive shopping spree to NYC to discover “what is this high fashion thing all about.” She came home having spent a ton of money ($10k?) for clothes that she felt great in, that looked wonderful, and didn’t fit into her life.
So a few months later she goes out to dinner with her husband and slips into her expensive dress and her Louboutins (they may have been Manolos, but one of those) and is standing around waiting for a table when someone says “cute shoes” - she is all ready to gush about her $600 shoes when she realize the comment is being made to the person standing next to her (who is probably NOT wearing $600 shoes).
The conclusion of the article was sort of - if these things fit your life, they feel wonderful to wear. But who’s life do they fit? Not anyone I know. And, if you are buying them for status, midwestern soccer moms can’t tell the difference between Louboutin’s and cute shoes from Payless. Besides the heels slip into the grass at the soccer field.
I hear what you’re saying, Dangerosa (especially the shoe thing!) but I actually got into scarves (not just Hermes, I have cheapo ones too!) for the opposite reason. I don’t have many fancy clothes, to the point that the 2-3 times a year that I do need them, I’m digging through the closet trying to figure out what fits, what’s not 20 years out of style (10 is fine :D), and what’s clean. Somewhere along the way I figured out that I can wear fairly casual clothes, throw a nice scarf around my neck, and voila! Insta-fashion!
They’re also great for traveling light. A casual daytime outfit turns into something decent enough to wear out at night by changing your shoes and throwing a colorful scarf around your neck. Bonus points if I brush my hair!
I do the same thing with scarves. I don’t have Hermes (as I said upthread, I have a few handmade art scarves that weren’t cheap, but most of them are pretty inexpensive).
I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying. My beef is that people use the term “overpriced” in an attempt to elevate their opinion to an objective truth (see also “moral” and “ethical”). Some people aren’t happy simply having an opinion (ie “that costs more than I am willing to pay for it”), they need to turn their opinion into an attribute of the subject they are opining on (ie “that is overpriced”).
So, your translation misses the mark some if you were trying to justify that, because “comparable” necessarily involves subjectivity.
Believe it or not, what you’re saying isn’t all that hard to grasp. I got it, and am not going to be roped in to one of your arguments about the subjectivity of terms like “moral” or “right.” All I’m saying is being “overpriced” and being more than one is willing to pay are two distinct things. Apparently the disconnect is you don’t think that is the case, because everyone who uses the term “overpriced” has some kind of angle, needing to make their opinion the Word of Truth, or whatever, when really, it’s as simple as believing two similar items have very dissimilar price tags.
This reminds me of a brief story I’ll share. The only two backstory things you need to know are that Lexus and Toyota are made by the same people, and that my dad swears by Consumer Reports. So one day I’m at my parents’ house, which always has a shitload of old Consumer Reports magazines lying around, and I pick one up because I am that bored, and start reading car comparisons. I was tickled to no end when one of the Camry models and Lexus models were grouped as one car for the sake of the review. Don’t ask me what year or model, because I don’t remember, but they were the same car, and thus analyzed accordingly. Same drivetrain, same chassis, same interior, same damn car, except one was sold by the Lexus line, and the other by Toyota. One might reasonably argue that the Lexus model was “overpriced,” or as I said earlier, priced higher than items of comparable quality and style.
I don’t think people do it consciously (i.e., I don’t think they think “hmm, instead of saying that I am making a subjective judgment, I will attempt to convince others that I’m stating an objective fact about the world!”). I just think that some people have a problem with having an opinion, so they find ways to to imprint the world with their own feelings about it as if those feelings are an intrinsic part of the world. So, for these people, it is not the case that “I don’t want to pay what they are asking for the item” (a statement about the person), it is the case that “the item is overpriced” (a statement about the item).
Just because they are the same car for purposes of that Consumer Reports review doesn’t mean they are the “same damn car.” They could (and probably do) have different options, electronics, interior appointments, and styling.
This is just asinine. The world “comparable” in this context means “roughly the same.” It takes human judgment to determine if one scarf is “roughly the same” as another scarf, and different people will answer differently if you ask them whether two scarves are roughly the same. Say one guy has never seen a scarf in his life, so all scarves are comparable. Or another guy designs scarves for a living, so really each scarf is different from the next. There’s no litmus test that determines whether two scarves are roughly the same or not–it’s a matter of human judgment.
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