Questions about fashions, designers, and costs

In My Humble Opinion
41

[QUOTE=Zsofia]
You know what’s funny? How many Navy guys own AMAZING suits. Know why? Because they have port calls in Asia.

Seriously. When my dad went to Hong Kong on a business trip, he spent something like $600 on a suit that was made by an honest to goodness tailor from scratch to fit him. Took two days. He’d spend that much easily on a nice suit here that had to be altered. I have never seen the man look so good as when he was wearing his Hong Kong suit. (He has since lost too much weight for it to fit him, and retired so he no longer wears suits except to funerals.) What that means is - what counts the most is fit. That is true no matter your size, your gender, your age, or your status.
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You know, I’ve heard the same thing about tailored clothing in Asia. A friend of mine went to China and came back with ridiculously well-made, specially-tailored, silk dresses and shirts and such that she paid almost nothing for, in terms of comparative pricing to the US.

That aside, I gotta say. I’ve had my share of nice clothing and crappy clothing in my life, and I’ve also seen women stuff themselves into unflattering $800 skirts. Just because it’s “designer” does not mean that it’s going to look good on you. Haven’t you ever seen the Oscars? All of those dresses cost an arm and a leg and fully half of them make the actress look stumpy or whatever.

Meanwhile, I look down on people who need to spend this amount of money on clothing. In my mind, it’s all laziness and misplaced sense of what “style” really is. I have friends who work 80 hours a week at less than minimum wage and look fantastic every day because they go to thrift stores and buy clothes for $5 that ms. richie on park avenue bought on a whim and gave away two months later because it ran “out of season”. “Seasonal” clothing is the only way that fashion designers can get away with charging an arm and a leg for “new” styles, to convince people that it’s cutting-edge and new and unique and that, in order to be fashionable, you have to wear something “new” and “unique” and “in season”. Bullshit! Fashion and looking good are about making good choices for you and your body and your skin tone, not spending money and buying something new and expensive each “season” in the “new” cut and the “new” style and the “new” color. I’ve gotten plenty of compliments on no-name clothing I picked up for pennies at thrift stores. I worked in corporate offices in NYC in almost EXCLUSIVELY SECOND-HAND clothing, many no-name labels, and intermixed with cheap department store crap, and I was always complimented on how well I dressed. Anyone who thinks that throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at their wardrobe means that it’s going to build itself is sadly mistaken. A fool and her money, yadda yadda.

And, you know what, it IS similar to picking out a picasso. Anyone with a million bucks to throw away can tack up a random master painting onto any wall anywhere and it’ll look great. That being said, if you spend a little time and learn a little bit about art, you can pick up a $200 piece of art at an independent art fair that will look AMAZING in your house. It’s the same thing with clothing. You can look fine by throwing money around at designer clothing, or you can spend effort picking out nice pieces that fit you well and achieve the same effect for much, much less without giving into the fashion scam. It’s up to you.

42

[QUOTE=DMark]

Let me give ya one tip: Drop the money and just buy DKNY’s best selling item - the “cozy”.
Here is the link to a very simple, basic view of this item.

OK - looks simple, is wildly expensive and from the pictures on that link you might think “so what”?

Well, one of my students works there and showed (in a speech class demo speech) about 30 different ways you can wear this amazing piece of clothing!!!

You can put it on forwards or backwards, throw it over your shoulder, wrap it, tie it around your waist, wear it at work, take it off and put it back on in a different manner and wear it out to dinner at an expensive restaurant, then take it off, put it back on differently and wear it to go bowling later!

According to my student in fashion, this item is the number one best seller at DKNY and the design function(s) are practically limitless! The class was blown away with the demo speech and almost everyone in the class went out to buy one - despite the price.

The student mentioned that other companies have tried to copy this item, but never got the right weight of the material nor the exact fit and lengths.

All I am trying to say with this rambling response is that you sometimes have to pay for quality and design. After watching this demo (and go to a DKNY to see for yourself), if I were a woman, this would be one item of clothing I would go out and buy immediately. Sheer genius in both design and function!
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Disagree! This is another one of those looks that is nice on stick-thin women but, for regular people, falls rather short of flattering. Most women’s figures are not going to support a huge bunch of fabric around the hips or stomach. Defined waist-shapes are much better for 99% of women. This, IMHO, is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that much of high-priced fashion is a scam. Just because you CAN wear something a certain way doesn’t mean you SHOULD. I’m not going to pay $200 for a limitlessly unflattering sweater!

43

[QUOTE=NightRabbit]
Disagree! This is another one of those looks that is nice on stick-thin women but, for regular people, falls rather short of flattering. Most women’s figures are not going to support a huge bunch of fabric around the hips or stomach. Defined waist-shapes are much better for 99% of women. This, IMHO, is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that much of high-priced fashion is a scam. Just because you CAN wear something a certain way doesn’t mean you SHOULD. I’m not going to pay $200 for a limitlessly unflattering sweater!
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Well, the girl who did her speech took that into consideration and used both a thin girl and a rather hefty girl in class to demonstrate this. She admitted that a few of the looks didn’t work for both of them, but she was able to give the hefty girl several different uses that were more than flattering - especially the long front and long back version, and then the simple one knot tie in the front that actually gave that girl a smaller waistline.

Many of my students are anything but thin, and many also intend to design for women who don’t look like they just stepped off a runway in Milan.

44

Sorry to intrude, fashionistas, but I have a question.

After the design phase where the designer (artist) is finished with the product, isn’t it mass produced at that point? Or does this crack team of tailors and color decoders personally make each and every $400 pair of shoes sold?

I ask this question seriously, because I know there are plenty of “handmade” products out there. I just am not sure as to the level of “handmaking” going on with designer goods.

The main reason I ask this is because I’m not sure that the Picasso analogy is really appropriate. It’d make more sense if people were willing to shell out millions of dollars for recreations of Picasso’s works. However, even with the really good Picasso replications, no one’s willing to pay that price.

(For example, this could be a UL, but I remember in high school often being told that the newest $200 Nikes cost an obscenely low amount of money to make in factories in <insert 3rd world country>.)

After a certain point, are fashion companies like pharmaceutical companies? The markup is all justified by “R&D” costs?

45

[QUOTE=tremorviolet]

By 35, I was out of school and at a “real” job so I had a little more money to spend and I started checking out what the (slightly) higher end stores had to offer, moving from Target and Old Navy to Banana Republic and J. Crew. Then I realized that for not much more than J. Crew, I could get a very, very nice skirt from Nordstroms or Niemans and, dang it, I was frugal in other parts of my life (my car is an '88) so I could splurge on Louboutins occasionally.

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bwahahahaha
Gap anything. old Navy and bananananana republic are all the same corporation. Just like Limited, Limited Too, New York Outlet are the same corporation, and Sears/Kmart are the same corporation, just names to appeal to different markets.

In general the polo that you get at Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic are made in the same factory and the only difference is the label they sew in. [The family business used to be textiles…my dad still gets the trade magazines.]

46

[QUOTE=aruvqan]
bwahahahaha
Gap anything. old Navy and bananananana republic are all the same corporation. Just like Limited, Limited Too, New York Outlet are the same corporation, and Sears/Kmart are the same corporation, just names to appeal to different markets.
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Yes, Gap, Old Navy and Banana are owned by the same parent corporation. IIRC Limited Corp sold off the New York and Co line, but does still own Express, both Limited brands, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath & Bodyworks.

Actually not so. While they may indeed be made in the same factories, IME the cuts are different. To use your example of polo shirts, I find Old Navy uses patterns that are cut very straight which means they tend to look good on teens, who are still fairly straight. Banana polos are straighter than, say, Ann Taylor, but they are curvier than what I find at Old Navy. For me, Gap runs a bit in between the two. Again, that’s my experience in those three stores.

Bottom line, I want my clothes to be made of quality fabrics that are well made. That’s one reason I don’t much bother with Express any more because their fabrics are so cheap and nasty-feeling.

As a quick aside, the one place I haven’t seen size deflation is in retail sewing patterns. I find it very interesting that I’m a zero or two at Banana et al but when making my clothes I am still a 10. Those measurements haven’t changed and are a good reality check for me.

47

[QUOTE=aruvqan]
bwahahahaha
Gap anything. old Navy and bananananana republic are all the same corporation. Just like Limited, Limited Too, New York Outlet are the same corporation, and Sears/Kmart are the same corporation, just names to appeal to different markets.

In general the polo that you get at Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic are made in the same factory and the only difference is the label they sew in. [The family business used to be textiles…my dad still gets the trade magazines.]
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Dude, I totally know that they’re the same company but there are some differences in quality. Banana Republic uses nicer fabrics and has a more work oriented style, Gap stuff is slightly better made than Old Navy. Maybe they just have slightly higher quality controls at the factory for their “premimium” lines, I don’t know. And that was also kinda my point, a skirt at Banana Republic is at least three or four times what a skirt is at Old Navy yet the difference in quality isn’t that great. For not too much more, I can get a much better made skirt from a department store.

48

[QUOTE=lorene]
I’m in a position where it’s time to donate a lot of my old clothing to Goodwill and replace some items. While I won’t be buying any $400 tee shirts, I am going to try to just scrimp and save my pennies and purchase classic “investment” pieces.
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I’m in about the same position. I’ve already donated most of my clothes, because I just hate the sight of them, but I’ve got a real problem replacing them. It’s partly the shopping anxiety I’ve developed and partly that I can’t bring myself to spend the money. I’ve thrift shopped so long that I apparently don’t know what clothes cost. Then I start to get angry because I think they’re trying to fuck me over. In theory, I can understand the “clothes as investment” thing, but I can’t seem to put it into practice.