question for those of you interested in fashion:

[purldrop]

how do you feel about all of these big-named designers doing lines for major discount chain stores? i just read today's daily candy about Abaeté doing a line for Payless Shoes. isn't it still crap produced in crappy conditions in some crappy sweatshop??? isn't that one of the reasons we like fancy designers?...because designer items are produced by

Comments

[pintuck]

people want things cheaply...they've been trained by consumer culture and big business (think wal-mart, etc...i call it the "wal-mart mentality") to expect cheap. and to achive that cheapness, something has to be compromised along the way: materials, people, construction, design. there is planned obsolescence in most consumer products today. make it cheap, with cheap materials, on the backs of low-paid workers...it breaks, and we have to buy another one. for a lot of people, it's really a matter of economics...they don't have a lot of money and want to get more for their dollar, even if it's just quantity and not quality.

designers do these collaborative lines to reach more consumers, but usually these products are more than that company's typical price points, which still makes it somewhat untouchable to many. i'm kind of torn about how i feel about it in general...depending on the day, i'm sometimes in support of it and other days i'm not so sure.

generally, i think people need to be trained to appreciate good design, how to recognize good craftsmanship/materials, and they must be trained to appreciate WHY something amazing is more expensive (if it contains time-intensive detail, finer materials that warrant a larger price, etc....not just cheap crap with ridiculously marked-up pricepoints). they might eschew the garbage and save for the best. but it takes interest and care and it has to be taught, and not everyone is interested...

anyway, just thoughts.