Fashion as Advertising/Douchebaggery

[tongodeon]

There's an aspect of fashion which is purely aesthetic. Some clothes and jewelery make you look nicer than other clothes and jewelery. But there's another aspect that seems a bit more biological. Wearing expensive clothes advertises that you have the financial resources to raise your offspring to adulthood. "I have so much money that I have no

Comments

[ikkyu2]

As a parenthetical note, watching you grow up over the last ten years has been enjoyable. You make the process so explicit.

This post made me laugh and laugh and laugh...

[ex_doohickey67]

I just buy cheap stuff because it is just as durable as the *name brand* stuff and no one really knows the difference.

:)

You can even be *creative* if you get some things from a thrift store (although not sure about guys stuff at thrift stores unless it is the castro) and mix them with new stuff.

[crisper]

Many of the same people who buy overpriced clothes they can't actually afford also have body image problems without ever once looking at the ingredient lists of the food they eat. As you say: decision-making problem. They have not been sufficiently educated - by their parents, their friends, their schools, their churches, or their society in general - to prioritize by actual need and consider their limits in advance of exceeding them. (Perhaps some, additional, are not smart enough to understand such a lesson even if they were told a great deal, but I don't think that's the dominant failure mode.)

While doing some holiday shopping, I was at a Toys R Us a few weeks ago and saw an $85 battery-driven 4WD ATV, designed to vaguely look like a Hummer knockoff with a suggested age of 1 to 3 years. One year olds often can't even walk reliably; what kind of idiot thinks such a child needs a luxury SUV? Answer: an idiot who is going to wonder why their kids seem perpetually unsatisfied as they grow up.

[k0re]

supposedly conspicous consumption has always been a nouveau riche phenomenon. really rich people tend to buy things that only make them more money and what luxuries they end up accumulating they've gotten for free usually coming with whatever they've purchased as a perk. if one were to ask any super rich person where they got something, they almost always will tell you it was given.

[adw3345]

Please distill what you just wrote to my daughter, who has been spending the lunch money I've given her on Abercrombie and Fitch clothes. She claims that she can only wear these jeans because they're made for skinny people and they fit her. Okay, I can grant her that, but they come with holes built-in and she buys shirts with the store's name emblazoned on them. I am not sure why she has to PAY to do their advertising for them.

-Derrick

[quercus]

"I am not sure why she has to PAY to do their advertising for them."

Find a little book called "Class" by Paul Fussell. It's a laugh all the way through, but especially the section on "legible clothing", as he terms it.

[tongodeon]

I am not sure why she has to PAY to do their advertising for them.

Because if nobody knew what brand she bought, nobody would know how much money she'd convinced you to spend on them. It's all part of advertising your affluence to convince men that the inheritance you leave them will help them raise their children. (Or that your wealth and social status will positively correlate with better intelligence/education/earning potential in your daughter and granddaughter.)