This came up on a meme that a friend shared to a group that some of my friends are in and the point was to make fun of a friend of mine that is always proudly wearing clothes with brand names on them. This is mostly about his choices of shirt and no, I am not a snob and I have very little in the way of fashion sense but the meme really resonated with me because of a recent adventure I had been on.
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Superdry is just one of many labels that came into existence while I was already overseas and not part of the whole western marketing immersion so I didn't even know that such a company existed until my friend started turning up with these shirts on. I find it to be a ridiculous company just like "Supreme" but to be fair, I was roped in by certain brands as a teenager and even young adult.
When I was a kid, Quicksilver was all the rage and my parents refused to buy it for me. I had to save up and get them on my own. Looking back, my parents were correct on this one because there really is no difference between a Quicksilver, Superdry, Supreme, or any other brand name shirt and the plain ones you see at Wal-Mart or somewhere like that.
Well, there is a difference I suppose. One of them is $50 and the other is $7.
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This is the meme in question and yes, it makes total sense to me. Somehow somewhere along the line the industry convinced us to advertise for them and pay a premium for the item at the same time. Do you ever just stand back in awe at how utterly stupid we all are? I grew out of this when I was in my early 20's and was starting to pay for everything myself in life but my friend, who is getting near 50 years old, still buys all this stuff and pays a lot of money for it.
For some people I would imagine it is a way of advertising how much they paid for something and if that is the case, I am very happy that I am not part of that culture. If there exists a type of person out there that only wants to be around people that pay a lot of money for their clothes (or really anything else that they have) I am really happy to not be around superficial people like that. I would much rather have the money in the bank, wouldn't you?
Brand tribalism even exists because of this and I recall a time when I was in high school and an arrogant classmate was talking to the teacher of the class named Mr Reid (great teacher, that's why I still remember his name 25 years later) and the arrogant student was trying to tell Mr. Reid that "Reebok shoes suck" as he paraded around in his new Nikes. I don't know if the arrogant classmate realized this or not but both Mr. Reid and myself were at the time, wearing Reeboks. The thing is, I was an athletic type at that time in my life and actually used my shoes for basketball. I knew that this kid didn't participate in any sports so how exactly do you know which shoes are good and which aren't? Are you sure Michael Jordan didn't convince you that Nike's are good?
I now live in a part of the world where basically all shoes are made and I whole-heartedly believe that there is no difference between most shoes other than the logo that is on the side of them. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are all actually manufactured in the same factory by the same people.
I know it is cliché, but as I have gotten older I have become more attached to whatever shoes happen to be comfortable which means that since I am in my 40's, New Balance shoes are my go to. I almost always am wearing sandals anyway and the label that I wear for sandals is "whatever they have in my size."
One time I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, NYC, and we went to a store that had clothes for sale in it and it was amazing to me to find shirts, just regular shirts, that were hundreds of dollars each. Other than what was written on the tag there was no difference between this shirt and one that they would sell at JC Penny for $10. By the way, is JC Penny still a thing? I read this article about the most expensive t-shirts in the world and discovered that people are paying $2000 for Armani plain white t-shirts. Have people lost their damn minds?
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The only time I can see that a shirt would be worth that kind of money would be in really rare situations such as it was the last shirt that Kurt Cobain wore on TV before he died. Not the brand or type of shirt... THE shirt.
Recently, I was out in one of Danang's many shopping malls trying to find some shirts that would actually fit me. I am average size by western standards but a bit of a giant when it comes to your average Vietnamese person. Therefore, I am quite limited by what is available. I was getting very frustrated in the name brand stores like Nike because the shirts they have for sale in there would be 50-60 USD, were no different than the ones in the generic store that unfortunately had no big sizes, and it had their logo all over the damn thing.
I will take this to the grave as a solemn promise: I will NEVER pay $50 for a t-shirt and I don't understand why anyone would do so.
We don't need to understand why, because they don't understand we don't we 😂
Once I purchased a very good quality brandless t-shirt at Hat Yai. The store operator won't let go for anything less than 150 Bhat, since I know my shit, I agreed and took it. Well, my buddy was the one saying, he don't understand how would I pay such a premium for a no brand shirt 🤣
Oh that t-shirt I'm still wearing until today, since 2016. So, technically I know my shit... Shirt I mean.
That is a very cheap price for a shirt but if it was at a market in Hat Yai, that is understandable. As far as brands are concerned in Thailand, unless you are in a shopping mall at that brand's store, you are almost certainly getting an illegal knockoff of the shirt anyway and well, it is probably exactly the same material.
Reminds me of my brother's stories as a white dood with size 12 feet.
I MIGHT have bought a band shirt from a concert of my favourite band for $40 maybe 1 time. Most of my shirts are free or gifts these days.
Yeah I did that a couple of times as well. I don't know what I did with those overpriced shirts either. Mine were always black.
I was a buyer in the retail industry myself for a major retailer than sold clothes with no label for cheap. It is famous around Europe and has now hit the states and is making waves. Our company would sell sports socks for €3. It would cost us around €0.80 to make them in China. The sock supplier used to supply the same sock to a well known sports brand as well so all that was on them was a brand name logo on the side. They sold their socks for €15. Same sock, Just with a logo. Madness. PS I do like the feel and fit of a superdry tshirt however. This is what I am paying for here with them.
This adds credibility to what I always suspected. I was always thinking that there is no way that all of the clothing manufacturers all have their own sock factories, or factories for anything else that they make. So all the socks are made in the same place and they just get orders for different logos to be printed on them to the tune of highly inflated consumer prices.
I don't think I have ever purchased a pair of socks from a major label.
Yeah the Germans have it figured out. When I first arrived in Germany I did a study on them on their shopping habits and this is a coincidence by the way but I will tell the story. If I am heading on holidays I go to a shop and buy a pair of trainer liners. I just pick a colour , look at the price and maybe the style , make my mind up and off I go and make the purchase . But in Germany the average shopper does what I did then did something extra and checked the material content on the label. So our sock was 90% cotton and 10% elastine. But the customer did not buy this He or she went to H&M next door and checked the content of the sock in that shop. Same content but €2 more expensive @ 5 euro . They then came back to us and made the purchase. I was selling 10,000 of a white trainer liners at €3 in Frankfurt Zeil per week. That was only the white by the way. So it's all about the material content. Clothes is not rocket science. The content is on every label. The higher the cotton content then the better quality the label. There are a few cheaper pretenders by you cannot outdo cotton. Try it on your own gears labels .you would be amazed at the amount of Polyester in the "quality" brand names .
This all makes a lot of sense to me. Well done for you on capitalizing on this!
The funny thing is, New Balance is actually kind of a hot brand again now. It's not just the shoes that your dad wears. I noticed the other day that a lot of professional athletes are moving to them. I recently bought some Nike Air Maxx (at a big discount) and they are some of the most comfortable shoes I have ever owned. I tend to prefer the cheaper pop culture shirts that Old Navy carries. Two for $10 and all of that. Sure, they might have like a classic Mt. Dew logo on them or something, but I think that is a little more acceptable. I do have a shirt from a distillery called Michter's that I visited. It's more of a souvenir thing when I wear it versus hunting for social status.
That's good to hear about NB. Those have been my favorite shoes since the one day at Shoe Carnival years ago when I saw a "wide size" shoe that was on special. I have 2 pairs of NB's outside my apartment door right now and they are the most difficult shoes to come by in Vietnam since although a lot of their shoes are manufactured in this country they only have ONE retail outlet in the entire country and as you would expect they don't carry large western sizes.
Ah, good old shoe carnival! I remember that store well! I wish they made them easier to get for you.
Is it still around that store? I loved it even though I never got to go into the money vacuum.
I'm not sure. Maybe in a mall here or there, but I can't tell you the last time I was in an actual mall!
Wear whatever you want and whatever is the most comfortable is the only way to be. I do stick to a few brands these days over all the others due to their fit and the quality. Most cloths today do not last and you are lucky if you have t shirts that last a year or two.
My wife was big into Guess hand bags until she saw her unused still in the packaging hand bags fading in color. Just because the items are branded does not mean they are not poor quality which they obviously are. Pure rip off and why shopping for brands is stupid unless you have found a brand you particularly like.
The purse industry is a particularly crazy one to me. I will hear of stories every now and then about handbags costing tens of thousands of dollars and it is merely for the name or logo on it.
I think the closest I have ever come to wanting something fancy like that is a desire to have at least one high-end wristwatch at some point in my life.