Comment by nathan_compton
3 months ago
The pants cost around 500 bucks? I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I usually buy cheap clothes and mend them and ten years for a pair of pants isn't unusual for me. I probably haven't spent $500 dollars on clothes in a year ever in my entire life (except maybe the year I bought a suit for getting married).
I guess I'm just genuinely curious how you found yourself in the position of even contemplating $500 for pants.
> but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
It depends on how much you earn. I don’t mind spending tens of thousands on Loro Piana cashmere because it’s really nice, but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial.
Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
A few years ago I too would’ve considered $500 for pants to be absurd, at this point I just go to a tailor and pay slightly more than that but save tons of time in the long term and always have perfect fitting pants. The time savings alone are tremendous, after getting a pair fitted properly I can just order new ones whenever I need without having to spend hours going through shops looking for the right pair of pants.
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.
Not that those people aren't here, but I don't think they are the average. I think the average person here is an un/under-employed tech enthusiast who dreams of startups but spends his time here instead of actually working to make it happen. I'm not in that group by the way, I stopped dreaming about startups 10 years ago.
Bored developers are probably another large fraction.
You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech.
I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it.
My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
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In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin.
I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)
I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
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> you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin
Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?
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Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.
This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit.
Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental.
Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money.
News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism.
FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
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He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.
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> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
Are you sure about that?
I would be surprised if it was much above the US salary average, considering the global audience of HN.
I could be totally wrong!
However, at the very least I think we can agree that it’s a site chock-full of aspiring multimillionaires.
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There's some weird online effect where people assume everyone they talk to on the internet makes essentially the same exact amount of money they do.
I've noticed this most in a forum for a country I used to live in where foreigners would come in and post "What's an affordable hotel/restaurant/bar/travel experience".
Uh, I have no idea what "affordable" means to you!?
Occasionally I read the local subreddit /r/monaco, and see posts like “how much should my weekly food budget be?” with no further information included.
In a place where “normal” genuinely ranges between a couple of euros at McDonald’s and 500+ euros a day in fancy restaurants (easily 1000+ if you drink wine) it always feels like a particularly outrageous question.
There are many places in the world where that’s not a very unreasonable question, but this certainly isn’t it.
What is your NW?
Less than $10M with the mortgage, my income will hit $5M this year pre-tax for the first time (almost half of that goes to the government)
Valuing my vast and eclectic empire of small websites earning between $1k and $300k per year is tricky because it’d presumably be tremendously hard to sell them all at once. Of course some reasonable multiple would arrive at some much higher number than my bank account+physical assets.
I never knew what a difference good pants can make. I usually just bought my pants from H&M/other retailers or Amazon. I usually bought what I considered good value pants for like $30-80. I then, out of curiosity, bought pants that were 2-4 times as expensive (~$150) and it really made a difference. I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
- A button that just "clicks". Most pants I usually owned had a traditional pants button. Those more expensive ones had buttons that just "clicked". Away goes the worry about a button falling off while you are on the go. - Pockets with hidden zippers: My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
There are more "features" but those are the important ones. The most important feature is just the material that is used. I barely feel it. Also the company that makes those pants makes other things as well. I ordered a lot of cloths by now and the amazing thing is that everything they make fits me perfectly. I don't know how they do it… When I usually buy pants I have to try on like 10 pants to find one that fits. Even if I pick the "correct" size.
Alright, after that lead-in, you really need to tell us what the pants are.
It might be a well known brand to many folks – I am not sure since I am new in the US. My pants are all from Rhone Apparel.
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> I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
I managed to get the same experience for free by losing weight.
I lost around ~9-11 kilos over the last year and a half and went two sizes down in pants (went from european size 50 to size 46, with a few more kilos to lose until i can wear 44).
It's incredibly nice to be able to pick pretty much any pair of pants/jeans my size and have it fit pretty much perfectly.
The pants I wear are still usually either from OVS (https://www.ovs.it) or from Doppelganger (https://www.doppelganger.it/it/uomo/abbigliamento/pantaloni....) but they fit me almost perfectly.
> My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
I had one with these as well, although probably not of the same quality, and I always feared the zip scratching the screen of my phone when putting it in my pocket.
You are comparing cheap pants to average pants. Expensive pants are >$500 but they don't add much value over average pants.
I prefer not wearing pants.
Different strokes for different folks. I'm a fashion lover but a fan of cheap cars, and I could equally say something similar about people who drive new luxury cars when there's plenty of reliable functionality to be had under $10k. There's a lot of craftsmanship that goes into nice clothes, and you can get way more expensive than $500. And fashion is a form of art in a way. What makes a painting worth thousands of dollars?
I always have a hard time telling is it craftsmanship and superior materials or marketing
For clothes as a rule of thumb if you're not interested in doing a lot of research, items made in Portugal or Japan are more often than not priced fine enough, yes you'll pay some markup for a designer, but on average should last if you look after them.
$500 for something you might wear for a decade straight? A brand-new pair of Levis at JC Penny is gonna run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
But also, quality has diminishing returns in basically every category. At the low end, it's extremely efficient to improve the quality of your product and charge a bit more. At the high end, you can't make any more inexpensive moves to set yourself apart, so you use higher end materials, fabrication methods, and workers.
> $500 for something [...] run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
To be honest, I did abandoned school as quickly as I could and my math skills aren't that of my peers, but 5x times as much is pretty "much more expensive" for most people out there, not sure how someone can say else with a straight face. $100 vs $500 would easily be a "Can I eat properly the entire month?" decision for a lot of the population.
Wrong comparison.
The right comparison is "For people who can spend $500 on a pair of pants, what is the financial difference between $100 and $500?"
For most of that subpopulation, not much.
> A brand-new pair of Levis at JC Penny is gonna run you like $90 anyways
I'm seeing a range of around $33 to $60 at the moment, with other brands dipping under $30.
https://www.jcpenney.com/g/men/jeans?id=cat100250010
When I go into the store four years ago, Levi jeans are $100. Yet even Macy's website shows them for $60 now?
Maybe there was some significant quality degradation. They recently added elastic fibers to like their entire khaki shorts line, which makes them dramatically less durable. I bet they did the same here.
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Every pair on that page is ~$70, but some are on sale. I overassumed a little on inflation for them, I guess.
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What in Silicon Valley salary is this statement?
Median weekly salary is 1159 according to BLS. That’s 7% of weekly salary vs 43% of weekly salary.
I think it's implied that one would need to buy the cheap pants several times to match the lifespan of the expensive pants.
It's a few hundred bucks. If you're in the category of buying luxury pants, this is not much money. I really do not care how affordable it is for people making minimum wage, and am obviously not talking about their perspective.
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HN is full of very wealthy people, I don’t think pointing this out is that useful. It’s pretty obvious who the target audience is there.
I can wear a $40 pair of jeans that I really like and keep buying for its style and durability and invest the $460 remaining dollars and in 10 years I would have about $1200
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I don't think Steve Jobs went shopping for pants. Nor do many of the people who buy this sort of garment. They either have an assistant who buys things for them, whose goal is to keep them happy and not blow a predetermined budget, or they go to a store and sit in a nice suite where a personal shopper suggests things to them. In either scenario the price of individual items probably don't even get a mention.
Steve was a notoriously picky shopper and obsessed with details. In the biography it says they went without a dishwasher or something in his house for half a year because he could never be satisfied with the geometry or finishing. So his billionaire wife washed dishes by hand.
I don't doubt it, but I don't think Steve was out there browsing at Lowe's either. You can be very picky and still not shop the way the rest of us shop.
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I believe the word for it is "rich".
They save you from buying 10 pairs at $100. They not only are durable, including not fraying, etc., but keep their form and color, and they have a beautiful form and color to begin with. You get what you pay for (if you buy the right $500 pants).
Someone outside IT might say, why pay for a Macbook when you can buy a $100 Chromebook? Why use Vim or Emacs when you can use Notepad/TextEdit (though those all cost the same!).
Someone in IT will probably say "why pay for a Macbook, which is a toy, without even real MS Office, when you can buy a chinese configuralble laptop for same price that will have 256gb of RAM and a 5090"
I once paid $1000 for some sneakers. I’m still regularly wearing them 7 years later. I’ve bought $50/$100 and they never last that long. It was an insane purchase at the time, done in a moment of jet lagged madness when my shoes fell apart in an airport. But over time it’s turned out to be a great investment. Smart, comfortable, well made.
Do you wear them like $50 shoes or like $1000 dollar shoes? I run around 18 miles a week on trails and I doubt your $1000 dollar sneakers would last ten years with that usage pattern.
When you run 18 miles a week you should measure the lifetime of your shoes by mileage rather than time. I think 600 miles is about right for a pair of running shoes. It's just that some people run 600 miles in a year, others run that in ten years.
I'm sure that if you got super high quality durable running shoes, and only used them for running, you'd get some good milage out of them before the shoes either wore out or wore through.
I play tennis regularly and only go through a pair of shoes maybe once a year or every 18 months. I always pay extra for a higher quality and more durable pair because they last. I only use the shoes for tennis - I put them on when I enter the court and take them off when I end my session. The shoes probably run me $180-200 but totally worth it if they can last me 100+ hours.
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I do have a pair of $250 leather riding boots that have lasted me many years so far and I'm pretty sure will last that long, but they also require cleaning and polishing a few times a year....
I'm happy to pay $$$$ for something that lasts but my exerience is some of the most expensive things I've bought, well known luxury brand names, had the lowest quality.
In my younger years, I really did believe that cost correlated with longevity, but as I've gotten older, I'm finding that most of the very affordable things I've purchased, including shoes and pants and jackets, have lasted 15+ years. So I no longer believe that paying a thousand dollars for an item of clothing is going to yield a material benefit in terms of longevity -- I think some of it is just marketing, but there are also other elements of comfort and fit. I'm just not very discerning.
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As someone who is on the lookout for long-lasting durable products, what brand and model sneakers did you buy? How often do you wear these?
I've heard that Common Projects are pretty good at a $400 retail price point, but it sounds like you got something else.
My understanding with Common Projects, is that if you are looking to spend $400 on a blank sneaker, they set the standard and have the most brand awareness, but now there are plenty of smaller brands making virtually identical sneakers with better materials and/or construction for the same price or less.
Like with anything else, buying Common Projects you are paying for the brand (the subtle gold lettering on the side of their shoes).
I got a pair of Santoni’s leahther sneakers in 2017, for about $500. I still have them and while they worn out a bit, they are still nice.
The most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. I remember describing them like “walking in clouds”.
Never bought any of them and all the other pairs I got from different brands in the $200-$400 bracket have been awfully disappointing
I got a pair of Common Projects Chelsea boots maybe 10 years ago now. I still have them, they're good shoes. I wore them all the time for the first year I got them. They don't make it into my rotation much now these days though. My most worn shoes now are: Guidi PL2, 11 by BBSxSalomon Bamba 2 high, Rick Owens "Vans", Rick Owens "Dunks", CCP Prosthetic Tornados, and Visvim Christo slides. Everything except the Bamba 2 highs is a replica and cost under $400.
I have had $20 sneakers last that long. You don't need to pay $$$$ to have clothes last a long time, you just need to take care of your stuff.
Which? I struggle to find any sneakers that last more than a couple years, while also avoiding the big brands.
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money
Maybe he's amortizing them.
He says they've lasted ten years, so that's $50/year.
If they last another ten, that's $25/year.
Oh, great. Now I've invented Pants-as-a-Service.
>Now I've invented Pants-as-a-Service.
If you forget to renew then the zipper stops working.
decent hand-sewn raw denim made in the EU/US jeans are minimum $500. and i'm talking non-designer. just fair wages and good materials.
Don't rule out until you've tried it. High end clothing (not just brand name, but real advanced stuff) is pretty amazing in how it makes you feel. I'm inclined to spend on anything I interact with, and clothes is pretty big interaction.
I wonder if there's an "ignorance is bliss" effect here that makes trying it not worth it for the average person. Think about it - to my knowledge, almost everyone spends ~0 seconds per day thinking about the comfort of their pants. But once you try something that feels as (allegedly?) supreme and heavenly as what you describe, you can't go back - you'll always feel that difference from now on, and now wearing something that you previously never paid any thought to would feel distinctly less comfortable. Kind of similar to how audiophiles train themselves to perceive the tiniest of flaws in the music they listen to and spend thousands of dollars to rectify those flaws, while everyone else keep ignorantly enjoying the flawed sound, not even being aware of the difference.
I try my best to remain ignorant of these sorts of things. I prefer my bliss.
Sure, but you need to have a certain level of wealth before even considering it. $500 is a ridiculous sum for a pair of trousers. I've had €80 or €120 Levi's at one point when I had a bit more expendable income but they only lasted me two years. I'm back on affordable jeans now (when outside, when inside it's pajama pants all the way lmao), I think they're €30 or so.
I'm sure the branded ones are "better" but is it to scale with the price? Are Levi's 4x as good as cheap ones? Are these Steve Jobs ones 16x as good?
i don't think anyone is saying you should save up to buy $500 pants. you buy them if it's a rounding error of your bank statement
Yeah, that is wild. I can't imagine spending that kind of money on pants.
Pro-tip. You can buy them used for a significant discount to rrp.
Gee... And I thought $5 spent at Starbucks was outrageous...
statistically, inheritance
This is kind of getting into the weeds a little bit but for me and a lot of others luxury items can be fun to own. You can get an affinity for certain designers style, whether it's Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga. The items are ridiculously expensive sometimes but it's kind of a tough line to balance because the fact that they cost so much make them more special. So how cheap should they be before they don't feel as special anymore? Is it all a bit irrational? I guess. There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give. Some people can spend all their income on luxury items rather than other discretionary items because it's the most fun to them.
> There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give.
Counterpoint: that is exactly what someone who charges $500 for a $5 pair of pants would want you to think. If you boil it down far enough, the principles you are describing are just inequality and luxury marketing.
While that is definitely at play there is a deep rooted instinct in humanity to show status and to have something that is worth a lot. It goes beyond just marketing, which is why it "works" economically. I think the luxury market serves a certain type of mindset that has been there since ancient egypt even. It would be nice to have a society where status didn't pay a role but there hasn't been a social movement that has crystallized what that would look like.
I also think as a sidenote there is a difference between luxury and fashion. Fashion is about creativity and self expression, and for a long time, the luxury market was sort of the defacto place for creeativity rather than the cheaper labels that had more 'standard' clothing, at least where I live. That has changed a bit in the past decade though. I like both fashion and luxury, but I am conflicted about it too. For example in the luxury fashion world there is a thing called 'grails', which are essentially items that are difficult to get but are considered very cool looking in some way and so they become grails. A lot of people like the feeling of chasing and finally acquiring grails, so that's one aspect of it.