Comment by lp4v4n
8 days ago
Fashion is a deeply irrational market that preys on the worst of human nature. There are companies selling cotton t-shirts with a logo on them for 500 dollars. You might say ok, if people are dumb enough to buy that then that's not my problem. So now there are companies creating the environmental cost of destroying viable products just to sustain this kind of grifting.
On top of that I think that society, as a general principle, should demand more product transparency in the form of regulation. What are the actual environmental costs of a certain product? Where are the components coming from? What kind of production process did that industry adopt? All this should be clear in the description of a product.
The way things are right now the incentives are geared towards trying to industrialize and sell the worst kind of product for the highest price and offload to society as an externality the environmental and social costs of doing so.
"There are companies selling cotton t-shirts with a logo on them for 500 dollars. ..."
I used to be very tolerant of people's idiosyncrasies but with the internet, social media etc. that brings out the worst in people I'm now much less so.
Agreed, fashion is deeply irrational but it's always been with us. The real problem now is the degree to which the fashion industry exploits the excessively 'vulnerable'—you know, the oddballs who were once ignored. It's why a $5 can now cost $500.
Moreover, something in fashion one day is out of fashion the next, and it's a damn nuisance. It's gotten completely out of hand. Recently, I bought a pair of cargo-style work pants and they were fine. About a month later I bought another pair of the same brand, size and type (going on the label they were same model and style, and there was only one type--supposedly). Got them home and the cut was not only different and they were less comfortable but the legs were cut narrow (they were now too tight).
Took them back and the sales assistant said "oh that's normal, styles usually change with every new shipment, you're supposed to check them first".
For fuck's sake they are ordinary utilitarian work pants—not something you'd expect to see on the catwalks of Paris. I ought to be able to buy exactly the same product time after time like I used to be able to do with Levi jeans by just by looking at the tag/label (nowadays you can't even rely on Levis being the same fit).