random fashion thoughts

[cjbreed]

dude wants autotrader.com for clothes. the problem is that participation is voluntary, otherwise there is no uniformity for sorting and refining a search. farfetch does this but on a much smaller scale and with far fewer sorting options.

but here's the thing. when price is all that matters, the little guy will be crushed if he is trying to sell the same exact item that a big boy has. thats why there needs to be some pricing standards on retail items. if i carry 15 brands in a b&m store and ssense carries 150 brands online only and we get to choose our own price, he can destroy me by making peanuts per unit and selling huge volume with much lower relative overhead.

what i am saying is i don't want apples to apples retailing to be a price war. there will be too many casualties.

[Faust]

dude wants autotrader.com for clothes. the problem is that participation is voluntary, otherwise there is no uniformity for sorting and refining a search. farfetch does this but on a much smaller scale and with far fewer sorting options.

but here's the thing. when price is all that matters, the little guy will be crushed if he is trying to sell the same exact item that a big boy has. thats why there needs to be some pricing standards on retail items. if i carry 15 brands in a b&m store and ssense carries 150 brands online only and we get to choose our own price, he can destroy me by making peanuts per unit and selling huge volume with much lower relative overhead.

what i am saying is i don't want apples to apples retailing to be a price war. there will be too many casualties.

Who are you to defy the iron logic of capitalism with your unclean human emotions and empathy?

[1994]

Because if Boutique X is only able to move Designer X at 50-70% off because of Boutiques Y & Z ability to sell for less, they probably won't pick them up again next season, or if so will shrink their buy considerably. Fewer orders = fewer stockists = higher costs = fewer purchasing customers = fewer boutiques and designers staying in business. At the end of the day, if margins aren't met, everyone takes a hit.

As someone who has worked on the product side I want to add another layer onto this which is buying on consignment. A retailer receives inventory without any up front payment. Instead they pay a contractual percentage on the selling price. When the agreed upon selling period expires the remaining inventory is sent back to the vendor.

This is extremely risky for new or smaller brands because there are no guarantees. Consignment allows retailers to carry brands without ever marking them down. And puts the burden of unsold items on the vendor. These then often end up in sample sales or the hands of discounters.

Since retailer's only sell consignment at full-price, and if the ROI isn't there, it's unlikely they will reorder or carry the brand again.

[lowrey]

but here's the thing. when price is all that matters, the little guy will be crushed

exactly, and anyone operating anything else than an online warehouse would be crushed. but that seems to be beside the point for Defender, he seems to be fine with the idea of the retail market being destroyed. However, his utopia aside, the retail market obviously plays a bigger role than being a deliveryman.

[devour]

Agreed on all accounts. Vertice being the prime offender. Fakest store ever. And that comment in the end is beyond idiotic. I discussed the article at length yesterday, and actually it's a piece of shit, except Karlo's input, which is always on point. "Journalists" should stop interviewing shopkeepers altogether, for obvious reasons. The likes of Karlo, who not only know what they are talking about but also know how to articulate it, are very few and far between.

care to explain your view on vertice? Just curious.

[newp]

care to explain your view on vertice? Just curious.

They stock shitty brands on the verge of being literal knockoffs. Antonioli comes close second but their selection is really wide unlike vertice.
UPD: It appears antonioli has dropped this m.a+ knockoff person. Guess I wasn't the only person mailing them about it.

[devour]

They stock shitty brands on the verge of being literal knockoffs. Antonioli comes close second but their selection is really wide unlike vertice.
UPD: It appears antonioli has dropped this m.a+ knockoff person. Guess I wasn't the only person mailing them about it.

Ahh i see. Thanks for the input. Could you name a few of these knockoff brands? Im fairly new, starting to appreciate artisanal clothing.

[zamb]

Ahh i see. Thanks for the input. Could you name a few of these knockoff brands? Im fairly new, starting to appreciate artisanal clothing.

other than people making references in a discussion, I don't see the point of discussing knock off brands as a man subject. I suggest you read a bit more around these parts. you will learn a lot and many of your questions will be answered that way

[newp]

Ahh i see. Thanks for the input. Could you name a few of these knockoff brands? Im fairly new, starting to appreciate artisanal clothing.

Unfortunately, I won't name it: I am against giving these brands publicity even as a borderline knockoff brands.

[TriggerDiscipline]

what is justified as a knock off and what isn't anyways?

[TriggerDiscipline]

Would seem pretty clear. Vultures. Waiting to see what others design, then waiting to see which of those things are the most popular, and then making lower-quality almost-copies and selling them for slightly less.

They eat into the sales of the genuinely driven designers, contributing nothing--and all because there is a certain section of customers who'd sell their own mothers to save a few hundred dollars on a pair of pants.

when did this become about price?

[TriggerDiscipline]

Why else buy a knock-off? Not gonna name names, but that was the whole reason a certain designer got any custom when they began, they were making "budget ccp".

No naming of names and I don't even know what we are talking about. For example , personally there's brands people in here proudly parade that I find derivative and just doing complete knockoffs of other designers. The problem with statements such as this is that this statement is vague enough for several brands to come up into discussion. If you are a hobbyist then I don't understand why the need to omit names.

So with that being said I guess there's not much to discuss here unless you want to circlejerk opinions about nameless brands

Side note: I have a fight to pick with peeps who have zero experience with a brand or what it's about to go off and say that it's a knock off, which is a huge problem if you ask me.

[guardimp]

Leopold bossert is the main offender, although to call his initial start a copy of Ccp is a bit fallacious. He made custom pants, with the options to make them any way you wanted. Sure he had options to make them like ccp, but is that his fault or the fault of people who had him make the knockoffs? Should no one be allowed to use the same methods Ccp uses? Tbh I'm not sure what the big difference between him and a1923 is though, both make items extremely similar to other designers and yet only he gets a bad name. And a1923 makes direct rips on Ccp footwear, no choices or excuses just copies of Ccp year after year.

Another brand rife with similarities (that I'm not sure if layers carries) is bergfabel, although you could claim both they and harnden merely copy turn of the century workwear. Slight differences in their products but at what level of similarity does it become copying? Similar things could be asked of carpe diem and all the offshoots, what level of creative input excuses direct pattern usage (m.a+). So few designers actually have novel clothing (such as inaisce or harnden), are we splitting hairs as to how derivative you can be before it becomes a negative?

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Fit magna cades - why are lower prices inherently bad? If the item can be made to the same standards for less it seems odd to demand that people pay more or immune their character. When designers such as Ccp raise prices without any changes it seems odd to say that lower price is budget, when the lower price is in line with the original price. Maybe this is a reaction to a void in the market, where you can get extremely similar quality for half the price.

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If a brand is being copied I see it as an indictment of their work. They were stagnant for long enough that some one else was able to not only duplicate their process but also sometimes improve on it (see a1923 and Ccp vs alterei). Sure the initial design was successful but they didn't modify or improve it. It's similar to tech companies and innovation - just because someone did something first shouldn't mean that they are the only ones to ever do it. Later products from competitors will incorporate the successful portions with slight modifications to presumably improve the item.

[petricor]

"good artists borrow, great artists steal."
--Pablo, Diego, José, Francisco de Paula, Juan Nepomuceno, Maria de los Remedios, Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad a.k.a. Picasso

"When it actually comes to the designing, people all want to throw it away and say, "I've got to do something different." I taught fashion, and I started off getting students to copy things." v. westwood

just saying this thing could be argued both ways.

there would be no "trends" in fashion if designers didn't copy/borrow/steal/rip-off each other--think of it as a memetic theory of beauty (see Foster Gage, "Etiologies of Beauty")

[Faust]

"good artists borrow, great artists steal."
--Pablo, Diego, José, Francisco de Paula, Juan Nepomuceno, Maria de los Remedios, Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad a.k.a. Picasso

"When it actually comes to the designing, people all want to throw it away and say, "I've got to do something different." I taught fashion, and I started off getting students to copy things." v. westwood

just saying this thing could be argued both ways.

there would be no "trends" in fashion if designers didn't copy/borrow/steal/rip-off each other--think of it as a memetic theory of beauty (see Foster Gage, "Etiologies of Beauty")

That is the most misinterpreted Picasso's quote. He did not mean that a great artist makes an exact copy. And that's coming from a teacher? Good lord...