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  • Fuuma
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2006
    • 4050

    Originally posted by Faust View Post
    Two disheartening news on the next front:

    H&M is opening a 57,000 sq foot store in Manhattan on 5th Ave
    Uniqlo opening 10 to 20 stores in the US in the next 18 months, on track to become a $50 billion company.

    So much for buying less, paying more.
    Uniqlo is perfect for buying less and paying less if that is what you need it to be, do you really think designer clothing lasts longer? Not really to be honest...
    Selling CCP, Harnden, Raf, Rick etc.
    http://www.stylezeitgeist.com/forums...me-other-stuff

    Comment

    • Fuuma
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2006
      • 4050

      Originally posted by rilu
      ^ isn't the key issue here not the quality in terms of durability, but where and how clothes are produced (working conditions, etc.)?
      So should we attempt to get China (or whatever) to have better standards or should we give jobs to Chinese working in Italian factories?
      Selling CCP, Harnden, Raf, Rick etc.
      http://www.stylezeitgeist.com/forums...me-other-stuff

      Comment

      • Faust
        kitsch killer
        • Sep 2006
        • 37852

        Originally posted by Fuuma View Post
        Uniqlo is perfect for buying less and paying less if that is what you need it to be, do you really think designer clothing lasts longer? Not really to be honest...
        No, it's not perfect. It uses sweatshop labor in China and shit falls apart. With few exceptions, there is no doubt that designer clothes lasts longer.
        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

        Comment

        • michael_kard
          Senior Member
          • Oct 2010
          • 2152

          I have never heard of a Uniqlo garment falling apart. If you actually look at their stuff the quality is seemingly equal to that of the average designer brand.
          ENDYMA / Archival fashion & Consignment
          Helmut Lang 1986-2005 | Ann Demeulemeester | Raf Simons | Burberry Prorsum | and more...

          Comment

          • Geoffrey B. Small
            Senior Member
            • Nov 2007
            • 618

            letter from a farm town and a word to the wise...

            Whoah.

            Doesn't say much for the "average designer brand" does it?

            Well, I think one needs to talk to Japanese people to really know anything about Uniqlo quality and durability. Let's start with their denim, which is made in whatever-tim-buk-tu happens to be the cheapest labor deal at the time of production, which they pitch there at around 29 bucks, and performs just about as perilously short-term as any other jean in that price-range - I know because sales staff people tell me stories about it all the time. You'll be lucky if you a get a year from them. Alternative? Spend around 100-150 bucks for a pair of authentic Johnbull's with fabric and construction done in Kojima, Japan (perhaps the world's capital of quality denim, bar none) and get something that lasts at least 10 years, and for many customers, even "forever." If anything does goes wrong, they will make repairs on the piece either in their shops or back at Kojima. The economics? 150 bucks divided by 10 years is 15 bucks a year. That's way cheaper than the Uniqlo junk that will be costing almost double every year. With the other difference being you don't have to wear junk, and life can be better... for your image, your skin and if you are Japanese, your own local economy (Johnbull still employs Japanese people who are great at making and selling jeans, I have seen and know a lot of them). If the Johnbull's last forever, they get even cheaper per year.

            The clothes I make offer the same value and performance at a different level for my customers. That is why I like working with them, and why I decided to distribute some of our work with the Johnbull Private labo stores instead of the typical 'modayola' designer shops in many of the same cities in Japan that our collection would normally be seen in. This philosophy and approach is a part of what I would call "Next" .... although Johnbull has been doing it for over 60 years, and we have been doing it since 1979. Real quality and value takes a lifetime to build. It's like housing, in the long run, there can be a huge difference in the end between renting and owning (by buying well). Uniqlo, H&M, Zara, WalMart, Target and their ilk are making unprecedented fortunes for a very small group of people who own them, by targeting products on an unprecedented scale for "the dummies" (their words, not mine) that will just keep making them poorer and poorer, and endlessly more dependent on a way of life that has absolutely no future on this planet.

            Why do it?

            Because there are simply an unprecedented amount of "dummies" right now on the planet to rip-off at the moment, and if you run or own a publicly-traded company (like all the ones listed above) and are responsible for delivering quarterly growth numbers every 3 months to keep your stock price up, it is just too easy and too tempting not to keep dipping into that seemingly bottomless, expanding well of dummies- especially if that is precisely what your company was organized and formed to do in the first place. All you need is enough mass-media in any market new or old, to do its number on a new-generation that doesn't know anything and voila', there you are... another new boom market to exploit. Like cigarettes and Coca-Cola, it's been done a zillion times before. Why change the wheel, right?

            But look around you. Do you have any idea what this year's unprecedented summer drought hitting every major continent today is going to do to resource availabilities and costs in the next few years? I will tell you, it's gonna hit the fan. And you're going to see a whole lot of scrambling pretty soon. And let's not even talk if those scientists who say that this year is only the beginning of where things are heading in regards to global warming effects are correct...

            I for one hope and pray they are wrong. Totally wrong. I happen to live in a farm town in one of the most productive agricultural regions in all of Europe, and I can tell you, things around here are pretty damn scary. And there are millions of farm towns like this all over the world right now going through the same thing. Without water, without soil, nothing grows. Nothing. Just dust. No food. No animals. No plants. No textiles... and so on. And if you lose your topsoil, which is 90 percent living micro-organisms that also need water, you are in very deep trouble. Topsoil cannot be replaced, and for those who are not aware of it, the entire world currently lives on what 2 percent of the planet's entire surface area can provide us. That is all the topsoil we have folks. And we are continuously diminishing it. This year, vast areas of Europe, China and the US are looking more and more like sub-Saharian Africa countries that have been plagued by famine for decades. Everything is brown and dry as a bone.

            So, I advise everyone on this forum to think about not being a "dummy" anymore.

            The price you are going to pay for being one, is going to get very dear. If you can't afford to buy quality new, do what smart, frugal folks have always done. Buy quality used. There is still great used clothing out there for the price of Uniqlo and H&M junk. Superior clothing that was built to last, can still be worn and reworked (like we have been doing for 2 decades already) with great style (often more cool and intriguing than the newest "designer" stuff), and can provide its new owner with years of performance and help turn the tide in the worldwide battle we are all facing with global warming and diminishing resources for human life. Reduce, reuse, recycle is the mantra... play a part now as a consumer and do something about it. Then get others you care about to do the same.

            But, like the addicted gambler who loses his family's home chasing "something for nothing," and finds himself and his wife and kids out on the street one day in a daze of shock and disbelief, "more for less" is a dangerous, baited-hook that has been dangled by robbers and thieves in difficult times to the uneducated, the unprepared, and the unwary, for millennia. Only now, they have the tools, power, organization and reach of multi-billion dollar a year global corporations.

            But the bottom line is the same. Like fool's gold, it is only a mirage for the fool that falls for it. Now is a time to shop and buy your things with extreme care. Treat the purchases you make now, like they may be your last.

            And beware of cheap. If it is cheap, there is a reason for it.
            And believe me, none of those companies is giving it away as a present, or doing you any special favor. You are nothing but a number to them, and you are making them even richer than they already are.

            But what are you really getting in return?

            Think about it.

            Carefully.


            As always, thank you for reading.

            Best wishes,


            Geoffrey

            Comment

            • Atom
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2009
              • 310

              Hmm. Uniqlo uses mainly denim from Kaihara, a denim factory located near Hiroshima. It's quite a large factory, and they produce many many kinds of denim there. But Kaihara also uses vintage Toyoda shuttle looms for some of their production, and some of that production end up for Uniqlo as well.

              And no, this doesn't make me a huge fan of Uniqlo, in fact I find many of their products to be similar to H&M basics, qualitywise. Just stating the fact their denim is made in Japan.

              Comment

              • Geoffrey B. Small
                Senior Member
                • Nov 2007
                • 618

                Hmmm

                .


                Hmmm- sure Atom, so does GAP, J. Crew and Old Navy too. That is a classic trick. Any large corporation can "buy" a name fabric to help them improve the image positioning of a cheap product for the market to make it look like a better deal, including Japanese denim products. In fact, this textile category has been totally overbought and saturated in recent years. Everybody, even Diesel uses 'Japanese' denim.

                Look I'll try to explain it to you this way, one day when I was doing one my Japan tours, I found myself in the Tokyo showroom and offices of a famous Japanese denim fabric company with a very good reputation at the time. I was brought there by an old ex-client who is now known as a top retailer of "SZ-type brands" in the Tokyo area (I will leave it at that). The denim fabric company's national sales manager met with us, and after a short introductory chat, and through many puffs of heavy cigarette smoke, began to explain that he was ecstatic. He had just received a signed order from a big American company and couldn't believe the order quantity. Upon further discussion, we were told that the company in question was the GAP and they had placed an order for over three hundred thousand meters for a single denim fabric design/article from their collection. It was the first time he had ever seen an order of this volume which was about 2-300 times larger than their usual order size.

                Please note that this is 300 kilometers of denim fabric, or just over 186 miles. That is the distance between the cities of Boston and New York. Just think about a single swath of denim fabric stretching from Fanueil Hall to Rockefeller Center and then think about the quantity of material you would need to make this a reality. This created a slight problem in that he was not at all sure he could use the same yarns as his original product. Due to the large quantity, he would have to use a different yarn (of a different quality) that would be available in that type of quantity. Even possibly a different yarn that was NOT made in Japan. So in the end, the product would not be the same because the extreme volume change necessitated a change in the supply chain to meet the quantities required.

                This happens all the time.

                The product is not the same. If you know anything about fabric making… yarns are everything. And great yarns, like food, are not produced in GAP or Uniqlo or H&M quantities (which are now far bigger than GAP quantities back then were), ever. But the big company doesn't care. What counts to them is quarterly earnings growth (please don't ever forget that the founders of both Uniqlo and Old Navy went to business school together in Boston where they both concocted their retail empire concepts for school projects-these are not hands on clothes people, they are MBA business people and there is a huge difference in where their fundamental priorities are, believe me). And what counts to them in these cases is that they can use a "name" fabric and slap it on their cheaper product which is then constructed in their own much, much, much cheaper way, and then market it real good in order to fool the "quality-oriented" or "more knowledgable" customer into thinking he is getting more for less. Well guess what, he is isn't. He's getting ripped off again. You see nothing comes for free. And the fabric companies that supply these guys start risking their reputations and if they really dig the big corporate business, they start changing the products for good (including making their fabrics in other places than their home countries-whether they tell you or not) and in about 2-5 years end up ruining themselves forever. I have seen it a million times in my short but very exciting 35-year career in this game.

                "Made in Japan" like "made in Italy" or even "Designed in California" really doesn't mean squat anymore. What counts is who is doing the making and more and more importantly: in what quantities... when determining quality, value and environmental and ethical responsibility in a product today.

                So I don't know what to tell you Atom. You can Hmmm all you want to, but it does not change the simple realities I am talking about from the inside out.

                As for Uniqlo, they do a lot of "cashmere" product too.
                And just look at that stuff they did with Jun Takahashi and Undercover. Talk about great stuff cheap, right?

                If that is what you want to believe, support and put your hard-earned money into. Go ahead. Be my guest.

                As for me, I believe my clients, and frankly the world, deserve better.

                Thanks and Best wishes, Geoffrey


                .

                Comment

                • mizzar
                  Senior Member
                  • Mar 2008
                  • 219

                  Jhon bull denim cost around 300+ usd, not 150.
                  here is 390 eur (around 480 usd)
                  Johnbull | selvage denim braces dungarees jean | selvage denim dungarees style jean with detachable braces in a faded light blue wash, relaxed fit | article code: 20024 | season: Spring/Summer | composition: 100% cotton

                  Jhon bull shirt cost around 280 usd in Europe and more in USA

                  So it's around 40 eur year... wich is ok if it'll go for 10 years
                  But i don't think you could wear it for 10 years.
                  Crotch blowout in 2 to 3 years predicted.

                  i'm sorry that i'm factchecking your statments, my OCD.
                  ____
                  sorry for my bad english, i learned it from the book.

                  I too am inspired by homeless people when I buy a $1,000 jacket. Why don't we just shit on them? Oh, fashion, sometimes I wonder why I bother...(Faust)

                  Comment

                  • gavagai
                    Senior Member
                    • May 2010
                    • 468

                    Look Geoffrey, if you think that everybody in the world are dummies and subjecting themselves to being "ripped off" that is fine. No doubt you use finer fabrics, materials and manufacturing then the large brands you quoted above. Do you honestly believe that a customer walking into H & M believes they are getting garments that are made from the finest threads and yarn in the world?

                    For someone who makes clothes that literally less than 1% of the world can afford you come off as completely senseless. Who can actually afford your clothes? Seriously? The same rich people profiting from big business that you supposedly despise? That is an honest question. It is fine to rant and rave about the quality of the low priced garments these companies are providing to the masses. That being said, what are you doing for the masses? Offering a shirt that costs more than many of the individuals' entire wardrobe?

                    Comment

                    • Faust
                      kitsch killer
                      • Sep 2006
                      • 37852

                      Hmmm, thinking and H&M shoppers in one sentence?

                      Gavagi, I don't get your argument. So, because Geoffrey makes expensive clothes, he should shut the fuck up about the injustices perpetuated by the modern capitalist society? Because he sells expensive clothes he should stop being a responsible citizen of this planet? Your comment is doubly ironic after your comment on the $4,000 suit article. Clearly, you don't think Geoffrey takes champagne baths every night and pisses from his villa's balcony on his Ferrari?
                      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                      Comment

                      • gavagai
                        Senior Member
                        • May 2010
                        • 468

                        Geoffrey's thing is that people are being "fooled" and "ripped off" by the large retailers.

                        I have no problem with people producing expensive garments or making money. Read his posts. The point of bringing up the costs of his clothing is that it is neither an alternative or a solution to the problems he is citing over and over again. He is quite frankly - if his opinions are to be taken at face value - unconnected with the thoughts or predicaments of the people. He is no champion of the people.

                        Comment

                        • Faust
                          kitsch killer
                          • Sep 2006
                          • 37852

                          He is not talking about the poor though. He's talking about the middle class teeny-boppers that go to H&M once a week because it's their idea of leisure, have closets full of shit they don't wear and then toss it out without the slightest feeling of guilt because it doesn't put a big hole in Daddy's pocket. His arguments are valid. And I don't think he ever said that his clothes are the only alternative. If you can't afford Geoffrey B Small, buy a pair of Rag & Bone jeans. Can't afford a pair of Rag & Bone jeans at retail, buy them on GILT or MyHabit. There are ways, if you give it thought. But most people don't, and that's I believe is the issue Geoffrey raises.
                          Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                          StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                          Comment

                          • 525252
                            Senior Member
                            • Dec 2010
                            • 246

                            Faust, before in the thread you put down an idea because it involved too much mental effort on the part of the customer and said the kids are okay. Now the kids are not okay and there's not enough mental effort?
                            there is some value in what gavagai has said - the fact that Geoffrey's very expensive clothes coexists with cheaply manufactured shit implies (at the least) the gaping inequity of wealth in the world. It does seem contradictory when a designer has so much criticism to give on an issue which stems from that inequity, while his own practice is quite firmly immersed in it. Its the same as before, valid critiques have been given with no solutions offered.

                            You can't rely on the consumer to make educated decisions, but you should/could/would (...oh god) be able rely on the industry to regulate itself ethically and sustainably.
                            Criticism is great, sure, but if change is to be implemented, people have to get off their pretentious pedestal and get down to boring diplomatic business.

                            Ethical and sustainable product should be a standard, not an alternative, I'm sure everyone agrees with this. But actualising this is a tedious and complicated process so because everyone is too busy with their own creeeeaaaative endeavours: no time to be bothered, just complain about it instead.

                            Comment

                            • 525252
                              Senior Member
                              • Dec 2010
                              • 246

                              wow there's an embarrassing amount of alliteration in that second last paragraph

                              Comment

                              • cowsareforeating
                                Senior Member
                                • Jan 2011
                                • 1032

                                I do believe that the discussion is rooted in the middle class that can choose to invest in ethical and durable clothing (repairing always an option)

                                versus the poorer or ultra rich.

                                I for one don't make much money at all (I'm a student) and I get by buying very ocassionally here..

                                Comment

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