Indeed there is a time (and there sort of always has been) for smaller, younger designers to come in and offer a high quality, innovative product at a competitive price... the problem is that people don't know about them because they don't have marketing.
With the advent of the internet and more and more fashion blogs/sites/forums etc., the potential of a previously unknown designer getting noticed is highER, but still is quite difficult to get picked up.
The sad part is, with the markups and continual price climbing of what is essentially the same garment (or equivalent in material and construction complexity), the small-scale designer is very likely not getting rich and actually probably just having the opportunity to make a decent living versus just scraping by.
Others have pointed to it as well, but the breakdowns of costs on the honest-by site are really interesting. There is also the need to increase prices of items over the seasons as the brand(s) get more well known because of a need to increase production and thus expand working staff/equipment which leads to what at first seems like a paradoxical increase in retail price instead of a lower one (MA+ slim belts being $215 at full retail during his first collection and wallets were sub-$300).
In the end, everything we buy on the shelves/online/etc has been marked up. We'd all rather not think about it or just complain that things are inflated, but everyone has to make a buck somehow and if it's from the rich, then that's cool too. Personally, I've been priced out of just about all of the brands I like at full retail... really have been priced out years ago as I just can't let myself spend that kind of money on garment XYZ. I respect the work that these men and women do and how hard they work at it, I'll just let the Hermes leather seat/vicuna toilet paper folks support them financially.
With the advent of the internet and more and more fashion blogs/sites/forums etc., the potential of a previously unknown designer getting noticed is highER, but still is quite difficult to get picked up.
The sad part is, with the markups and continual price climbing of what is essentially the same garment (or equivalent in material and construction complexity), the small-scale designer is very likely not getting rich and actually probably just having the opportunity to make a decent living versus just scraping by.
Others have pointed to it as well, but the breakdowns of costs on the honest-by site are really interesting. There is also the need to increase prices of items over the seasons as the brand(s) get more well known because of a need to increase production and thus expand working staff/equipment which leads to what at first seems like a paradoxical increase in retail price instead of a lower one (MA+ slim belts being $215 at full retail during his first collection and wallets were sub-$300).
In the end, everything we buy on the shelves/online/etc has been marked up. We'd all rather not think about it or just complain that things are inflated, but everyone has to make a buck somehow and if it's from the rich, then that's cool too. Personally, I've been priced out of just about all of the brands I like at full retail... really have been priced out years ago as I just can't let myself spend that kind of money on garment XYZ. I respect the work that these men and women do and how hard they work at it, I'll just let the Hermes leather seat/vicuna toilet paper folks support them financially.
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