Rick Owens

[gerogerigagaga]

The Moldova issue has bothered me for a while, and I'm glad it's a hot topic suddenly, I've lurked and seen murmurings, but I'm surprised it never really got pressed. It's worth mentioning again that even things that may say Made in Italy may have had some work done on it in Moldova, minimal enough they do not have to legally acknowledge it. I'm not sure how that works, but I've seen it mentioned in the past.

Of course the Rick Owens company indulges in these practices. OF COURSE. Independent or not, they are a huge multi-million dollar business. He is a capitalist. Minimize cost, maximize efficiency. Mr. Small has a lot of great things to say, fantastic and on point things, but respectfully, his business is not near the size of Rick Owens. If it was, no doubt business decisions would be made that would compromise the integrity of his initial vision - because you DON'T become this large without stepping on someone, you DO NOT make this much money without contributing to human misery. Not under capitalism.

As has been mentioned, nearly every consumable has the same sort of bloody trail. What you wear, what you eat, what you drive. This is the way of things. The solution isn't burning all your clothes and moving up into the mountains. If you don't like it, start discussing alternatives to these systems, start voting for the alternatives to these systems. If young designers don't want to go down this path of paying poor people slave wages, then maybe it's time to start looking at worker co-ops.

Don't stop at holding Rick Owens accountable, hold everyone accountable.

[bukka]

this thread....

This thread would stop derailing if people stopped posting meta-comments.
I agree we should stop the shitstorm. But, as long as some relevant new information can be added, we need to keep talking about this.
For example, anyone reading this and looking for some more information should go to the GBS thread (some people may have missed it).
Ofc adding a narrative will always help the catharsis, but the last three posts by Geoffrey are truly mind-blowing. And shed some light on what might be happening inside Euro Olmar.

[DudleyGray]

Those posts are really great. While I can't say that I will stop wearing and sell the Rick that I have, it's enough to push me into not giving him free advertising in WAYWT and returning the wool swingers/investing in the "other" side of my wardrobe instead. It's a shame that my preferred labels (UC/CDG) are also guilty of dubious production, but I generally just buy used, whereas I've bought plenty Rick new.

[zamb]

.

Of course the Rick Owens company indulges in these practices. OF COURSE. Independent or not, they are a huge multi-million dollar business. He is a capitalist. Minimize cost, maximize efficiency. Mr. Small has a lot of great things to say, fantastic and on point things, but respectfully, his business is not near the size of Rick Owens. If it was, no doubt business decisions would be made that would compromise the integrity of his initial vision - because you DON'T become this large without stepping on someone, you DO NOT make this much money without contributing to human misery. Not under capitalism.
.

There are a lot of things I know but refrain from saying for my own personal reasons, However this kind of statement is ridiculous. there is no one way of doing business and there is no one way of becoming successful. what you are implying is that one HAS TO BE CORRUPT or at least Concede to corruption in order to become largely successful. That to me is complete nonsense. what that kind of thinking does is play exactly into justifying a problem that people are trying to figure out how to address.

[zamb]

Those posts are really great. While I can't say that I will stop wearing and sell the Rick that I have, it's enough to push me into not giving him free advertising in WAYWT and returning the wool swingers/investing in the "other" side of my wardrobe instead. It's a shame that my preferred labels (UC/CDG) are also guilty of dubious production, but I generally just buy used, whereas I've bought plenty Rick new.

Rick Owens and designers like him benefit significantly from a community such as SZ. I also know that either him or people within his business are aware of discussions such as these. wouldn't it be a better thing, instead of boycotting or selling, challenge designers to stick to better standards of production etc because as fans/ customers you all are interested in seeing things done right?

[Faust]

I'm staying away from this conjecturefest, but I just want to point out (for the second time) that none of us have been to the Moldova factories O&M uses, so none of us know what they are like.

My only gripe is that these savings are not passed onto consumers. That's why I have respect for Dries Van Noten, who's the only label I know that passes the savings onto consumers.

[zamb]

I'm staying away from this conjecturefest, but I just want to point out (for the second time) that none of us have been to the Moldova factories O&M uses, so none of us know what they are like.

My only gripe is that these savings are not passed onto consumers. That's why I have respect for Dries Van Noten, who's the only label I know that passes the savings onto consumers.

Fair point, and the argument about wages must be taken into consideration based on the structure of the countries

For example. I would like to make a factory in Jamaica. obviously it would cost me less to produce there than I do in the US. however basic cost of living in Jamaica is extremely less than it is in the US.
Food is cheaper, houses are cheaper, smaller country will less cost to transport people/ goods from point A to point B.
unless someone really knows something and something bad, then its better to look at the quality of the product and the cost and deal with that aspect........

[josecc]

Fair point, and the argument about wages must be taken into consideration based on the structure of the countries

For example. I would like to make a factory in Jamaica. obviously it would cost me less to produce there than I do in the US. however basic cost of living in Jamaica is extremely less than it is in the US.
Food is cheaper, houses are cheaper, smaller country will less cost to transport people/ goods from point A to point B.
unless someone really knows something and something bad, then its better to look at the quality of the product and the cost and deal with that aspect........

Exactly, that is what I tried to say with the simplified numerical examples that I provided before. Now, as another not well informed example, take this job postings by Euro-Olmar (1,2,3), the average salary of the bounds is 5500 MDL, which is ~€263 p/m. Adjusting by PPP of Moldova/US(cost of living, factor 6.29), that salary is equivalent to ~1654 USD(PPP) p/m, which is greater than the average salary in Italy (USD PPP) that I cited before.

I am NOT saying that this is the average salary in O&M or that they are the best company in Moldova. My point is that, as Faust more eloquently pointed out, we DO NOT know the specific situation of that company to give a judgement. And yes, they should pass some savings into the customers, but I suppose they are taking advantage on increasing demand.

Maybe the O&M employees are better than before working there (maybe not). But should they lose their jobs because Moldova wage sucks in general?

[DudleyGray]

There's a lot of gray area and conjecture, yes, but given the reputation of Moldova, I feel that the burden of proof is on Rick to show that the workers are being paid fairly and in safe conditions. I need this in order to feel comfortable with buying his products at full retail and then posting pictures of myself in only Rick on a highly visible and public fashion forum. Not everyone does this, so I don't expect them to feel similarly, and I know my withholding Rick uniform pics won't amount to anything substantial, but I have my boundaries. I can't pay $500+ for a pair of redundant, subpar quality pants and wear them publicly online, serving as little more than free advertising, without at least some reassurance that the workers are in safe conditions and being paid fairly.

[stemcell]

Probably stupid but honest question. How unsafe can the factory for sewing luxury leather garments be? They have to use heavy duty sewing machines, but those are pretty safe. I would think the leather factories "In Italy" that TAN the leather are probably a hell hole of chemicals, machines and pollutive runoff. But the leather sewing factory itself? I can't imagine it's in some kind of pre-collapse Bangladesh kind of state... Maybe temperature/weather related concerns, or safe as in "not worked to death?"

[Faust]

/\ Watch True Cost, the documentary - there is a whole thread on this.

[stemcell]

I did watch that, that was actually what I was referencing— I can't imagine it is as bad as Bangladesh and I cannot imagine the building is ready to collapse. But really that doc was about so much more than the specifics of factory safety. I have to stop because as already stated the fact is that we just don't know.

[DudleyGray]

Buildings collapsing aren't necessary for a disaster; a fire hazard is more than enough.

[cloakroom]

Exactly, that is what I tried to say with the simplified numerical examples that I provided before. Now, as another not well informed example, take this job postings by Euro-Olmar (1,2,3), the average salary of the bounds is 5500 MDL, which is ~€263 p/m. Adjusting by PPP of Moldova/US(cost of living, factor 6.29), that salary is equivalent to ~1654 USD(PPP) p/m, which is greater than the average salary in Italy (USD PPP) that I cited before.

I am NOT saying that this is the average salary in O&M or that they are the best company in Moldova. My point is that, as Faust more eloquently pointed out, we DO NOT know the specific situation of that company to give a judgement. And yes, they should pass some savings into the customers, but I suppose they are taking advantage on increasing demand.

Maybe the O&M employees are better than before working there (maybe not). But should they lose their jobs because Moldova wage sucks in general?

Your calculations don't touch the motivation of producing there at all. It's the ABSOLUTE costs that matter for Owenscorps and any other manufacturer which moves his production to these countries, not the relative costs considering the Moldovan average. You are trying to whitewash a greedy decision. No, we don't want any worker in Moldova to lose his job and probably not one worker in Bangladesh to lose his as well, which means we have to buy H&M and and Zara basically according to your logic. Or, what some posts here and the enlightening posts in the GBS thread suggest, don't support or even reward this practice.

[josecc]

Your ...

I think you did not read properly my previous post, or most likely, I was not clear enough. Sorry for my broken english.

First, of course Owenscorp cares about the absolute cost. I was not trying to uncover the "true" nature of the Owenscorp decision. What I tried to do is to analyse that decision in terms of its impact on the welfare of the moldovan workers. Welfare analysis is always relative because the nominal salaries are not a true measure of the real value. In my last numerical example I was trying to show that, using a relative measure, the O&M salaries are not as "bad" as the uninformed intuition implies. And I did this normative assessment about "bad" or "good" using the criterion implied by all previous post, which is, italian salaries or producing in Italy. By no means I am trying to "whitewash" anything, I just want to compare apples with apples.

Second, your answer to my question of O&M moldovan workers losing their jobs is totally disproportionate. The premise of the question was that if the O&M salaries are not "bad" in relative terms to the italian ones, and hence to the average moldovan salaries, is it "fair" to call for stopping O&M operation there? Of course this is not the same to say that we should purchase Zara or H&M, their salaries are not even close in relative terms to the chinese/mexican ones, and they outsource the hell out of the production, that was not my point.