Margiela x H&M ???

[Faust]

I'm trying to disentangle this conversation. This all depends on the object of critique, no?

Eugene's article does not condescend to people as blameworthy moral agents, it is critical of a business practice and the interpretation of this business practice. Fuuma, on the other hand, is being directly snobbish toward particular people.

From an ethical standpoint, I think Eugene has identified something actually novel about collaborations. Namely, they perform intellectual work for the consumer. In this sense, you can see how the collaboration is actually antithetical to this position of "democratizing fashion." Because what is deemed desirable is no longer determined by a person, but by H&M. It is very top-down; aesthetic sensibility is dictated by fast-fashion companies. Okay, when we're talking about MMM its not simply aesthetic, but that issue is addressed in another thread I imagine.

edit: Hah. As a follow up, just imagine. Already tired from waiting in line, customers enter the building on opening day for the collab and now passive aggressively fight over and grab what they can. The SAs are swamped. Managers have been a bundle of nerves since learning the day this would happen, and if they had pedometers they'd probably be clocking extra mileage. Customers also file out the store already thinking of what kind of mark up they will put on their items for ebay. This whole time, two people have been lounging against the walls just surveying the scene. One turns to the other and says, "This is what democracy looks like."

Not entirely true. I do put the blame on the shopper's shoulders as well as H&M. People do have agency, but that agency can be upended. The problem is that H&M facilitates and encourages consumerism. I don't fully buy the argument that the consumer has a choice - technically he does, but it's like putting a bunch of candy in front of a child and telling him he has a choice not to eat it.

Hence we come to your second paragraph, which is correct. Here we talk about agency on behalf of the buyer too. Margiela would encourage agency on the part of the buyer by effacing his persona and distancing himself from his creations. Whether or not Margiela's tag has become popular enough is besides the point - the original intent was there and it has not changed. H&M, on the contrary, by using marketing mega-blitz indeed dictates to the consumer what he must like by bastardizing Margiela's body of work.

And here is another thing. When I ask for real knowledge of fashion (the cliff's notes vs. the book analogy), I am not being pedantic. People forget that knowledge is pleasure, that it is much more fulfilling, meaningful and at the end rewarding than the glossing over that these collaborations encourage, which is empty, which is consumption at its worst.

[michael_kard]

I don't fully buy the argument that the consumer has a choice - technically he does, but it's like putting a bunch of candy in front of a child and telling him he has a choice not to eat it.

Are you suggesting that the average H&M x Margiela customer possesses the intellectual capacity of a child?

[Patroklus]

If the clothing factories of Leeds and Manchester spontaneously reopened and Paul Harnden was able to harness a workforce capable of producing a 10000 jackets per season instead of 100 or CCP moved production to some specialist clothing ninjas in China and special orders took a week instead of a year and cost proportionally less also.

Now that would give us something proper to worry about...

i would like this. if my fav designers decided to slash their prices to dirt cheap without sacrificing the design quotient, quality, or using exploitative labor practices i would poop my pants in glee and then go and buy more pants immediately. i know some people like the exclusivity that comes with high prices and don't want every kid on the street in their rick dunks but that aint for me man, i just want lovely clothes to wear.

but there's certain methods you have to use to make decent clothes and they take time and skill. that's the problem - when you distill something like mmm down to h&mmm it necessitates that you nuke the craftsmanship that made it special, not to mention straight up bum spelunking some desperate third world laborers.

a year or two ago there was a fire in a factory that h&m contracts thru that killed about 20 workers. an investigation suggested that fire safety equipment was inadequate or nonexistent, that the workers were only in the factory because they were working forced overtime to meet quota, and that they had been blocked in the building by blockading the exits, which prevented them from feeling the fire. iirc no one was charged with a crime. that's fucking sick and even if h&mmm managed to maintain exactly the build quality of mmm i am not going to give them my money

[525252]

Factory outside Beijing manufacturing for H&M
photos Erik Bernhardsson
more

okay snobbery aside, humanitarian efforts aside, moral/ethical ineptitude aside : in any sense, the time has come so that we look at this and no longer feel the excitement and potential of mass culture, probably some kind of nauseous disgust instead.

the point is not who is to blame, nor is it anything to do with what is "better", or claims that knowledge is whatever it is. Faust, I think your attitude does not necessarily discourage "empty consumption", (quite possibly does the opposite)

For years Margiela was a designer’s designer, an intelligent creator and a pioneer of deconstruction who refused to talk to the media, letting his work speak for itself. The tags on his garments did not carry his name, but were pure white. He was a tinkerer, a sartorial engineer whose clothes often concealed their complexity.

I don't think it elitist at all, but I really want to emphasise this: the above can be read in two ways, as descriptive text or didactic text. The intention of the writer does not matter so much, given that the statement is true. If the reader already understands the connection between Margiela and intelligent creation, pure white etc then they read the text as a descriptive one : "Margiela is Good."

If the reader does not already understand the connections of these words, the text is read as didactic. The text doesn't demonstrate or illustrate its case to the reader, it only speaks its perspective. This is the point where I see a backward logic occurring, where meaning is granted before the process of understanding : "Good is Margiela" (or double negation "Margiela is not not Good")
Maybe its better described as an irrational logic, but the concepts "Margiela" and "good" are prescribed to each other in a manner outside the deduction of formal logic.

Now, that is just an observation and I'm not quite at a solid conclusion, but my idea is that this irrational logic/double negation is what what drives empty consumerism. (I've been doing a youtube self education crash course on logic so forgive my possible misuse/abuse of terminology, if anyone happens to be an expert on Badiou, I would love to talk to you, PM me pleaaassse)

To me, H&MxMMM is "good" because it shows us the limits of knowledge. You can know something, but you cannot make someone else know it too. Everybody knows to value creativity and originality, but how many actually know what that means? Faust, I haven't really formed an opinion of whether I think your article is "good" or "bad", (though either way, I enjoyed reading it), but I would very much like to know what you think of the above thoughts.

[Shucks]

[nellytheelephant]

a year or two ago there was a fire in a factory that h&m contracts thru that killed about 20 workers. an investigation suggested that fire safety equipment was inadequate or nonexistent, that the workers were only in the factory because they were working forced overtime to meet quota, and that they had been blocked in the building by blockading the exits, which prevented them from feeling the fire. iirc no one was charged with a crime. that's fucking sick and even if h&mmm managed to maintain exactly the build quality of mmm i am not going to give them my money

This incident is particularly harrowing and just another reason why I wouldn't consider shopping at H&M whether they carried MMM or even a label I really cared about like Paul Harnden.

Don't get me wrong I admire the methods employed by real craftsman like Harnden and Poell. And wilfully pour fortunes into their coffers in part as a result of that admiration. I just don't like the snobbishness (a trait I too am sometimes guilty of) that sometimes goes on at the selling / consumer end* and feels rife in this current debate.

Currently there is not the will to turn this world on it's head (the factories in the north of England will not reopen and they are no chinese clothing manufacturing ninja's, that I have heard of). I only wish that things like the H&M and MMM collaboration would happen more often and to a greater extent if only to show me and the rest of the snobs what for.

* I once heard a story that Paul Harnden ran into a young, not too well-off looking girl in Brighton wearing a jacket of his that she had been gifted. He said to the girl something like "how the fuck do you afford to wear my clothing?" Make of that what you will. But whether the story is true or not there's some truth in that sentiment and it's non too palatable to me.

[Faust]

Thanks for that one Shucks, was going to check the image link or ask if it was Kidult, but then I did see the skulls.

What happened there?

[Faust]

This incident is particularly harrowing and just another reason why I wouldn't consider shopping at H&M whether they carried MMM or even a label I really cared about like Paul Harnden.

Don't get me wrong I admire the methods employed by real craftsman like Harnden and Poell. And wilfully pour fortunes into their coffers in part as a result of that admiration. I just don't like the snobbishness (a trait I too am sometimes guilty of) that sometimes goes on at the selling / consumer end* and feels rife in this current debate.

Currently there is not the will to turn this world on it's head (the factories in the north of England will not reopen and they are no chinese clothing manufacturing ninja's, that I have heard of). I only wish that things like the H&M and MMM collaboration would happen more often and to a greater extent if only to show me and the rest of the snobs what for.

* I once heard a story that Paul Harnden ran into a young, not too well-off looking girl in Brighton wearing a jacket of his that she had been gifted. He said to the girl something like "how the fuck do you afford to wear my clothing?" Make of that what you will. But whether the story is true or not there's some truth in that sentiment and it's non too palatable to me.

You sound like the only two options for consumers are Poell and H&M

[Shucks]

kidult is hardcore. full respect.

[Faust]

Faust, not sure what provoked him to go after MMM, besides potentially using some grafitti in some of their work. But I think it MIGHT have to do with the fact that the picture for the HM x MMM campaign was stolen from another artist.

http://www.complex.com/art-design/20...l-dictatorship

I think it's obvious that it's the H&M collab.

[nellytheelephant]

You sound like the only two options for consumers are Poell and H&M

Of course there is so much in between the two but I was just using these two polar opposites to illustrate the argument and perhaps got a little carried away : )

[Shucks]

Well, for some reason that alone would not provoke him before. He usually went after houses that tried to capitalize on using graffiti prints etc, but now he seems to be past that. I remember seeing some Tabi's with graffiti recently, might be it.

I don't think he's a huge MMM fan, but I might be mistaken. I think the reason he might have done it right right now was because of publicity?

yeah the collab should have NOTHING to do with it other than possibly timing. he's just saying fuck off to those who exploit graffiti. not everyone cares about fashion, faust.

[Fuuma]

kidult is hardcore. full respect.

[BSR]

(I've been doing a youtube self education crash course on logic so forgive my possible misuse/abuse of terminology, if anyone happens to be an expert on Badiou, I would love to talk to you, PM me pleaaassse)

ask gavagai for propositional logic courses
i'll take care of first-order logic, model theory and lambda calculus as it is way too complex for him

[Fuuma]

ask gavagai for propositional logic courses
i'll take care of first-order logic, model theory and lambda calculus as it is way too complex for him

I can see the profound respect you hold for propositional logic...