An "accessible luxury" brand is buying a "high fashion" shoe and accessories brand for £896 million as American mall traffic continues to decline and consumers have gravitated towards either extremely cheap or extremely expensive fashion products:
Many upscale retailers are grappling with plummeting sales and tepid profits. Mall traffic in North America has declined sharply, and deep discounting tactics have resulted in some luxury labels losing much of their luster with core customers.
Shoppers who have traditionally been loyal to the so-called middle market have gravitated toward brands at extremes of the style, and price, spectrum. That has benefited e-commerce giants like Amazon, fast-fashion brands like H&M and Zara, and luxury houses like Gucci.
And it has left companies like Michael Kors — once the runaway leader of the "accessible luxury market" — exposed.
[...] The shoemaker was founded in 1996 by Tamara Mellon, then accessories editor at British Vogue, and the Malaysian cobbler Jimmy Choo. It shot to fame thanks to a slew of celebrity patrons, including Diana, the Princess of Wales, and the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who embraced its signature sky-high stilettos and the vampish aesthetic for which it became known.
After three cycles of private equity ownership, it became the first luxury footwear brand to list on a public market in 2014. Prices range from $425 for flat shoes to $1,795 for over-the-knee suede boots, while small clutch handbags start around $700, according to Jimmy Choo's website.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:07AM (2 children)
Bullshit - "accessible luxury" is an oxymoron - if it's accessible it's not luxury.
The real terms, in chronological order:
- fast fashion [wikipedia.org] - initially, "Just-in-time manufacturing" in fashion industry (shorter cycle from design to shelf). After a while, closer to the "fast-food of fashion" meaning (= "supermarket fashion brands")
- disposable fashion [npr.org] - pretty things you buy cheap and wear once - I couldn't believe** watching a doco that such a thing exists [abc.net.au], but it seems it does. It also creates a huge waste disposal problem - looks like Australian dispose 6,000 kilograms of fashion and textile waste every 10 minutes.
The real meaning of all above: extreme consumerism and wastage.
--
** Personally, when I'm done wearing a short or a tee (4-5 years, at least 2 normal - public - wear, after which is a thing I'm wearing when doing chores or during the weekend), it becomes a (dusting) rag or shreds/twines to bind the tomato plant on the stakes or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:12AM (1 child)
And the best part of all is how enjoyable you must be to know on a personal basis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:36AM
(Oh, why, of course... I made the purpose of my life to make myself the most enjoyable person by AC-es on SN, the supreme purpose of anyone living in this world really.
Or... was it getting to be most friended on FB? I can't remember).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:13AM (1 child)
This is a charity comment because You won't get many on this. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:26AM
News for Fashionistas? Bro, did not know we could sink this low! Another Charity Comment, for the win.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:20AM (10 children)
Why was this a really big thing to begin with? Maybe I'm an outlier here (apparently not, according to the article?) but I've never gotten the point of going to the middle of the market with a purchase I can put off. Either I don't care about it in which case I'm going to go with the cheapest thing that does what I want, or I do care about it and I'll try to get something nice that lasts.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:45AM
Another sinner that refuses to bow to consumerism and part with her/his money. See? This is why the economy isn't growing enough to make 0.1% richer fast enough.
This must be regulated as a crime: either you spend on you own will or we get to lock you in the goat farm prison [soylentnews.org] and have you producing profit in a slave-like style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:01AM (8 children)
Here's a suggestion: 30 year guarantee T-shirt [tomcridland.com] at only £45 (and, in general, the 30 year collection [tomcridland.com].
The "Terms of 30 Year Guarantee" reads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:27AM (7 children)
45GBP? Seems to me like that's not the greatest deal considering how well normal shirts age. Pretty sure my parents still wear t-shirts they bought more than 20 years ago..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:35AM (6 children)
I couldn't get a T-shirt to last me more than 2 years without getting deformed or split at the seams.
I reckon the fabric and the sewing threads that they use today is not what was used to 20 years ago.
3, max 4 years for a t-shirt is all I could get lately before it lands into the rags basket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:34AM (3 children)
It's probably how you wash/dry them that is at fault.
Apart from a few accidents during washing most of my shirts held for 10 years.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:50AM (1 child)
Well, yeah, I admit - machine washing.
Front loader, set on "daily wash" program (40C, 1 soak cycle, 1 detergent, 2 rinse cycles) - loaded with the week worth of tees and shirts (single wear before washed), dried outside on a rope.
Not the most gentle wash, but again not the most aggressive.
And the "mileage varies" based on the brand - I found that the tees from certain places do tend to last longer (almost the full 4 years) - denser, more regular fabric, with seams on the sides (as opposed to a "seamless tube fabric" tees - those go out of shape in less than half of an year).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:47PM
I have found that Egyptian and Indian cotton shirts far outlast any cotton that comes from China. Several of my favorite shirts are from India.
Getting harder to find these days though. Everything is made in China.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:57AM
Well, yes, the shirts last longer then the tee-shirts.
Unfortunately, not at the 10 years mark - the cuff and the corners of the collar get worn out after 4-5 in my case.
I'm usually having/using 10 "business" shirts, single day wear, washing them at the end of the week (so every shirt gets about 25 washes/year).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:55AM (1 child)
Hm, .... Did you check your waist circumference recently? Just a thought...
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:04AM
Mmm.... I'm afraid to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tonyPick on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:14AM (5 children)
Meanwhile the New Horizons mission sends a space probe to Pluto for a grand total cost of $720 million [iflscience.com]. Oh, and NASA cut out the Pluto Fast Flyby and Kuiper Express (amongst others) because they couldn't get the budget.
But $1.2 Billion on a trendy brand name that sells expensive shoes is somehow seen as sane?
Everything you wanted to know about why the human race is fucked in the above sentences...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:33AM (4 children)
All that money has to end up somewhere. If it takes $30 to make shoes sold for $1,500, you have money going to the government (and NASA), employees, reinvestment in the business which means additional construction work and bla bla bla. The figure includes physical retail locations, som I think it would be hard to argue that a brand selling a lot more volume, like say Nike, isn't worth a billion if not much more. It is entirely sane for a luxury shoe business to be sold for over $1 billion. What might be insane or at least irrational is that customers are buying the luxury products when cheaper options or counterfeits exist. Or you could claim that fashion is irrational and fundtion is everything... but we know that argument won't go far because some people cleverly use fashion as a tool to get what they want.
I think you would like a world where people voluntarily decide to directly fund space missions instead of buying certain luxuries. In some cases universities can fund cubesats and the like with realistic funding targets. Then you get projects like Mars One that have made out of this world promises with little to show for it. Finally, NASA could try its hand at crowdfunding a mission. It would need a very good marketing campaign to raise hundreds of millions of dollars (most cool missions are at least in the $1-2 billion range). Maybe Congress could authorize dollar for dollar matched funds for what NASA can officially crowdfund, up to say, $1 billion a year. All on top of NASA's existing budget.
If you want to criticize something, criticze military spending. You can point to actual wasted money. Wars that didn't need to be fought, money that mysteriously went missing, the number of aircraft carriers, cost overruns well over $100 billion for the F-35 program, etc. And this is all money that the government has already extracted from businesses like Jimmy Choo, and Congress + the President have the power (to the extent that a bipartisan agreement can or needs to be reached) to decide how much of it goes to NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:23PM (3 children)
A lot of money the government spends it doesn't extract from businesses. It just borrows and 'promises' to pay it back later. Don't worry The Fed is in on it and are going to keep interest rates low for a little while longer. Have fun while it lasts :)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:52PM (2 children)
I'm still waiting to hear the jew banker screams when someone suggests to Trump that he can just have the US Mint make a few dozen platinum coins with a face value of a Trillion each, and give them to the Federal Reserve to pay off the USA national debt.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:19PM (1 child)
Don't you mean give them to his closest friends, and Putin.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday August 02 2017, @09:10PM
Repeating yourself there, aren't you?
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by oldmac31310 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:28PM
Just why?