7 ms·

My wife and I went to Paris for our anniversary and we didn't realize until we were there that it was Fashion Week. I am genuinely not surprised at all that th

My wife and I went to Paris for our anniversary and we didn't realize until we were there that it was Fashion Week. I am genuinely not surprised at all that this guy made it to the top. Streetwear has become so ironic because the lines have blurred between haute culture/high fashion and bargain basement designs that you genuinely can't tell what is $800 (Balenciaga Triple S https://www.balenciaga.com/us/triple-s-shoes_cod11271302nb.html https://www.balenciaga.com/us/triple-s-shoes_cod11271302nb.h...) and what is $55 (Nike Air Monarch https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-lifestyle-gym-shoe-lPtRrS https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-lifestyle-gym-shoe-lPt...) unless you know the brands and styles.

nopinsight 8y ago
It is great there is little objective difference between $800 and $55 pairs of shoes. It means the middle class can afford high-quality items and do not need to care if someone is willing to pay for the brand.
- klodolph 8y ago
  I’d say that’s not quite what’s going on here. You can’t tell when someone else is wearing an $800 or $55 pair of shoes, but in my experience the $55 shoes tend to bite my heels and fall apart within the year. If you don’t care about the brand and have a middle-class income, I might spend $55 on shoes for a growing kid but $200 on shoes for myself that I know will last for years. Not saying you can’t get good shoes for $55, just sharing my experience. Someone will come in with the Terry Pratchett quote about boots here any moment, or you can look up the quote for yourself.
  - sbov 8y ago
    I've bought plenty of $300 pairs of shoes that fell apart in a year. Price has little relationship with quality nowadays. You just need to do your research.
    - bhandziuk 8y ago
      What kinds of shoes are you buying for 2-300 $? High quality running shoes seem to max out at ~150 and the prices are centered around 100.
      - sovnade 8y ago
        Nike has plenty over $200. There doesn't seem to be a noticeable difference between their $80 and $240 shoes though.
        bhandziuk 8y ago
        I can't appreciate any increase in quality as a running shoe price goes over ~140 $. I bet any 200 $ running shoe has an equivalent for about half that price. (which seems to be what you're saying)
        hultner 8y ago
        When I ran a lot (avg. 20km/workday, more in the weekends), I’d wear down any shoe in a couple of weeks tried all sorts of running shoes in different price ranges but in the end I settled with buying cheap ~$50 shoes since I knew that I had to buy a new pair next month again.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >High quality running shoes seem to max out at ~150 Huh? That's not even remotely accurate. There are tons of Nikes and Adidas way beyond $200, and even more so for "collectible" sneakers, and way more so ($1000 easily) for quality leather shoes. E.g: https://www.adidas.com/us/originals-shoes?sort=price-high-to-low https://www.adidas.com/us/originals-shoes?sort=price-high-to... https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/mens-shoes/7puZoi3?sortOrder=finalprice|desc https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/mens-shoes/7puZoi3?sortOr... https://www.colehaan.com/mens-shoes?pmax=351.00&pmin=251.00 https://www.colehaan.com/mens-shoes?pmax=351.00&pmin=251.00 https://www.thefryecompany.com/mens/boots?product_list_order=price&product_list_dir=desc https://www.thefryecompany.com/mens/boots?product_list_order... And I'm not including any high-fashion brands...
  - dcole2929 8y ago
    Yeah this is 100% not the case when it comes to athletic wear. You are far more likely to get a comfortable well fitting shoe made by Nike, Addidas, etc than you are from one of the high end fashion designers. And it's pretty obvious why. At the end of the day your $300 Jordan's need to look good but they also have to be something you can be active in. Ball players you know actually play ball in them. Your $1000 Balenciagas just need to be expensive. The quality of the shoes is directly related to what you do in them. If you are buying trainers to run in, you probably want to replace them yearly if not every 6 months. If you're buying them to walk around in and because they look nice, yeah they'll last a lot longer. People treat their shoes based on the price they paid. You're not doing gardening in your $1000 sneakers but you might in the $50 pair of nikes you picked up at Nordstroms Rack.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    If you live in a walkable city and you walk, there's no $800 shoe that would last you proportionately longer than $55 shoe. If you Uber everywhere or drive everywhere then it is quite possible that an $800 shoe would last 4-5 years.
    - Bayesiano 8y ago
      Goodyear welted shoes can be resoled multiple times plus you can also glue a plastic sole over the leather one. The cost is 15$ and when you're wearing it out you simply replace it. Dainite soles are quite more long lasting than leather ones too. Goodyear > Blake > Cement. Not only the construction matters but also the leather used in the upper. I can differentiate a 200$ shoe from a 500$ one at a glance, a good pair of shoes can be brought back to life even if they have been seriously abused. There are more durable leathers too like cordovan. In clothing there are many garments where there isn't much of a correlation between price and quality but leather shoes and jackets isn't one.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      It is too bad that the reply to this message got [dead]'ed because it contained the typical mistake that people make when talking about "fixing" something - the gist was that for $15 it is possible to replace the sole of a $55 shoe. Here's the thing: $55-$200 shoe can be had at TJMaxx or Marshalls for $25. Quality sole replacement is claimed to be $15. That's not really correct - it is closer to $40 in sole + labor + you need another pair of shoes while your shoe is being replaced but lets say that it is $20. So even if there's no wear on the top of the shoe replacement of a sole would cost $20. Objectively, soles in a city would last ~6-10 months based on daily wear. This means that what we are evaluating is: Shoe 1: $0 NRC + $25 every 6 months Shoe 2: $800 NRC + $20 every 6 months Man it will take a long time to break even on shoe 2
      - Bayesiano 8y ago
        10-15$ is what it costs to glue a rubber sole over the leather one, I believe it's calle a topy in English. It's mainly used so you don't fall in slippery floors but can also be added for durability. A quality sole replacement for a goodyear welted shoe costs around 100$. You're not buying an 800$ shoe for durability but for aesthetics and comfort. There isn't much difference in durability between a 200$ shoe and an 800$ one. There is a great deal of difference between a 55$ and a 200$ shoe. I have 200$ shoes with dainite soles that have been worn three or four hundred times over the last 4 years and are completely new. We can't evaluate how much a sole lasts objectively because we should: - Specify the sole that is being used. - The construction of the shoe. - How the wearer walks. - How many kms does he walk. - Where he walks. - The weather. - ... In my experience a dainite sole is perfectly fine after one year of usage. Some of my days have 30-50k steps. I don't wear shoes daily though because it's bad for them and I have 22 pair of shoes. My reply wasn't stating that an 800$ shoe lasts 14.5 times longer that a 55$ shoe but the notion that a 55$ shoe will last around the same time. A 200$ will last 5 times more easily. An 800$ shoe will look better than a 55$ shoe 30 years later at a cost of a 100$ resole every 5 years. We should take into account the environmental costs of buying new low quality shoes every year instead of having 3 pairs of good value quality shoes (200$) and taking good care of them.
- dillondoyle 8y ago
  I also don't really agree. I think it'd be hard to find a high quality pair of leather shoes for $55 that you couldn't pick out of a lineup. But then you might need to know the difference to spot it. Kind of like when you learn what kerning is you see bad kerning everywhere. Cheap shoes (especially leather dressier shoes) are easy to spot by the sole and stitching. I've known a few people in service industry who've said a persons shoe is often a signal of wealth they can leverage.
StrictDabbler 8y ago
That Balenciaga is an absurd shoe. It's the running shoe equivalent of a Gaudi hotel facade. It looks like it belongs on the cover of Yellow Submarine. The lines are crazy. The curves of the sole section near the front of the shoe are in a complicated dialogue with the curves near the back. Check those tangents, man. If you've ever used something like illustrator, imagine where the spline controls would be. Then try the same with the Nike. They're different. I wouldn't pay $800 for those shoes because for me, $800 is a lot of money. If I were megarich and I needed sneakers maybe I'd pick the Balenciaga out of an appreciation for how they're pushing the edges of sneaker space. I'd be more likely to buy nice leather shoes because they'd suit me better. The reason you can't tell the difference between that and a generic sneaker for middle-aged men is that you're used to the higher fashion brands using a separate set of cultural symbols as their baseline instead of looking at the design itself. We've gone past that. Rich people aren't wearing wingtips to show how rich they are anymore. In fact, "formal" clothing and couture has long been a way to show you're on the way up, not that you're there. Old money doesn't try to keep up with fashion. Rich people want to wear sneakers, t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, and all the other normal sportswear that everybody else now wears but they want it to be interesting instead of generic. That's a valid role for a fashion designer. Not addressing that market would be idiotic. The reason it's easy to fake your way to the top of fashion week is actually that 90% of everything is shit, in every field and at every level, so there's no way to look at a given person's stuff and say definitively "nope, I can clearly tell you aren't successful by the way your clothing designs look". You might kick Michael Kors out by accident.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  > 90% of everything is shit in regulated/safety-critical industries such as automotive, aerospace & defense, medical, etc. where people's lives are at stake, 99% of end-user facing products are fantastic and you generally get what you pay for, with some minimum level of quality and manufacturer warranty in high fashion, the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low. and it has stirred emotions here because nobody likes to feel left out, and that's basically the point of high fashion, to appoint a select group of people as "cool" because they "get it" and can afford hot labels I wouldn't say that this extends all through the art world - good design is key to a lot of functional and utility aspects of engineering or creating anything new. but nobody is going to be playing pick up basketball in their $800 balenciaga, or expecting any level of functionality/comfort from them besides fitting on their feet
zokier 8y ago
> Streetwear has become so ironic because the lines have blurred between haute culture/high fashion and bargain basement designs I was under the impression that haute couture still is its own weird world, far distanced from anything reasonable. Just look at some of the shows: Relatively wearable Armani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgaJD5hISc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgaJD5hISc Random Givenchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQGbOOKpTd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQGbOOKpTd0 Bona fide art pieces from Guo Pei: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ew-tsk8KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ew-tsk8KA (and those were just some random sampling from youtube search for haute couture) Nobody is going to mix those up with some random cheap street vendor clothes.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  That's also because nobody is ever going to actually wear outfits like this: https://youtu.be/a1ew-tsk8KA?t=983 https://youtu.be/a1ew-tsk8KA?t=983
perl4ever 8y ago
I wouldn't be able to tell you a priori what the price difference is, but the Balenciaga is obviously trying to be more avant garde, whereas the Nike looks much more ordinary, even conservative. It reminds me of the way (in my opinion) cars are more attractive up to a certain price point and then they get less attractive (to me) because really rich people want to show off that their taste is different from the masses.

nopinsight 8y ago

It is great there is little objective difference between $800 and $55 pairs of shoes. It means the middle class can afford high-quality items and do not need to care if someone is willing to pay for the brand.

klodolph 8y ago
I’d say that’s not quite what’s going on here. You can’t tell when someone else is wearing an $800 or $55 pair of shoes, but in my experience the $55 shoes tend to bite my heels and fall apart within the year. If you don’t care about the brand and have a middle-class income, I might spend $55 on shoes for a growing kid but $200 on shoes for myself that I know will last for years. Not saying you can’t get good shoes for $55, just sharing my experience. Someone will come in with the Terry Pratchett quote about boots here any moment, or you can look up the quote for yourself.
- sbov 8y ago
  I've bought plenty of $300 pairs of shoes that fell apart in a year. Price has little relationship with quality nowadays. You just need to do your research.
  - bhandziuk 8y ago
    What kinds of shoes are you buying for 2-300 $? High quality running shoes seem to max out at ~150 and the prices are centered around 100.
    - sovnade 8y ago
      Nike has plenty over $200. There doesn't seem to be a noticeable difference between their $80 and $240 shoes though.
      - bhandziuk 8y ago
        I can't appreciate any increase in quality as a running shoe price goes over ~140 $. I bet any 200 $ running shoe has an equivalent for about half that price. (which seems to be what you're saying)
      - hultner 8y ago
        When I ran a lot (avg. 20km/workday, more in the weekends), I’d wear down any shoe in a couple of weeks tried all sorts of running shoes in different price ranges but in the end I settled with buying cheap ~$50 shoes since I knew that I had to buy a new pair next month again.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >High quality running shoes seem to max out at ~150 Huh? That's not even remotely accurate. There are tons of Nikes and Adidas way beyond $200, and even more so for "collectible" sneakers, and way more so ($1000 easily) for quality leather shoes. E.g: https://www.adidas.com/us/originals-shoes?sort=price-high-to-low https://www.adidas.com/us/originals-shoes?sort=price-high-to... https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/mens-shoes/7puZoi3?sortOrder=finalprice|desc https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/mens-shoes/7puZoi3?sortOr... https://www.colehaan.com/mens-shoes?pmax=351.00&pmin=251.00 https://www.colehaan.com/mens-shoes?pmax=351.00&pmin=251.00 https://www.thefryecompany.com/mens/boots?product_list_order=price&product_list_dir=desc https://www.thefryecompany.com/mens/boots?product_list_order... And I'm not including any high-fashion brands...
- dcole2929 8y ago
  Yeah this is 100% not the case when it comes to athletic wear. You are far more likely to get a comfortable well fitting shoe made by Nike, Addidas, etc than you are from one of the high end fashion designers. And it's pretty obvious why. At the end of the day your $300 Jordan's need to look good but they also have to be something you can be active in. Ball players you know actually play ball in them. Your $1000 Balenciagas just need to be expensive. The quality of the shoes is directly related to what you do in them. If you are buying trainers to run in, you probably want to replace them yearly if not every 6 months. If you're buying them to walk around in and because they look nice, yeah they'll last a lot longer. People treat their shoes based on the price they paid. You're not doing gardening in your $1000 sneakers but you might in the $50 pair of nikes you picked up at Nordstroms Rack.
- notyourday 8y ago
  If you live in a walkable city and you walk, there's no $800 shoe that would last you proportionately longer than $55 shoe. If you Uber everywhere or drive everywhere then it is quite possible that an $800 shoe would last 4-5 years.
  - Bayesiano 8y ago
    Goodyear welted shoes can be resoled multiple times plus you can also glue a plastic sole over the leather one. The cost is 15$ and when you're wearing it out you simply replace it. Dainite soles are quite more long lasting than leather ones too. Goodyear > Blake > Cement. Not only the construction matters but also the leather used in the upper. I can differentiate a 200$ shoe from a 500$ one at a glance, a good pair of shoes can be brought back to life even if they have been seriously abused. There are more durable leathers too like cordovan. In clothing there are many garments where there isn't much of a correlation between price and quality but leather shoes and jackets isn't one.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    It is too bad that the reply to this message got [dead]'ed because it contained the typical mistake that people make when talking about "fixing" something - the gist was that for $15 it is possible to replace the sole of a $55 shoe. Here's the thing: $55-$200 shoe can be had at TJMaxx or Marshalls for $25. Quality sole replacement is claimed to be $15. That's not really correct - it is closer to $40 in sole + labor + you need another pair of shoes while your shoe is being replaced but lets say that it is $20. So even if there's no wear on the top of the shoe replacement of a sole would cost $20. Objectively, soles in a city would last ~6-10 months based on daily wear. This means that what we are evaluating is: Shoe 1: $0 NRC + $25 every 6 months Shoe 2: $800 NRC + $20 every 6 months Man it will take a long time to break even on shoe 2
    - Bayesiano 8y ago
      10-15$ is what it costs to glue a rubber sole over the leather one, I believe it's calle a topy in English. It's mainly used so you don't fall in slippery floors but can also be added for durability. A quality sole replacement for a goodyear welted shoe costs around 100$. You're not buying an 800$ shoe for durability but for aesthetics and comfort. There isn't much difference in durability between a 200$ shoe and an 800$ one. There is a great deal of difference between a 55$ and a 200$ shoe. I have 200$ shoes with dainite soles that have been worn three or four hundred times over the last 4 years and are completely new. We can't evaluate how much a sole lasts objectively because we should: - Specify the sole that is being used. - The construction of the shoe. - How the wearer walks. - How many kms does he walk. - Where he walks. - The weather. - ... In my experience a dainite sole is perfectly fine after one year of usage. Some of my days have 30-50k steps. I don't wear shoes daily though because it's bad for them and I have 22 pair of shoes. My reply wasn't stating that an 800$ shoe lasts 14.5 times longer that a 55$ shoe but the notion that a 55$ shoe will last around the same time. A 200$ will last 5 times more easily. An 800$ shoe will look better than a 55$ shoe 30 years later at a cost of a 100$ resole every 5 years. We should take into account the environmental costs of buying new low quality shoes every year instead of having 3 pairs of good value quality shoes (200$) and taking good care of them.
dillondoyle 8y ago
I also don't really agree. I think it'd be hard to find a high quality pair of leather shoes for $55 that you couldn't pick out of a lineup. But then you might need to know the difference to spot it. Kind of like when you learn what kerning is you see bad kerning everywhere. Cheap shoes (especially leather dressier shoes) are easy to spot by the sole and stitching. I've known a few people in service industry who've said a persons shoe is often a signal of wealth they can leverage.

StrictDabbler 8y ago

That Balenciaga is an absurd shoe. It's the running shoe equivalent of a Gaudi hotel facade. It looks like it belongs on the cover of Yellow Submarine. The lines are crazy. The curves of the sole section near the front of the shoe are in a complicated dialogue with the curves near the back. Check those tangents, man. If you've ever used something like illustrator, imagine where the spline controls would be. Then try the same with the Nike. They're different. I wouldn't pay $800 for those shoes because for me, $800 is a lot of money. If I were megarich and I needed sneakers maybe I'd pick the Balenciaga out of an appreciation for how they're pushing the edges of sneaker space. I'd be more likely to buy nice leather shoes because they'd suit me better. The reason you can't tell the difference between that and a generic sneaker for middle-aged men is that you're used to the higher fashion brands using a separate set of cultural symbols as their baseline instead of looking at the design itself. We've gone past that. Rich people aren't wearing wingtips to show how rich they are anymore. In fact, "formal" clothing and couture has long been a way to show you're on the way up, not that you're there. Old money doesn't try to keep up with fashion. Rich people want to wear sneakers, t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, and all the other normal sportswear that everybody else now wears but they want it to be interesting instead of generic. That's a valid role for a fashion designer. Not addressing that market would be idiotic. The reason it's easy to fake your way to the top of fashion week is actually that 90% of everything is shit, in every field and at every level, so there's no way to look at a given person's stuff and say definitively "nope, I can clearly tell you aren't successful by the way your clothing designs look". You might kick Michael Kors out by accident.

roymurdock 8y ago
> 90% of everything is shit in regulated/safety-critical industries such as automotive, aerospace & defense, medical, etc. where people's lives are at stake, 99% of end-user facing products are fantastic and you generally get what you pay for, with some minimum level of quality and manufacturer warranty in high fashion, the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low. and it has stirred emotions here because nobody likes to feel left out, and that's basically the point of high fashion, to appoint a select group of people as "cool" because they "get it" and can afford hot labels I wouldn't say that this extends all through the art world - good design is key to a lot of functional and utility aspects of engineering or creating anything new. but nobody is going to be playing pick up basketball in their $800 balenciaga, or expecting any level of functionality/comfort from them besides fitting on their feet

zokier 8y ago

> Streetwear has become so ironic because the lines have blurred between haute culture/high fashion and bargain basement designs I was under the impression that haute couture still is its own weird world, far distanced from anything reasonable. Just look at some of the shows: Relatively wearable Armani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgaJD5hISc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgaJD5hISc Random Givenchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQGbOOKpTd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQGbOOKpTd0 Bona fide art pieces from Guo Pei: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ew-tsk8KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ew-tsk8KA (and those were just some random sampling from youtube search for haute couture) Nobody is going to mix those up with some random cheap street vendor clothes.

jpatokal 8y ago
That's also because nobody is ever going to actually wear outfits like this: https://youtu.be/a1ew-tsk8KA?t=983 https://youtu.be/a1ew-tsk8KA?t=983

perl4ever 8y ago

I wouldn't be able to tell you a priori what the price difference is, but the Balenciaga is obviously trying to be more avant garde, whereas the Nike looks much more ordinary, even conservative. It reminds me of the way (in my opinion) cars are more attractive up to a certain price point and then they get less attractive (to me) because really rich people want to show off that their taste is different from the masses.