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Objects have to earn the right to exist. We make so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary. Stuff that will soon be cluttering your home and then end up in a land
by bborud 11mo ago
Objects have to earn the right to exist. We make so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary. Stuff that will soon be cluttering your home and then end up in a landfill.
This is not a product that deserves to exist. It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
What makes this particularly objectionable is that it is from a design house that usually makes quality garments. And then they stoop to making this crap, slapping their designer label on it and then exploit ghastly people who don't know any better to waste tons of money on it.
This is pissing on Issey Miyake's grave.
- __alexs 11mo agoSynthetic fabrics are perfectly capable of being high quality. Buzz Rickson aren't making their MA-1s out of junk.
- lucideer 11mo agoMA-1s are inner lined with a 100% cotton/wool mix. The outer is nylon because synthetic fabrics are generally good for waterproofing (waterproofing is always a trade-off of quality over function) & also just because bombers are generally nylon, but a big part of their construction is using quality non-synthetic fabrics wherever they can to ensure overall quality.
- __alexs 11mo agoI think nylon was probably also chosen for the MA-1 because of it's light weight and flexibility over the leather jackets it replaced for pilots.
- l5870uoo9y 11mo agoExcept microplastics rub off and penetrate the skin barrier.
- bborud 11mo agoThe MA-1 "works" under a relatively narrow set of conditions that I don't see most days. I tried. It is a miserable garment for how and where I live. I'm not saying synthetic materials are always bad. I own a few jackets in synthetic materials that are good, but I have gone through a lot that are rubbish. For jackets it is more about the technical design than the exact material. I have had lots of expensive jackets that just don't work for my use cases. And a few that do. It is trial and error since I have no idea why some jackets just don't work. I live in a place where it rains heavily, and in the winter it is often cold, and I spend a lot of time outside being physically active. This means that the challenge is to find jackets that can deal with heavy rain, cold, physical abrasion, and perhaps most important of all: moisture management. If you spend a lot of time being physically active outside in all kinds of bad weather, you tend to start caring a lot about what materials you wear. Best case for sub-par garments: they start to smell. Worst case: you freeze because your clothes can't manage moisture. But for what is more or less a glorified sock, at that price I am not buying a piece of plastic. I'd expect more pleasant natural materials.
- mensetmanusman 11mo agoSynthetic materials vary by many orders of magnitude in quality depending on the purity, molecular weights, antioxidant packages, processing conditions, etc
- auggierose 11mo agoWhat do you think of the new futurelite material from The Northface? I think it is great, I love it for both my winter jackets and my light hoodies.
- bborud 11mo agoI haven't tried it so I wouldn't know. But I'll have a look. Thanks for the tip! As I mentioned, I've gone through a lot of jackets in order to try to find a model that consistently works and it is slightly baffling. I have a long discontinued 20 year old Bergans (https://www.bergans.com/ https://www.bergans.com/) jacket in a horrific puke green color that works really well, but it is ugly as sin. (It is almost painful to look at :-)) It is one of the few jackets I own that combine good resistance to heavy rain with an ability to vent moisture really well, so it doesn't get clammy. It also traps heat really well so I have worn it in ~ -15C with just two relatively thin merino wool layers. Most of the other jackets I've tried tend to build up condensation when I ride in heavy rain. Which is pretty common weather where I live.
- xeonmc 11mo agoThere are at least two graves I can think of that this is pissing on.
- novok 11mo agoI see you haven't seen designer collabs from ikea and target then.
- artyom 11mo ago> We BUY so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary. Fixed it.
- nyx 11mo agoYou're right, of course, but I don't think blame rests solely on the individual consumer here... I guess it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, wherein Apple makes $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because they know people will line up to buy it, and people will line up to buy $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because Apple made them. And people have brand loyalty to Apple stuff because quality, or design, or something... but for a product like this, which to me is prima facie a ridiculous, impractical, high-priced, fast-fashion item, you know that the marketers are cashing in on that brand loyalty almost exclusively (in the absence of any intrinsic value). Half-baked thoughts, I'm sure people have written properly about this. But the conclusion I leap to is that marketing people are the great Satan here. Fuck those guys.
- docmars 11mo agoThis is the perfect example of a product nobody asked for, but someone brilliantly decided to create waste with.
- artyom 11mo agoPretty sure the profit margin for these bags is 10x at least. Way better (and simpler) that dealing with expensive computer/phone hardware and it supply chain, even if their pricing is ridiculously expensive. Marketing guys just know and exploit a very well known human weakness. It's annoying because it's Apple, but everyone has been doing this forever. Non-standardized phone chargers? USB-C and its patent hell? HDMI and its licensing? There's plenty of examples for creating wasteful items without them being fashion ones.
- bborud 11mo agoOh it is going to be a more than 10x profit. The materials themselves probably cost no more than a few tens of cents, so all the cost is going to be the in the manufacturing process. The knitting pattern does look somewhat advanced, so I guess it would require a relatively high spec knitting machine. I suspect what would drive up cost is a combination of throughput and somewhat that you need an expensive knitting machine. Since this is a high volume item that will probably bring down the average cost by quite a bit. I would guess somewhere in the region of $2 to $5 per pocket to mass produce these? Anyone have a more qualified guess?
- fvrghl 11mo agoAre you familiar with Miyake's work? He did a lot of innovative design with synthetics, including the entire Pleats Please line.
- bborud 11mo agoTo some degree, but junk is junk even if it says Issey Miyake on it. But at the price they are asking I'd insist on higher quality materials. Not this junk. It is like those horrible Louis Vuitton plastic bags. Yes they are expensive and probably better made than most plastic bags, but they are mass produced plastic bags. You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for. (The only reason I know about Issey Miyake is because years ago I happened to buy a couple of handmade linen suits while visiting Japan. And only later discovered that these suits were "a big deal" when some fashion people I shared an office with saw me wear them as "casual office clothes". To me they were comfortable linen suits that were obviously hand dyed. And they weren't even that expensive)
- futuraperdita 11mo ago> You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for. You're making the subjective value judgement that a synthetic material is "junk", without qualifying it as such. A textile that is less expensive to manufacture, or is synthetic, does not automatically qualify as "junk". Look at technical fabrics such as GoreTex as a highly functional example, or any avant-garde techwear from brands like ACRONYM which usually last quite a long time and have some artistic merit within the fashion world. It's OK to not like synthetic materials. It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design.
- jowday 11mo agoGoreTex is a bad example - it's gonna delaminate after a year or so of heavy use and is pretty much impossible to repair after that. Which also undercuts ACRONYM's messaging about their GoreTex products being some kind of like, buy-it-for-life rainjacket.
- stevage 11mo agoI've never seen a bag similar to this so from that perspective it's a bit innovative. I am so very very far from the target market here though.
- vitorsr 11mo agoReminds me of waterproof phone pouches.
- 98codes 11mo agoIt's November, but I still had to make sure the date on the page wasn't April 1st.
- vessenes 11mo agoExactly my reaction. I hate this. I hate that someone thought of it and that it exists. I have no idea if it will sell, but I was like "no way, that cannot be a real launch from Apple"
- Animats 11mo agoHadn't heard Issey Miyake mentioned in over a decade. He was an important designer in the 1980s, and died in 2022. Known for running completed garments through a pleating machine. Looking at that thing, the overall impression is "a phone so big and heavy it needs its own shoulder bag?"
- steve1977 11mo agoBut… but… it’s a 3D-knitted construction!
- thrw045 11mo agoYou hate on Louis Vuitton but have you ever tried one? Have you looked at all the designs they have? I think LV is better than Hermes bags with that horrendous closure they have on the Birkin and other bags. LV has cool colorful designs also in their ready to wear. You might object to the branding but the bags work very well and are designed well in terms of how easy it is to get stuff in and out and if you don't throw it around the canvas can last a long time. Hermes might have nice Pogo leather and so on but that doesn't mean that closure is worth the hassle IMO. Also IDK what to think about the iPhone Pocket. It LOOKS like a hassle to get stuff in and out of it but if they have somehow managed to make it easy, maybe it's well designed. If not then I agree with you the product is probably garbage.
- matthewdgreen 11mo agoOther random LV fact: Louis Vuitton was a lock maker, and the locks he made were advertised as “unpickable” (more advertising than reality, sadly.) He even had Houdini try to pick one. No, this has nothing to do with TFA, but I like locks.
- pseingatl 11mo agoUndoubtedly, Youtube/Tik-tok's "The Lock-Picking Lawyer" would make short shrift of their padlocks.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo agoThey hate on Louis Vuitton plastic bags, not Louis Vuitton in general, and they are entirely right to do so. It's the same with their perfumes, keychains, wallets and most other small accessories. All products which are far too expensive for what they are but remain reachable by the average person to capitalise on people who want the brand but can't afford the "real" products. Buying entry level products from luxury brands is hard to justify. At their price point, you can generally get a far better equivalent product from a brand with less appeal. It's especially true with Louis Vuitton where the brand's cachet has been severely diluted by how many people own their bags.
- tabletopneedle 11mo ago>It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well. It solves the problem of "how do I flaunt the fact I carry an iPhone to everyone around me" It's a conversation piece and way to flaunt your wealth and status by uncovering a iPhone 17 Pro Max S+ Duo XTX from it when asked.
- chaostheory 11mo ago> Objects have to earn the right to exist. Yes, and that is what a free market is for I don’t understand this either but you and I are obviously not the target market
- bborud 11mo agoI'd object to the notion of a free market. Free and fair markets don't actually exist in the way we like to think. Pretty much every kind of business I've been involved in has different strata of rules for different players. Try to set up a HFT business. Or try to do anything interesting in telecom. Once you have cleared the capital and regulatory hurdles what kills you is that you need special relationships. In this case, I doubt this product would become a success without the two brand names behind it, and completely astronomical amounts of financial might. They will sell literal tons of these even if people ultimately find out that they are junk. On its own, this is a bargain bin-liner.
- chaostheory 11mo agoSure, but in the case of consumer products like this one, consumer choice largely rules
- WheatMillington 11mo agoNone of that matters, Apple drones will buy it.
- digitcatphd 11mo agoBeatifully said and you are right. I will get mine on Temu.
- simjnd 11mo agoTo be fair a lot of garments from Issey Miyake are made from similar material.
- boringg 11mo agoIm not sure if you have spent any time in Asia but they love to have little throwaway bags for their to go drinks so they stay cold - and they hang in the same way. This looks like the exact same thing but pop an iphone in it. Wild waste of materials and design.
- lynn_xx 11mo agoYes, you're right. People in Asia do like to use small bags for their phones or lipsticks. But those little bags are usually really cute or nicely designed, not like this one. Collaborate with Issey Miyake? Seriously?
- thisislife2 11mo agoWhat I am curious about is whether women in France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S (where this product is going to be launched) don't use hand-bags? If not, do they hold the phones in their hands or keep it in their pockets? In India or the middle-east, I've never seen women carry their phones in anything but their hand-bags / clutches.
- fakedang 11mo agoParisian pickpockets gonna salivate over this.
- thisislife2 11mo agoHad the same thought too - it's like an advertisement to phone thieves, "Look I have an iPhone!".
- fakedang 11mo agoAlso, "look I have disposable income to buy unwanted goods". Like painting a large bullseye on your back.
- wahnfrieden 11mo ago
- naravara 11mo agoWhat do you mean? Nylon and polyester can be extremely durable, that’s always been their appeal. A knitted pocket is very likely to be a BIFL item even moreso than typical cotton or wool fabrics unless they’re specifically designed to be hard wearing, like canvas. That and the fact that it’s designed to fit any size and model of phone means it’s likely to be significantly less wasteful than putting your phone in a high end leather case that will age out when you upgrade. Apple is clearly trying to experiment with more textile elements on its products, like with the Apple Watch band and FineWoven/tech woven cases to move away from using environmentally damaging leather and cheap feeling silicon. Stuff like this, sold in small lots, is how you test out whether people are into it before trying to work it into a product meant to sell to hundreds of millions of people.
- WhyNotHugo 11mo ago> It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well. The primary use case is to show off that you can afford useless pretentious crap. It fulfils this role perfectly well.
- bborud 11mo agoWhen you put it like that I can find no fault with your argument :-)
- thelastgallon 11mo ago> It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well. It is impossible for Apple to innovate. It's way too much work to compete with BYD/Tesla on real things like Electric Cars. It's a LOT easier just to extract money from idiots who pay top dollar for 'fashion'. They will market this as the Balenciaga of phone bags, to differentiate it from the $2 phone bags that will appear on Temu next week (or they are already there; Apple is slowly catching up after a few years).
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- userbinator 11mo agoand then exploit ghastly people who don't know any better to waste tons of money on it. It's attempting to be a Veblen Good.
- PokemonNoGo 11mo agoFirst thing I my mind went to was the iPod Socks. I still have my old ipods in them... Only me? Ok :|
- constantcrying 11mo ago>It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)) Polyamids like Nylon are some of the highest quality and most durable fabrics in the world, with some of the best material characteristics fabrics can have. Given the constraints of the product and looking at it from an engineering standpoint, these are the materials you want for a product like this. Flexible, durable and resistant to weather. I do not see what other materials you would use to achieve a better quality product. That said, it is of course a stupid fashion accessories. The world is full of them.