really late on this and i feel like maybe y'all have addressed this before but on the topic of going into stores just for vibe research and raw appreciation (NOCAP mindset IIRC), i do that a lot and i've started to feel a little bad about it, especially when the staff start to recognize me. i feel like i'm, like, leading them on? or just taking up unnecessary space/time/energy? do you think that feeling holds any merit or am i just projecting? are they happy to have me in there even if i'm not spending?
randomly remembered now, two weeks after reading this post — a great addition to these brands would be Estudio Niksen (https://estudioniksen.com). For some reason, I thought I found out about them through BBSP, but the search doesn't turn anything up, so maybe not!
I wanted to give a plug for organizing a local clothing swap — it's a great way for the swag-rich/cash-poor to come up on some new pieces they might not be able to afford at retail, and for those of us who are blessed with both swag AND disposable income to re-home beloved jawns without negotiating the cursed hellscape of Grailed (or worse, debasing ourselves with an IG stories sale).
For Bay area Spyfriends, Makeshift Center hosts an awesome annual clothing swap in Oakland, but all you really need is a backyard, some like-minded homies, and a few flyers and you can do it anywhere.
"...clothes have started to routinely hit markdowns of 40% off and up at their ever-expanding stockist networks."
Over-distribution of once "small indie brands" is a major contributing factor to retail prices and jawnflation. Once a showroom sees how popular a brand is becoming, wholesale prices are often raised, and over distribution occurs as well. While showrooms or brand reps can have great intentions to help new designers grow, it can end up backfiring (especially when small brands are encouraged to sell to the majors). With a few seasons, no retailer can sell the items at full price. Once this cycle starts for a brand, under pricing starts between retailers in an effort to preemptively offload the merchandise, usually right at the start of the season. This doesn't even take into consideration the larger players who discount new goods within a month. Within a few years I have seen things that used to wholesale for X cost double or more. One thing I can't figure out is whether the extra cost is actually materials / labor cost, inflation due to hype, or extra padding to allow for markdowns? It could probably be all three - but at the end of the day, most people will walk away from a $700 shirt when they could have purchased it a year or two ago for less, or on sale in a month. (Of course, I have to give a shout out to shipping and importing costs, which have gone through the roof.) Jawnflation and brand devaluation ensue... and to your point:
"paying $300+ for a banger piece feels “normal” if not increasingly “cheap.” "
Yes, $300 does seem like a normal price, bordering on low these days. In fact, I would say in 2019 it seemed like a high price tag. There is a hug gap of clothing at this price point right now. I would guess this is primarily a materials and labor cost issue - I could say it's a reflection of global inflation, but the price increases seem way higher than that too!
In order for items to carry a heavy pricetag, they need to reflect the quality and effort of the maker. There are truly beautiful and amazing things out there that do deserve the $$, it just seems finding them is harder than ever in an overwhelming sea of information. The best thing is to always look for small makers locally, learn to make things yourself, etc etc. As always, kudos to you all for bringing up these topics!
If you're like me and want to shop secondhand online but you're maybe struggling to make eBay work for you--I'd love to recommend the online estate sale site Everything But the House (https://www.ebth.com/). It's an internet destination my mom put me on to to shop for like, old Pampered Chef (the goat), but which also offers some incredible clothing and accessories coppable for dirt cheap. I realize this isn't THAT much different than an eBay or thrifting situation, but I personally love the experience of browsing sales and find it's much more joyous than setting up a bunch of saved searches elsewhere. And I've found some unheard of deals on luxury labels and materials (i.e., last fall I picked up a ~2006 Prada hobo bag for $40). happy hunting!! <3
If you look at your own expenses and think about what you’d have to charge just to net enough to afford the absolute basics, it’s easy to see why the prices are what they are. The LEECHES profiting off life’s basics have skewed the wealth distribution so much it’s killing creativity and the ability to support creativity. Reversing the trend will take real structural/cultural changes and I think BBSP assists in getting people to think about these things while dropping dope recs. At least there are extremely cool clothes available used and they are often cooler than any new clothes you can buy. When you don’t have a lot of cash to work with you have to innovate and that is where a lot of the best looks come from. That being said I’d like to occasionally buy something new from a small maker because supporting new life in the industry is necessary if that’s what you want to see.
The link above is to a genius book written in 1975: Cheap Chic (there are less expensive re-prints available too, the new paperback edition is the one with a foreword by Tim Gunn). Anyway, the book introduced me to the concept of "cost per wear" - in other words, a cheap thing worn once is actually a waste of money, but if you save up and buy the good thing, and then wear it and wear it and wear it, you probably will achieve a way lower "cost per wear" ratio (and while the authors were writing too long ago to worry about the waste stream, obviously you keep your beloved old garments of high quality out of the trash). It's a very entertaining and sane book that also introduced many people at the time to the art of vintage shopping.
OK I'm sure I'm blanking on a ton but off the dome, some pretty reliably cool small / smallish lines that are priced *relatively* low that we've written about are Stüssy, Manresa MFG, 11.11, IJJI, Randy’s Garments, 18 East, Gramicci, and Satta... Again, definitely spacing out and forgetting a bunch more.
And of course there’s obvious mass-apparel sources known for good design, e.g. (the Lemaire-overseen) Uniqlo U and Muji. There's another comment in here from garmento Spyfriend Becca with positive inside intel from UU.
Erin has gotten good stuff from solid if sort-of-timeliney-feeling places like Le Bon Shoppe. Along similar lines people love Outlier, and for natural dye stuff there's Industry of All Nations, which I first encountered at Mohawk and seems to have expanded into a more DTC / timeliney operation. I use that term not as a pejorative, just as a kind of categorizing / vibe-identifying tool !
Inspiring sletter as always! I feel in good company alongside Jack and s.c. -- I'm someone who basically 1. only buys secondhand 2. but hates and is crummy at buying online 3. doesn't like to spend a ton of money 4. but also is on her David Milch wavelength and fundamentally believes money isn't real 5. and relatedly is a broke b*tch....Luckily I live in LA, where there is a robust ESTATE SALE CULTURE. If you're fortunate enough to live in a place where estate sales are poppin off, I couldn't recommend them more for high-quality and inexpensive clothing curated by swaggy elders. Oftentimes the clothing is worn-in but in superb condition and made of excellent materials, to say nothing of the MATERIAL OF A LIFE WELL LIVED. Punch in your zip code at estatesales.net and see what comes up in your area. (Pro tip: prices are negotiable and by the end of the sale expect deep markdowns.)
I'm a veteran who has been beuatiful garments for many many years coming up in Brooklyn and the NYC retail scene. I would tell the young me to get out before it's too late! But seriously, many bargains are to be had out there. It's almost like being a record collector digging in the creates. Vestiare, Poshmark, Marrkt, Grailed,, Ebay, etsy etc have great pieces. I'd rather have a great second hand piece from a great, quality brand, than a new piece from the tons of mid brands that occupy that space.
Also, if you're trying to by beautfiul brands like Auralee, Kapital, Kaptain Sunshine, Comoli, etc. buy them from Japan and save a ton of money. You won't have to swallow the massive markup,s and the shipping sometimes is just as fast. Good luck!
Yo I felt this deeply. I recently picked up a fleece from Drake's on their archive sale, for the "great" price of $330, marked down from close to $700! I felt a storm of emotions - I was a chump for saving up for a fleece that is objectively expensive (but maybe not overpriced), I felt good about supporting a brand that is small / small-ish, that I vibe with and that seems to do things "the right way". I felt wack for lusting after something, I felt blessed when it arrived and the fit was perfect and I knew it would slide into my wardrobe and fill a need. The whiplash of being a modern consumer obsessed and panicked about price while trying to get off fits and still afford my car note and babysitters for the kids...these are dark times. I really do look to BBSP and the community for guidance and this type of profundity is much appreciated...I bring up the Drake's fleece situation not just to cathartically unload but to point out this means I've been / will continue to be trying to thrift for much of the rest of the closet. Etsy and ebay have been good to me recently and I echo the sletter in that old LLBean, Polo, and Carhartt can be found for decent prices and you can ride them long and hard. And on a 'medium priced' level, Manresa (first heard of here), scratches an itch for sure. It's hard out here but we're in this together. Peace and love.
@Jack - not to shout out a huge corp but having worked on the inside at Uniqlo U, I can assure you that many of the fabrics are super high quality, some of them are actually woven or knit in Japan as well. The design team came from major luxury houses and all of us remarked that the fabrics we were using were actually nicer than the fabrics we used at luxury houses. They are sometimes the exact fabrics Lemaire uses in his collection. (The garments themselves however are def made in China which is a separate consideration). There is lots of second hand Uniqlo U available out there as well if you don't want to support the corporation. You can try searching both "Uniqlo U" and "Uniqlo Lemaire". Just beware if you are buying from a seller in Japan- you need to size one size up for the American equivalent, and the pants inseam will be 1-2" shorter than items bought from other countries.
really late on this and i feel like maybe y'all have addressed this before but on the topic of going into stores just for vibe research and raw appreciation (NOCAP mindset IIRC), i do that a lot and i've started to feel a little bad about it, especially when the staff start to recognize me. i feel like i'm, like, leading them on? or just taking up unnecessary space/time/energy? do you think that feeling holds any merit or am i just projecting? are they happy to have me in there even if i'm not spending?
randomly remembered now, two weeks after reading this post — a great addition to these brands would be Estudio Niksen (https://estudioniksen.com). For some reason, I thought I found out about them through BBSP, but the search doesn't turn anything up, so maybe not!
sexhippes is having a 40% off right now, with kind vibed Vermont skate garms and prices to match. 👀made in USA wool beanie and gridfleece mock neck 📥
One of my favourite subscriptions! Don't ever stop, please!
Great article.
I wanted to give a plug for organizing a local clothing swap — it's a great way for the swag-rich/cash-poor to come up on some new pieces they might not be able to afford at retail, and for those of us who are blessed with both swag AND disposable income to re-home beloved jawns without negotiating the cursed hellscape of Grailed (or worse, debasing ourselves with an IG stories sale).
For Bay area Spyfriends, Makeshift Center hosts an awesome annual clothing swap in Oakland, but all you really need is a backyard, some like-minded homies, and a few flyers and you can do it anywhere.
"...clothes have started to routinely hit markdowns of 40% off and up at their ever-expanding stockist networks."
Over-distribution of once "small indie brands" is a major contributing factor to retail prices and jawnflation. Once a showroom sees how popular a brand is becoming, wholesale prices are often raised, and over distribution occurs as well. While showrooms or brand reps can have great intentions to help new designers grow, it can end up backfiring (especially when small brands are encouraged to sell to the majors). With a few seasons, no retailer can sell the items at full price. Once this cycle starts for a brand, under pricing starts between retailers in an effort to preemptively offload the merchandise, usually right at the start of the season. This doesn't even take into consideration the larger players who discount new goods within a month. Within a few years I have seen things that used to wholesale for X cost double or more. One thing I can't figure out is whether the extra cost is actually materials / labor cost, inflation due to hype, or extra padding to allow for markdowns? It could probably be all three - but at the end of the day, most people will walk away from a $700 shirt when they could have purchased it a year or two ago for less, or on sale in a month. (Of course, I have to give a shout out to shipping and importing costs, which have gone through the roof.) Jawnflation and brand devaluation ensue... and to your point:
"paying $300+ for a banger piece feels “normal” if not increasingly “cheap.” "
Yes, $300 does seem like a normal price, bordering on low these days. In fact, I would say in 2019 it seemed like a high price tag. There is a hug gap of clothing at this price point right now. I would guess this is primarily a materials and labor cost issue - I could say it's a reflection of global inflation, but the price increases seem way higher than that too!
In order for items to carry a heavy pricetag, they need to reflect the quality and effort of the maker. There are truly beautiful and amazing things out there that do deserve the $$, it just seems finding them is harder than ever in an overwhelming sea of information. The best thing is to always look for small makers locally, learn to make things yourself, etc etc. As always, kudos to you all for bringing up these topics!
If you're like me and want to shop secondhand online but you're maybe struggling to make eBay work for you--I'd love to recommend the online estate sale site Everything But the House (https://www.ebth.com/). It's an internet destination my mom put me on to to shop for like, old Pampered Chef (the goat), but which also offers some incredible clothing and accessories coppable for dirt cheap. I realize this isn't THAT much different than an eBay or thrifting situation, but I personally love the experience of browsing sales and find it's much more joyous than setting up a bunch of saved searches elsewhere. And I've found some unheard of deals on luxury labels and materials (i.e., last fall I picked up a ~2006 Prada hobo bag for $40). happy hunting!! <3
If you look at your own expenses and think about what you’d have to charge just to net enough to afford the absolute basics, it’s easy to see why the prices are what they are. The LEECHES profiting off life’s basics have skewed the wealth distribution so much it’s killing creativity and the ability to support creativity. Reversing the trend will take real structural/cultural changes and I think BBSP assists in getting people to think about these things while dropping dope recs. At least there are extremely cool clothes available used and they are often cooler than any new clothes you can buy. When you don’t have a lot of cash to work with you have to innovate and that is where a lot of the best looks come from. That being said I’d like to occasionally buy something new from a small maker because supporting new life in the industry is necessary if that’s what you want to see.
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31637919174&dest=usa&ref_=ps_ggl_17730966692&cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade50up-_-product_id=COM9780517523681USED-_-keyword=&gclid=Cj0KCQiAw6yuBhDrARIsACf94RWnBhDbLpRfX3yhILLmLOMIP2o5JwqLPZrdGzNc1G0bPmalYu2eoWEaAhiFEALw_wcB
The link above is to a genius book written in 1975: Cheap Chic (there are less expensive re-prints available too, the new paperback edition is the one with a foreword by Tim Gunn). Anyway, the book introduced me to the concept of "cost per wear" - in other words, a cheap thing worn once is actually a waste of money, but if you save up and buy the good thing, and then wear it and wear it and wear it, you probably will achieve a way lower "cost per wear" ratio (and while the authors were writing too long ago to worry about the waste stream, obviously you keep your beloved old garments of high quality out of the trash). It's a very entertaining and sane book that also introduced many people at the time to the art of vintage shopping.
I’d like to shout out Frizmworks. The prices are INSANE if you buy directly from their shop in Korea and the stuff is very nice!
OK I'm sure I'm blanking on a ton but off the dome, some pretty reliably cool small / smallish lines that are priced *relatively* low that we've written about are Stüssy, Manresa MFG, 11.11, IJJI, Randy’s Garments, 18 East, Gramicci, and Satta... Again, definitely spacing out and forgetting a bunch more.
And of course there’s obvious mass-apparel sources known for good design, e.g. (the Lemaire-overseen) Uniqlo U and Muji. There's another comment in here from garmento Spyfriend Becca with positive inside intel from UU.
Erin has gotten good stuff from solid if sort-of-timeliney-feeling places like Le Bon Shoppe. Along similar lines people love Outlier, and for natural dye stuff there's Industry of All Nations, which I first encountered at Mohawk and seems to have expanded into a more DTC / timeliney operation. I use that term not as a pejorative, just as a kind of categorizing / vibe-identifying tool !
Inspiring sletter as always! I feel in good company alongside Jack and s.c. -- I'm someone who basically 1. only buys secondhand 2. but hates and is crummy at buying online 3. doesn't like to spend a ton of money 4. but also is on her David Milch wavelength and fundamentally believes money isn't real 5. and relatedly is a broke b*tch....Luckily I live in LA, where there is a robust ESTATE SALE CULTURE. If you're fortunate enough to live in a place where estate sales are poppin off, I couldn't recommend them more for high-quality and inexpensive clothing curated by swaggy elders. Oftentimes the clothing is worn-in but in superb condition and made of excellent materials, to say nothing of the MATERIAL OF A LIFE WELL LIVED. Punch in your zip code at estatesales.net and see what comes up in your area. (Pro tip: prices are negotiable and by the end of the sale expect deep markdowns.)
I'm a veteran who has been beuatiful garments for many many years coming up in Brooklyn and the NYC retail scene. I would tell the young me to get out before it's too late! But seriously, many bargains are to be had out there. It's almost like being a record collector digging in the creates. Vestiare, Poshmark, Marrkt, Grailed,, Ebay, etsy etc have great pieces. I'd rather have a great second hand piece from a great, quality brand, than a new piece from the tons of mid brands that occupy that space.
Also, if you're trying to by beautfiul brands like Auralee, Kapital, Kaptain Sunshine, Comoli, etc. buy them from Japan and save a ton of money. You won't have to swallow the massive markup,s and the shipping sometimes is just as fast. Good luck!
Yo I felt this deeply. I recently picked up a fleece from Drake's on their archive sale, for the "great" price of $330, marked down from close to $700! I felt a storm of emotions - I was a chump for saving up for a fleece that is objectively expensive (but maybe not overpriced), I felt good about supporting a brand that is small / small-ish, that I vibe with and that seems to do things "the right way". I felt wack for lusting after something, I felt blessed when it arrived and the fit was perfect and I knew it would slide into my wardrobe and fill a need. The whiplash of being a modern consumer obsessed and panicked about price while trying to get off fits and still afford my car note and babysitters for the kids...these are dark times. I really do look to BBSP and the community for guidance and this type of profundity is much appreciated...I bring up the Drake's fleece situation not just to cathartically unload but to point out this means I've been / will continue to be trying to thrift for much of the rest of the closet. Etsy and ebay have been good to me recently and I echo the sletter in that old LLBean, Polo, and Carhartt can be found for decent prices and you can ride them long and hard. And on a 'medium priced' level, Manresa (first heard of here), scratches an itch for sure. It's hard out here but we're in this together. Peace and love.
@Jack - not to shout out a huge corp but having worked on the inside at Uniqlo U, I can assure you that many of the fabrics are super high quality, some of them are actually woven or knit in Japan as well. The design team came from major luxury houses and all of us remarked that the fabrics we were using were actually nicer than the fabrics we used at luxury houses. They are sometimes the exact fabrics Lemaire uses in his collection. (The garments themselves however are def made in China which is a separate consideration). There is lots of second hand Uniqlo U available out there as well if you don't want to support the corporation. You can try searching both "Uniqlo U" and "Uniqlo Lemaire". Just beware if you are buying from a seller in Japan- you need to size one size up for the American equivalent, and the pants inseam will be 1-2" shorter than items bought from other countries.
Hoped you might answer my question but this was better than I expected.
Lots to think about, as ever, but my main takeaway is that I need to get back into thrifting… and work on my eBay eye.
One thing that isn’t too expensive? This newsletter. Cheap at double the price. (But don’t raise it!)
Peace and love x