When Women’s Wear Daily features ‘Cheap Week’ as a branded theme, that’s a sure sign of the times. Rosemary Feitelberg writes Frugality in Fashion Amidst Economic Slump:

While restrained spending has always gone hand-in-hand with a shaky economy, now, more than ever, Americans are bragging about their rock-bottom fashion finds.

Really? I’ve been doing that with my friends since the 80s. Apparently cheap chic has gone fully mainstream. And ‘fast fashion’ outlets are all too happy to provide alternatives to the traditional department store outlets.

Forever 21 - Times Square flagship store from Sugar Rock Catwalk

While the average American may not be glued to London’s FTSE or Japan’s Nikkei, he or she is more inclined to acknowledge the reality of his or her own financial situation. At Forever 21’s new 90,000-square-foot Times Square flagship Friday with her teenage daughter, Donna Georgio said she is definitely shopping at stores such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx more than Bloomingdale’s like she used to. “Part of it is due to clothes being too expensive and I’m afraid of losing my job or getting into debt,” she said. “I’m 50 years old. I’ve had all the clothes and have gone from having Audis and BMWs to a Volkswagen. My priorities have changed. But I can still hook it up and look good.”

What is interesting to note is that nowhere in this article does Feitelberg mention, even in passing, the essentially slave labor necessary in this race to the rock bottom price. Not that designer labels are above exploitation, mind you. It’s just that, ironically enough, the big names have been the target of enough high profile anti-sweatshop campaigns to force them to implement at least minimal supervision of their subcontractors. But the Forever 21 customer is highly unlikely to care about much beyond getting that trendy dress for $12.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to be frugal and will keep trading down and saving money for years to come, according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based retail and consulting banking firm. “People are looking for value and the consumer mind-set has changed forever. All you have to do is look at what’s going on with Mango, Zara and H&M [financially],” he said. “The most dramatic example is Japan. I have a home there. It used to be the biggest place for luxury [shopping]. Everything has changed there because the standard of living is declining and that’s what is going on here.”

W. David Marx noted this shift in Japan back in 2008 at Businessoffashion.com in a blog post titled Japanese Women: From Luxury to Yuru Nachu:

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (“big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam‘s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

Ah ha. Keep the easily recognizable status symbol, but skimp on the quality couture clothing that the men they were chasing didn’t care about, anyway. What happens, however, when the supply of rich young men dries up with a global recession? While some girls just step up their game, all too many decide to play a different one.

Yuru Nachu style featured on Businessoffashion.com. W.David Marx photograph

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-keilook appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing. This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (“relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

When the cheap canvas tote replaces the Louis Vuitton as the anti-status status symbol, something is afoot. Back to WWD:

“If you look back at the boom years, a lot of that spending was accessed through credit. Debt-fueled affluence or aspirational consumerism is going to be challenged to return and is not about to get us back to where we were.”

Needless to say, he is not counting on shoppers to start spending more freely anytime soon. “From a big-picture macroeconomic standpoint, we are expecting a very sluggish recovery in the economy that is probably not conducive to consumers waking up one day feeling a lot better about everything and willing to spend again,” said Tuhy

This is bad news for big name ‘luxury’ brands that depended on the aspirational consumer to provide the bread and butter by overpaying for logo laden bags cranked out in third world factories.

“Conspicuous consumption is not very chic right now,” Christopher said. That behavior is counter to the Veblen effect, named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who first noted that decreasing the value of high-end goods only decreases people’s interest in buying them, he added.

Obviously Veblen wasn’t around long enough to witness The Gilt Groupe website. What’s different about now versus Veblen’s Victorian age is that the ‘democratization of fashion’ has 21st century ‘aspirational’ (translate - can’t really afford it but buy it anyway) consumers going after the same luxury brands as the actually rich, which in the long run turns into a cannibalistic effect of sorts. Decreasing the price doesn’t necessarily increase the interest - for it’s safe to assume that, by definition, far more people are interested in these items than can afford them - but instead increases the accessibility of the brand. Which will, in time, decrease the interest of the truly rich who establish the status of the item in the first place.

Consumers are kidding themselves if they think fast fashion distinguishes them from the masses, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” Topshop may have certain status for being London based and the same might be said of the Swedish chain H&M, but the reality is that neither is all that different from Wal-Mart, she said. “Frugal chic is kind of a label in itself now. But I would argue that we are deluding ourselves. These goods are mass produced, sold all over the world, available to everyone and they don’t involve a lot of creativity,” Shell said. “Truly fashionable people are able to go to thrift stores to find something stylish.”

Yes! Count me amongst the truly fashionable, then.

Oh please let it be true. Susannah Frankel writes for The Independent, New model army: Why fashion has fallen out of love with its A-list clotheshorses:

The symbiotic relationship between fashion and celebrity, as seen everywhere from the red carpet to an increasingly sophisticated print media, has been the most ubiquitous and, it almost goes without saying, money-spinning phenomenon of the era. That is, until now.

This time last year – and as presciently as ever – the Prada Group sent out a press release to accompany the launch of its new women’s wear campaign for Miu Miu stating, in the opening paragraph, that it marked “the return of the model as opposed to the celebrity” to fashion’s most hallowed frontline. Shot by the super-fashionable duo Mert Alas and Marcus Pigott, the images established just that, featuring an array of painstakingly sought-out new models remarkable for their fresh personalities and entirely unrecognisable faces.

In February this year – in a move that was equally unprecedented – Marc Jacobs very publicly rid his catwalk show’s front row of the formerly requisite A-list contingent, telling the influential American Vogue website Style.com that his love affair with celebrity was over.

“It generated so much press [but] at a certain point it was like, ‘Did anybody actually watch the show?’ “

Snooki proudly sporting Coach

And remember, Marc Jacobs has the likes of Madonna in his front row. But in this new era increasingly dominated by reality TV, the newest crop of ‘celebrities’ aren’t always as aspirational. Access Hollywood asks Is Snooki a Pawn in the Gucci/Coach Bag War?

According to The New York Observer’s Simon Doonan (via Celebuzz),  Snooki is a pawn in a reported raging style war - with the weapon of choice being supple fine leather..Doonan claims that various fashion houses are engaging in “preemptive product placement” or “unbranding,” by sending Snooki new purses from their competitors’ collection…He adds, “The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.”

Back to Stengle quoting Karl Lagerfeld on his decision to use professional yet anonymous models:

… ”Why? Because I love them. They have the right look and class.” Ah, class … and with this in mind, he adds, “Their overexposure in ‘people’ magazines also makes it that one may be a little tired of celebrities and the red carpet.”

Ah yes, the now ubiquitous red carpet. With the wall of brands behind it. When even a nobody like me can all too easily find herself on one, you know it ain’t that special anymore.

Stengle writes an eloquent historical summation of the rise of the celebrity/fashion phenomenon:

It wasn’t until the Eighties – significantly the decade in which designer fashion first identified the potential of its power – that the relationship between fashion and celebrity began to gather momentum, and the seeds were planted for the behemoth it has become today. Giorgio Armani dressed Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and the response was such that the great Italian designer soon ensured that the front rows of his twice-yearly men’s and women’s wear shows were as star-studded as his jewelled evening gowns. Gianni Versace was quick to enter the fray. Speculation was rife as to just how much either designer was prepared to pay anyone, from Sofia Loren to George Michael to attend their shows, resplendent, it almost goes without saying, in Armani or Versace designs.

Versace, in particular, went on to invest huge amounts of capital in advertising campaigns shot by big names such as Irving Penn, Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon that featured everyone from Elton John to Madonna (yes, her again) and from Jon Bon Jovi to Lisa Marie Presley. If ever designer muscle was fully flexed, it was here. The fact that the label had the weight to employ not only the world’s most feted photographers but also so many of its most famous stars was a potent formula that few – before or since – could ever match. By the late Nineties, it was rumoured that Nicole Kidman was being paid no less than $2m simply to wear Christian Dior to significant social occasions.

It was also during this period that fashion magazines began featuring celebrities as opposed to models on their covers on a regular basis – and it was doubtless quite a coup when, for the December 1998 issue of American Vogue, Anna Wintour landed Hillary Clinton for that purpose.

After the rise… the fall:

Within five years, however, the effect of such originally ambitious intentions had been watered down beyond all recognition. Testamant to this was the appearance of the alleged TV “stars” Amanda Holden, Hermione Norris, Tamzin Outhwaite and Ulrika Jonsson on the cover of the November 2002 issue of British Vogue, a decision that moved some high-minded commentators – and Sir Roy Strong, the flamboyant former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in particular – to bemoan a celebration of the “trash-ocracy” in British culture. This was hardly “aspirational”, the thinking went, and that, surely, was the point of such glossy titles.

Yes, the ‘trash-ocracy’ is the opposite of aspirational. And not what middle class suburban moms aspire to with their handbag purchases.

Denise Dorrance comic

In America we tend to hold on tightly to this myth of a ‘classless society.’ Talk of status and reaching for it is taboo; rarely will an individual list ’signaling status to others’ as motivation for purchasing a luxury good (yeah sure, it’s allll about the quality…). British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson isn’t afraid to broach the class issue, and explains the fashion/status connection pretty clearly in his interview with Brooke Jarvis:

Louis Vuitton, classic status symbol

Status competition causes problems all the way up; we’re all very sensitive to how we’re judged. Think about Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind, or the great French sociologist Bourdieu—they show how much of consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of pounds on a handbag with the right labels to make statements about themselves. In more unequal countries, people are more likely to get into debt. They save less of their income and spend more. They work much longer hours—the most unequal countries work perhaps nine weeks longer in a year.

If you grow up in an unequal society, your actual experience of human relationships is different. Your idea of human nature changes. If you grow up in a consumerist society, you think of human beings as self-interested. In fact, consumerism is so powerful because we’re so highly social. It’s not that we actually have an overwhelming desire to accumulate property, it’s that we’re concerned with how we’re seen all the time. So actually, we’re misunderstanding consumerism. It’s not material self-interest, it’s that we’re so sensitive. We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes—and that’s the reason for the labels and the clothes and the cars.

“We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes.” We are conscious about how others perceive us, especially strangers who have no other point of reference other than our outward appearance.

This is about the psychosocial effects of inequality—the impact of living with anxiety about our feelings of superiority or inferiority. It’s not the inferior housing that gives you heart disease, it’s the stress, the hopelessness, the anxiety, the depression you feel around that. The psychosocial effects of inequality affect the quality of human relationships. Because we are social beings, it’s the social environment and social relationships that are the most important stressors.

If ever there were a quintessential example of advertising preying on insecurities of those too young to know better in order to drive consumption of a bunch of junk the entire planet would be better off not having at all, here you have it. From the NY Times Masculinity in a Spray Can:

One bathroom in Stefanie Mullen’s home in a suburb of San Diego is stocked with enough products to line an aisle in a drugstore:

Body wash. Face wash. Exfoliator. Exfoliating wash. Body hydrator. Body spray. Deodorant. Shaving cream. Shampoos and conditioner. Hair gel, of course.

All told, 18 different containers.

They belong to her sons Noah Assaraf, 13, and Keenan Assaraf, 14. They have been dousing themselves for years.

“Every day they walk out the door in a cloud of spray-on macho,” Mrs. Mullen said.

When boys pile into her car, that’s her cue to roll down her window, no matter the weather. “The smell drives me nuts.”

Nooooo! That stuff smells nasty. It does not drive women wild. I’m all about good grooming habits for boys, but soap and deoderant and maybe some zit cream should suffice. Where did these guys collectively come up with the notion that drowing themselves in this eye watering equivalent of glade air freshener is what women want?

“More insecurity equals more product need, equals more opportunity for marketers,” said Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University.

For “Gen Buy,” a new book she co-authored about marketing to tweens and teenagers, Ms. Yarrow held focus groups with boys. “The 10-year-olds are copying the 14-year-olds, trying to be cool,” she said. “Everything is moving down the spectrum. It’s getting younger and more pronounced.”

So boys are turning to hypermasculine guideposts like Instinct from Axe, Swagger by Old Spice and Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash by Dial with results that are poignant, comic, confused — and stinky.

“It’s not necessarily a hygiene thing,” said Paul Begley, a physical education teacher at Messalonskee Middle School in Oakland, Me. “If they’ve been sweating, they’ll use it as a mask instead of a shower.”

Nooooo!!! Just take a shower, please? But apparently my views aren’t shared by my eigth grade female counterparts:

What further drives the boys’ rush to the products are girls themselves. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for the market research firm NPD Group, said that in a recent survey, 41 percent of boys ages 8 to 18 said that one of their best friends was a girl.

“They shop with girls, and girls influence them,” Mr. Cohen said, much as the girls in the hit Nickelodeon tween show “iCarly” hold sway over Freddie, their hapless male buddy.

“Boys are paying attention to personal brands more than ever because it’s too easy to be criticized virally by a girl,” said Pat Fiore, a market consultant for body image products in Morristown, N.J. “The peer pressure is starting from the girls, who are discussing how much someone smells or what they look like, and it’s being recorded in real time by e-mail and texting.”

These girls are also becoming sexualized at earlier ages, applying lip gloss and wearing racier clothes. Boys, a bewildered developmental step or three behind, feel additional pressure to catch up.

Ms. Wiseman, who also wrote “Queen Bees & Wannabes,” a nonfiction book about the social pecking order of tween girls, speaks with students around the country. Even in rural North Dakota, she said, 12-year-old boys were highlighting their hair, a focus on appearance that was almost nonexistent five years ago.

“We consistently look at boys in a position of privilege and power,” she said. “But if you ask a 12-year-old boy if they’re in a position of power, they feel out of control of themselves, their bodies.” She added: “I defy anyone to tell me that an eighth-grade girl doesn’t look like she has more power and control than a boy.”

The blogosphere has been having a great time with the 6 pages of detailed dress code rules for the Pi Phi rush at Cornell that were leaked to Fashionista.com. A few choice ones are listed in the text, but the pages themselves have been scanned in and are worth a read in their entirety. Many years from now this will prove invaluable to a costume designer or historian.

While I’m no stranger to picking on sorority girls, after reading through the rules I don’t find them absurd at all (for sorority rush, that is) and in fact, I think the rush chair did the girls a favor. What, you think those rules never existed just because someone hadn’t written them down? Or leaked them to a blog? Of course, if we could jump in the time machine and go backwards or forwards a few years, the rules themselves would look different (I assure you at Cornell 5 years ago a boot cut or flared leg jean was a-okay) but would be just as strict.

from the Cornell Pi Phi webpage

And the rest of us who scoff at sororities can act all indignant that people choose friends based on the way they dress, when in reality all of us do the same thing to some degree, just not in a structured, institutional ‘rush’ sort of way. We dress to appeal to ‘People Like Us’ as anthropologist Ted Polhemus notes, and any girl taking the time, energy (and expense) to rush a sorority obviously finds appeal in that particular intersection of taste and class. Its no secret that a huge part of the greek system is all about setting up social networks that will help the kids connect with jobs and mates that are a part of a particular lifestyle, and the rules of what to wear and what not to wear that are internalized through a good 4 years of feedback from your sisters will serve you well applying for that corporate marketing job or snagging that lawyer who has visions of running for office. Not so much my cup of tea, but if they didn’t all conform then what would the rest of us have to riff against?

'Lily et Cie' interior from coolspotters.com

Cintra Wilson’s description of the icy snobbery at Lily et Cie in Beverly Hills, is yet another indicator of how vintage clothing continues to increase in value and status while serving as an iconic vocabulary of 20th century sartorial elements to be continually referenced and recombined by modern designers. The inaccessibility to the masses - in both attitude and price - supports the notion of a new definition of luxury for the 21st century:

As luxury seeks to redefine itself in the wake of the conglomerate takeover pandemic, there is, in certain (rich) circles, an increased demand for swanky vintage couture, the rarity of which essentially guarantees that when you sashay down the red carpet, there is no way in tarnation you will be wearing the same dress as Kim Kardashian.

…Even for a Teflon robo-cobra like me who has spent enough time in high-end establishments to have retail nerves like bridge cables, it’s a little hard to breathe in this joint.

It struck me, after my escape, why Lily et Cie has a half-million pieces: Ms. Watnick isn’t selling her formidable collection so much as hoarding it. One senses that she looks upon this mountain of untouchable fashion as her children and is loath to see any of them go.

Following up an earlier post…

Trendy retailers might be hastily hiding their garbage, but disgruntled former employees continue to expose them to the public relations nightmare as the habit of destroying clearance merchandise rather than mark it down too far or donate it to a ‘less than aspirational’ clientele lights up the blogosphere. Jezebel.com cuts right to the chase about the interface between hyperconsumerism and our current fashion system:

But what the problems boil down to is this: for a very long time, the retail economy in the first world has been flooded with product. Inventory was allowed to outstrip demand, because margins were so high that waste became tolerable. (Consumption was rising anyway, because of easy credit and planned obsolescence.) This is true both of disposable clothing chains whose business model counts on an endless cycle of new stuff, and high-end stores whose end-of-season 60% off “sales” don’t even start to bite into wholesale, anyway. In a worthless economy like that, where products that are understood both by their sellers and their buyers to be fundamentally without value are moved around the world to make some already rich men even richer, epic levels of waste are not even an unintended consequence. They’re a design feature.

And over at Alternet, Liliana Segura features interviews with former Anthropologie employees describing the practice:

I was on stock and we were clearing out a bunch of sale items that hadn’t sold. I asked the manager what I should do with the clothing and she said “destroy it.” Destroy it? I asked. Shouldn’t we donate it? ‘No,’ the manager replied, ‘we are only allowed to donate certain items. Corporate policy is to destroy everything else.’

I didn’t have a choice so I did it. Perfectly good shirts, sweaters and pants got ripped, torn and generally wrecked. It was really depressing! Another associate told me they destroy furniture too — almost everything that doesn’t sell. We couldn’t figure out why. Later on another manager told me that Anthro does it to maintain their brand integrity. They don’t want their brands at discount stores or anywhere that would cheapen the brand. Nothing is too common and they want to keep it that way.

NY Times reporter Jim Dwyer who first exposed the story continues to follow the trail with a story profiling an organization set up to provide retailers a systematic way to donate leftovers to the needy. Those who run the clothing bank offer a lot of insight into their suppliers, in particular the role that our familiar friend, aspiration, plays in the fashion retail game:

The reasons are complex. No business wants to compete with its own garbage, or risk having people show up at a store seeking refunds on clothes that were never sold. “That’s why many retailers will damage unsold garments,” said Luis Jimenez, the director of the Clothing Bank, which is now operated for the city by Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment.

Some businesses do not want their goods worn by poor people. Ed Foy, the founder of eFashionSolutions.com, said that brands invest billions of dollars in their images, using models and athletes, which makes them cautious about where donated leftovers might end up. “They want us to see that the people wearing their brands are the people we aspire to be,” said Mr. Foy, a board member of the Clothing Bank. “They want to know, ‘Who’s wearing the clothing and how can that hurt my brand?’ ”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

But even that isn’t enough for many brand managers, the luxury ones in particular. Dwyer continues his coverage:

New York City officials destroyed tons of new, unworn clothing and footwear last year that had been seized in raids on counterfeit label operations, abandoning a practice of giving knockoff garments to groups that help the needy.

…

A spokesman for the Police Department said that no one asked for the knockoffs in 2009 — an explanation that was bewildering to the operators of the clothing bank, who run a warehouse that supplies clothing to needy New Yorkers. They said they had made many requests.

“It would be hard to justify taking a truckload of perfectly good clothes and incinerating them, but that’s what’s happening,” said William Montana, a commercial real estate adviser who is on the board of the clothing bank. “The people who had control over giving us that stuff had been really good to us. Now the pipeline has dried up.

…
Many major fashion brands have their headquarters in New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg has made prosecution of trademark infringement a priority for his administration. The companies also take actions in civil court against the pirates, an expensive process, to protect the designers’ names.

“These are people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of them millions, to get counterfeit goods off the street,” said Robert Tucker, a lawyer with the firm of Tucker and Lafiti, whose fashion clients include Chrome Hearts, Steve Madden, Zac Posen and Ed Hardy. “Everyone wants to feed and clothe the homeless. But how are you going to spend all this money and then put it back on the street?”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

from Hypebeast.com: Comme des Garcons launch at Tokyo H & M

Why would trendy fashion for the masses palace H & M deliberately ruin mountains of brand new, perfectly wearable garments rather than mark them down or give them to people who really needed them? Jim Dwyer of the NY Times reports:

At the back entrance on 35th Street, awaiting trash haulers, were bags of garments that appear to have never been worn. And to make sure that they never would be worn or sold, someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors, a familiar sight outside H & M’s back door.

The Guardian UK picked up the story, too:

Inside the bags were gloves with the fingers cut off, socks, patent leather shoes with the instep cut up, and warm men’s jackets slashed across the body and arms. “It was a very frigid night, and there were bags upon bags of warm winter clothing not 50 feet away from where a homeless man slept on cardboard boxes,” she said.

…Paradoxically, five blocks away from the H&M store is a group called New York Cares, which mobilises support for the community by co-ordinating volunteers wanting to help homeless and poor families in the city. It holds an annual drive that distributes 70,000 secondhand winter coats to needy individuals.

The group points out that nine in 10 homeless adults need to replace their winter coat each year because they have no place to store it during the summer.

But neither article dares to venture near the ugly underlying truth that the reason H & M doesn’t give those coats to the people right outside who need them - or even mark them down to a level affordable by the working poor - is because those aren’t the people it wants its look to be associated with!

It’s a class thing. While H & M is talked about in fashion circles as cheap, disposable clothing, the fact remains that $25 tee shirts and $69.90 jackets are what the middle - or even upper middle - class can afford. Heck, I don’t even consider it something I can afford full price!

But this middle class will pay $49.90 for a really low quality pair of pants… that look a whole lot like elite contemporary fashion brands that cost 3 - 20 times as much. H & M offers the middle class a chance to participate in the fantasy of the designer fashion lifestyle and how do you think that customer is going to react when she sees the blouse she paid $39.90 for 6 weeks later on the streetperson she passes or the clerk selling her a sandwich?

And believe me that H & M isn’t the only hype dependent retailer doing this. A friend used to manage at Abercrombie and Fitch several years back and she said they, too, destroyed clothing rather than mark it down to where it could fall into the wrong hands.

Why wouldn’t a retailer want to at least recover 25% of the retail price rather than toss it? Because they don’t want to train customers to wait for the sales. The whole system is based on urgency and scarcity - better buy that hot item now before its gone. The belief that (insert latest fly by night trend here) is the thing to have would be challenged by customers pawing through the 75% off remains of last month’s ‘it’ trend and deeming it just as useful to them and a much better buy.

H & M might have gotten busted and I’m sure their current ‘no comment’ is buying time whilst the PR team scrambles to do damage control and come up with some corporate responsibility drek and token donation to a needy cause. But rest assured, the toss and destroy practice will continue, this time under tighter wraps.

...

Alt press influential Arianna Huffington shines the spotlight on her first book pic of the year:

My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel’s Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It’s a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it’s been so hard to bring about any real change in our country — why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces.

It’s not an altogether new idea, but what’s notable is the divergence from the usual focus on corporate power and towards individual players. It will be interesting to read it and see how much overlap there is with conspiracy theories that target organizations like the Illuminati.

But the mere fact that books like these can still be published and then promoted on a alternative-mainstream site with a large audience gives me a glimmer of hope.

“The shadow elite clearly knew that the months and months of so-called debate over the issue was nothing more than a charade — the ultimate outcome never in doubt. The bill was created in the shadows. The public process since then has essentially been like a Hollywood adaptation — complete with the requisite third act happy ending (or, in the words of our elected officials, a “historic” ending).

“The new breed of players,” writes Wedel, “who operate at the nexus of official and private power, cannot only co-opt public policy agendas, crafting policy with their own purposes in mind. They test the time-honored principles of both the canons of accountability of the modern state and the codes of competition of the free market. In so doing, they reorganize relations between bureaucracy and business to their advantage, and challenge the walls erected to separate them. As these walls erode, players are better able to use official power and resources without public oversight.”

How did we live before Google? A blog search turned up this fabulous insider post from Indiana Adams of Adored Austin: Indiana worked at Buffalo Exchange (heretofore abbreviated as ‘BX’) as a buyer, so she knows of what she speaks. It’s so good I’m going to block quote most of it:

I’ll admit that selling your clothes to Buffalo Exchange can be a little bit daunting. The worst is when you go in with several trash bags full of clothes and the buyer maybe buys the one thing that you threw in there as a joke and then passes on all your really awesome stuff that you thought for sure they’d offer you a billion dollars for. Then you have to do the walk of shame to your car with your bags still full!

Indiana Adams sports an outfit on her blog, 'Adored Austin'

Kids, you’re not alone in that walk of shame. Remember, this is coming from a buyer.

Believe me, this happens way more often than not, but it’s not because they crazy fashionista behind the counter hates your guts and despises your personal style. If they’re passing on things that you think they should have bought, here’s some reasons why:
1. They may already have a lot of what you’re selling in the store.
2. The store could be really, really full so they’ve been instructed to be incredibly selective until the racks empty up a bit.
3. The items you’re selling may not be in season, yet.

Since I’ve never been afraid to strike up a friendly, non-defensive chat with the buyers du jour, I’ve heard them tell me (and others) much of the same thing. And a little personal observation? Even though it’s not supposed to matter which buyer you get and they do a whole lot of second opinions with each other… it totally matters which buyer you get. The fashion eye is a subjective thing. period.

Before I worked there, it was hard to sell there. For me, my clothes are an extension of who I am. If they didn’t buy my clothes, that means they didn’t like my clothes, and that means that they don’t like the way I dress, and that means they don’t like me, and that means I should just go eat worms and cry in a corner.

Exactly. So well put, Indiana. This is why my friends who’ve felt the sting of the walk of shame can get forever soured. But to their credit, I noticed that a few years ago when I returned to Austin after a few years away at grad school, the buyers were now making a deliberate effort to be nice and kind, even if there was sometimes a bit of strain, kinda like a waitress voice. (I don’t blame them one bit, I’ve been a waitress…)

But after I worked there, I found out that there’s just so much more to it than that. And besides, there’s no reason to be embarrassed if the buyer doesn’t buy your stuff. One time a dude came in with (this is not a joke!) two trash bags full of jock straps and sweat socks. Those are the kind of people who should be embarrassed. I mean, really. What in the world was he doing with so many jock straps? And why in the world did he think I’d be able to resell them at Buffalo Exchange? Um, gross.

Really? Wow. Someone buy those kids and industrial strength mega bottle of Purell, please!