Why poor people need to be careful

The "investment piece" is back, this time thanks to fashion designer Vivienne Westwood:

"Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody’s buying far too many clothes. I mean, I know I’m lucky, I can just take things and borrow them and I’m just okay, but I hate having too many clothes. And I think that poor people should be even more careful."

One might imagine that those in the business of selling clothes would be in favor of people buying clothes, but that would be far too obvious. The appropriate marketing strategy for high-end is to denounce the meaningless acquisition of stuff, in favor of collecting, investing, or whichever other euphemism might be used to describe buying expensive things rather than cheap ones. The intended audience is, of course, the population capable of and interested in buying designer clothing. Rich and poor alike wear H&M; only the rich are going to be in Westwood's creations. So if your aim is to move high-end garb, one thing you can do is to frame that choice in moral terms. Save the planet! Buy one Hermès bag instead of ten or whatever at a bourgeois mall store like Coach!

But there's that other, pesky function as well, which is that the you're-a-good-person-if-you-shop-designer framing effectively amounts to, if you're poor or middle-class, you're a terrible person, because you almost by definition will have not properly sourced whatever it is you're wearing. And yes, there are such things as thrift stores, but there are also such things as underwear, socks, and t-shirts. As needing to look professional. Some stuff effectively needs to be purchased new and, if you don't want to stink (or to do laundry, with all its associated environmental impact - not to mention hassle - all the time), you may not want to "invest" in the one artisanal undershirt. This framing, then, flips around the more expected narrative, which is that if you're a rich person buying designer stuff, you're the one being decadent. It creates this imaginary world in which wealthy people who buy a couple really quality pieces don't also own like 300x the Old Navy-or-equivalent as do their fellow Westerners with less.

Westwood's gaffe, then, was in spelling out where "poor people" enter into this equation. The usual approach, the tasteful one, is to insist that the problem isn't poor people, but purchasers-of-cheap-things, and one may read between the lines.

Peasant-chic

After the notorious $89 bra got a hole in it - this before I'd even washed it! and not even somewhere where it might have been pulling! just bad construction (Made in France, I had such high hopes) - I'm extra-reluctant to "invest" in things that can snag. Similarly, I "invested" in a pair of not-the-absolute-cheapest white canvas sneakers (Superga, because those fit and the Converse didn't, even though I liked the Converse more), with the goal not so much to keep them pristine as to have them not full-on drenched in filth. Shortly thereafter, an incident with an especially poodle-friendly (and unfenced/unleashed) golden retriever took care of that. I now have a greenish-brown pair of sneakers. Inevitable, but still, sooner than expected.

The combination of dog-adventures, ubiquitous mud in the "with-it city" I live in, and my capacity to ruin a garment just by looking at it, suggests it's time to go the navy-potato-sack route of head-to-toe denim.

But I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of a Romanian peasant blouse. A white one with blue embroidery. Like Suzanne Pleshette wears on this one episode of "The Bob Newhart Show." Very 1970s. Cultural appropriation? I'm going to say that as someone of 1/4 impoverished-Romanian ancestry (Jewish, but not sure how that impacts the blouse situation - plus the current likeliest contender ships from Israel), I'm if anything culturally appropriating when not wearing such a shirt. However, a shirt along those lines has the impressive potential both to snag and to acquire every stain imaginable. This will now need to be mulled over for a few months, as is my way.

Poodles and cashmere UPDATED

Dear Bisou,

What was it that made you decide that pulling sweaters out of a drawer and shredding them is now your thing? Were you inspired by the fact that this particular sweater was new (as in, as of a couple days ago, worn once), cashmere, and, while discounted at Uniqlo, still $70 so not exactly cheap? A really gorgeous, well-fitting, wear-it-for-years-type, super-professional-looking camel crewneck. First-world-problems, fine, but this is enough of my budget that I'm not sure it's the best example. (I'm on a bit of a cheapness kick, if not lockdown, until I know exactly what it is I'll be doing after grad school. With exceptions for certain things that contribute to my polished-grown-woman-ness. See: another tub of the Japanese deep-conditioner, and some better-quality - but still $9 - clear nail polish. See: that damn sweater.) But yes, there are greater problems, I myself have greater things to contend with, so by all means, Bisou, have at it. (Like all dog owners, I've Googled "can dogs eat [every possible thing that humans can eat that's fallen on the floor, or that might have, and more]." So let's add cashmere to the list.)

But why, Bisou, why? Is the lesson you're trying to teach me that I need to be neater (i.e. no part of anything poking out of a drawer even a little bit, and anything of any value kept higher than even I can reach), that I should have been more the humble grad student and contented myself with the pilling, worn-out sweaters I already owned? Both, I think. Also confirmation of what I'm always saying, that paying more for better quality almost invariably means one ends up with these precious, delicate, snag-and-stain-ready materials. A sweatshirt, for example, would still be intact. I can't imagine this is a dog-training message, as this is not something you'd done before, and you're not exactly charging after any drawers and/or sweaters right now.

Can't-be-annoyed-at-you-because-you're-a-dog,
Phoebe

UPDATE

As feared/predicted, repairing this would cost more than the sweater itself. I think this is where I learn how to turn what's left of the sweater into a scarf, or poodle-toy, or who knows.