>http://www.sz-mag.com/news/2016/04/op-ed-how-grailed-is-killing-the-menswear-avant-garde/
>Surely, having a website like Grailed is a sign of the times. Today, young people, reared on the Internet, are interested in fashion on an unprecedented scale. Unfortunately, in many cases the mentality of these consumers does not extend much beyond wearing “cool shit,” whether by imitating Kanye West, queuing up for the latest Supreme drop, or saving money for a pair of used Rick Owens sneakers.
>Just one example – witness an Undercover parka that should be in a collection of any museum whose fashion curator is worth his chops – languishing on Grailed for a mere $171. Also, please note that the listing indicates, “105 people want this.” How did the secondhand market get to the point where 105 people cannot find $171 for a wool jacket that is a collector’s piece? Do all these people live off their parents’ allowance?
>But beware; the collapse of the secondary market for designer menswear that Grailed is precipitating may just well be the first domino in a chain that will end with avant-garde designers without a consumer base to support them, because Grailed has conditioned buyers that all clothing is just stuff to be consumed and that bargain-chasing is a god given right.
Eugene Rabkin is such a fucking blowhard
>>11160503
Clothing is just stuff though. Only marketing makes much of it seem worthwhile. The Internet market for used goods redpolls thousands of people daily.
>>11160503
So did he buy the parka?
>>11160503
Author sounds like an insufferable faggot
>>11160503
Jesus christ what a fucking retard
>a bloo bloo
>people aren't paying enough for stuff I think is worth a lot more
Then fucking buy it yourself, oh but you didn't right? Then you are part of the "problem" you fucking speak of.
And how the fuck does niche and avant-garde designers becoming more known and easily found by the new generation of high fashion consumer destroy them? It's basically just some man-child crying because his exclusive secret club isn't that anymore.
The UC parka is fucking amazing I admit as much.
>>11160503
>For example, on StyleZeitgeist, we require members to have a one hundred post minimum before they are allowed to buy and sell in the classifieds. This is done in order to separate the true
Yeah this guy has no agenda at all
He is literally just mad because kids are aware Paul Hardnen is designer.
>>11160503
Eugene Rabkin is literally a writing teacher at a university in New York. How he managed that is really unbelievable
>>11160571
Also this is Faust, the dictator of StyleZeitgeist. Hilarious censorship on his forum, literally bans people out of waywt for not wearing brands he favors
>>11160520
Fucking this. The internet being a level playing ground for retailers and the establishment of individual seller markets has added so much transparency to fashion consumption.
>>11160528
Yes, to put in his museum.
>>11160503
His attitude of violated sanctity is pretty annoying, but his point about kids wanting to wear "cool shit" rings pretty true. Especially in the streetwear community, kids just see it as a means of achieving "cool points" and status symbols rather than personal expression. If you want to wear "cool shit" stick to supreme or some other hype brand for kids, if you can't respect the art in avant grade you probably shouldn't be wearing it.
That being said, if you do have a fundamental respect for the art form but have no means of purchasing it at retail, I see no problem with buying secondhand.
>>11160661
The cool points thing is true but it's by no means cheapening or destroying avant-garde designers.
Despite what you want to believe, dressing to look cool is just as valid reason to dress the way you do as self-expression is.
Not to mention you just get different kind of "cool points" but the demographic that gives you that appreciation is just smaller and different.
Did this guy actually put helmut lang on the same level as rag & bone and allsaints?
i had to google his face to see how much of a cuck he looked like
he was up there
SZ is extremely upset that grailed singly handedly destroyed their userbased considering the b/s/t section was the only thing keeping them alive.
>>11160503
he's right
>>11160967
>Faust is extremely upset he isn't relevant anymore because SZ has no userbase
The vibe from the article is that he is upset that he isn't controlling second hand high fashion market anymore.
>>11160503
Such a enormous faggot.
>>11160503
>Most importantly, you learn about the designers’ ethos, philosophy, and his or her cultural influences.
> That is what gives clothing meaning and provides an emotional connection between the maker and the wearer.
> In the world full of stuff, forums give enthusiasts a reason to buy without feeling like a mere consumer. Remember, every decision to buy something is also a decision not to buy something else.
most pretentious thing i read since adorno.
>>11160503
if anything grailed gives people exposure to avant garde fashion.
and a lot of pieces on grailed are either uncommon pieces or pieces that people just don't want anymore. nothing wrong with lowering the price of it if it has been worn.
>>11160503
I thought Faust despised UC, why the fuck is he always talking about it then? Jap brands always go for cheap, it's how it works
author is literal joke. "Waaah stop liking what I like"
I wish there was a comment section where we could all point out how he's a big whiny faggot
>>11160503
it's a valid point however absurdly written to a bias most of us can barely fall under
do I like the idea of fashion fuccbois undermining clothing being something greater than "looking cool"?
no
but I do like the idea of people being more fashion aware/forward
attacking grailed on the topic is ridiculous
why cant he just go after these streetwear type brands over charging for awful materials and a basic logo?
or how inflated the market of higher end brands has become?
nah ill just pick on younger people trying to buy or sell nice clothes because it isnt how it used to be
its one big fallacy and defeats itself
So anyone have a link to the parka?
>>11161191
Never mind it's in the article. I guess it didn't sell because it's a fucking undercover xs.
>>11160503
sounds like such a whiny douchebag, simplifying the bst forums is a godsend
people can like shit blindly jfc
>>11160661
you described /fa/, not just "the streetwear scene"
>>11161212
but mu-muh museum piece
>>11161040
God Faust is such a fucking prick. He bashes on shit be doesn't like because of muh aesthetics
If anyone's to blame its the shitty brands making too few for muh exclusivity or charging too high only to slash prices and NOT grailed
>>11161398
meant for
>>11160503
Grailed is usually either fuccbois copping hyped up supreme and yeezy shit or collectors dropping thousands on archive Raf and Helmut.
I don't think it really affects the market for avant garde designers.
>>11160571
He's literally not. If he told you that, he was lying.
> I'm better than you cacs I have an emotional connection to these beautiful works of art you call "clothes"
>>11161398
Supreme (the biggest one now) is against this entirely but they don't give a fuck as long as there stock is cleared
And no, literally restocks are rare if not, a needle in a haystack chance of getting it again
>>11161567
It's worse though
>You shouldn't be allowed to buy clothes by certain designers because I don't get to judge if you appreciate the designers in the way I think is appropriate
Damn most of /fa/ is pretty retarded and obviously taking personal offence at the article.
The truth is if you're a designer having your clothes selling for lowball prices while being wedged in between poorly lit images of stained Polo shirts and wrinkled Supreme Chinos makes your brand LOOK LIKE ASS.
It might not seem that big a deal now, but fast forward 5-10 years when there are people who have only ever seen your brand displayed in that format. That's what the author is getting at. Having your stuff on Grailed devalues the shit out of it. Brands are ultra concerned about how their product is displayed because brand image is what sells their clothes. The is the first time in history that you have an unprecedented amount of people taking designer brands and displaying them like ass.
That's where the prediction comes in. If this keeps happening and keeps getting more popular it's going to be really difficult 5-10 years from now to convince people to pay big bucks for your avant-garde designs when their only exposure to them is through somewhere like Grailed.
I don't necessarily agree but it's a decent enough argument to make. There's a reason brands like Rick Owens don't sell to shitty stores that would aggressively mark down his clothes and display them terribly, yet that's exactly what Grailed does. You better believe if brands could prevent their clothes from being sold on Grailed that they would.
Grailed makes avant-garde designer clothes look like ass that's worth no more than what you would pay at Zara. Deep down you all know this you're just willing to ignore it for the deals. The authors point is asking what consequences this will have in the future.
>STOP BUYING THINGS I DON'T WANT YOU TO
OK.
>>11161628
hey faust
u mad noone uses your forum anymore? lol
>>11160503
$171 for a 10 year old mother eaten jap sweat stained smoke covered piece of clothing sold mass market doesn't belong in an archive
And that's recognizing that most archives had some really unwearable shit
Helmut Lang mentioned the piss poor condition his pieces were in prior to destroying it and selling his name sake label to theory
>>11160661
The kids today wanting to wear cool shit are the future of the industry
Yohji has spoken a lot about the youth and while I poke fun at them when I joke around I do understand that they're the future and what they do now doesn't necessarily reflect on what is to come from a few of the creative minds
>>11161667
this is a pretty cool post sieg i thought you were just a close minded racist
>>11161576
thats why you see fuccbois buying supreme collabs with jordan or cdg but not knowing shit about either of them. the brands also shoulder the blame here
>>11161641
Style zeitgeist was such a bad forum though, get in line or get banned mentality because some cute women made fun of him on the fashion spot
Dude when some cute ass girl who later became a model then designer makes fun of you...laugh it off and/or flirt back don't make an edge master dungeon forum where everyone has to dress like a goth ninja from obscure Asian and Belgian labels to fit in
>Uses the word "mere" 8 times in under 1000 words
Jesus, not only is the opinion shitty...
>>11161628
lmao selling items on grailed doesnt tarnish the brands rep
>>11161693
He claims to have had a career in journalism as well as a graduate degree in it.
Personally I think he's lying and claims his journalism career is the pathetic drivel of a failed magazine that he was pushing on his site
HELP ME FINISH THIS /FA/
>>11161628
Or you could just face the facts and realize second hand market is never going to disappear and that it's not representative of your brand.
You put your work out there and people are free to represent it in any way they want.
You don't just deny selling your product to someone because he walks in to the store in flip flops, Ralph Lauren Polo and bermuda shorts.
>>11161682
>Dude when some cute ass girl who later became a model then designer makes fun of you
that happened?
Fucking kek
Who was it?
>>11161628
faust is a fucking hypocrite though, for years he's been buying off yahoo japan and rak but someone makes a good tool for selling clothes in the west and he's pissed off because it lacks curation of sentimentality, he's just assblasted that his site sucks because he ran it into the ground.
>>11161628
But it's not like the second-hand market is new or started with Grailed. This sort of thing has been going for a long time already with ebay and Rakuten and just thrift/consignment shops in general.
I doubt people will learn about brands through Grailed anyway. When I see a brand I don't recognize, I usually just scroll by unless it's particularly eye-catching. People buy because they know about the brand's prestige, hype, etc. as well as design of course.
If a design is good, it should shine through even with amateur-level photos. Yeah sometimes people put up listings that look like shit or terrible condition items for cheap, but it's in the best interests of the sellers to make a brand's pieces look good to sell them.
author of this is a "muh sekrit klub" victim of the best kind
i guess we should close all consignment stores now. Seeing as how if you can find vintage Helmut Lang at a mark downed price.
its hilarious too, cause Faust uses Grailed. Or at least he used to before he published this. lmao.
Good job pointing out that a womens jacket isnt selling well on a mens market place! Man this truly is the death of the avantgarde am i right!
>>11160687
yes, exactly where "dude bondage straps lmao" belongs
>>11161628
it's mine and I do whatever the fuck I want with, reselling and ass pics included. if it bothers designers so much then have them buy the clothes themselves.
its 2016 and why should i let this shit affect how i wear and consume clothes. fuck off. the 2nd hand market is the greatest thing to happen.
>>11160967
SZ is such a shit site. It's deader than /fa/ and twice as pretentious.
>>11160687
HL hasn't been designed by Helmut Lang since 2005.
>>11160687
current helmut lang is on that level
>>11160503
What the fuck did you just fucking say about my magazine, you little Supreme wearing fuccboi? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Fashion Journalism, and I’ve been involved in numerous fashion shows in Paris, and I have over 300 confirmed bans given on StyleZeitgeist. I am trained in irrationally bashing hip-hop and I’m the top fashion influencer in the entire fucking internet. You are nothing to me but just another hypebeast. I will wipe your wardrobe out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my Rick Owens and your entire stash of Geobaskets is in the process of being recalled so you better prepare for a fucking storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your wardrobe. You’re fucking dead, you hypebeast. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can stunt on you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just using my Carpe Diem pieces. Not only am I extensively trained in writing about fashion, but I have access to the entire work of Maurizio Altieri and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of fashion, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have just continued posting Acronym pieces on instagram. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit tanned horse leather all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, you fuccboi.
>>11162300
Waiting for the follow up article on rakuten chris
>>11160503
lmao Faust, cry harder son
He's right though
So many posers just wanting "cool shit" like CCP, UC, Rick, etc. so they can post it to instagram, wear a few times, re-sell, repeat...
Example: that Jakob Hetzer kid
>>11163054
but that isn't a problem with grailed as he's suggesting
if grailed didn't exist people would still be hyping up avant garde brands and trying to flex on insta
>>11160503
>Today, young people, reared on the Internet, are interested in fashion on an unprecedented scale.
what an idiot
>>11161212
it's a womens piece that why it didn't sell
>alludes to ambiguous, petty relationship between "the maker and the wearer"
>twice
I understand the sentiment but this is just straight elitism. There is no culture too underground and there's no interest too niche in the age of the Internet. He's just throwing a shit fit that the fashion hobbyist archetype isn't the esoteric special snowflake it used to be.
>literally getting mad at Grailed for doing what it was designed to do
>being mad that not everyone thinks about clothes like he does
What a dweeb
fuckin lel
>>11160503
>the collapse of the secondary market for designer menswear that Grailed is precipitating may just well be the first domino in a chain that will end with avant-garde designers without a consumer base to support them, because Grailed has conditioned buyers that all clothing is just stuff to be consumed and that bargain-chasing is a god given right.
This is the part where I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my eyes
>>11161628
This is a well made argument, and I see the point. With that said, it kinda reveals how absolutely context-dependent some brands are. It's kinda like how shitty Asian sellers put bad clothing on the black mannequins and stage them ~just so~ to make the clothing look good: it's revealing only of how talented people can be at selling an image completely disconnected from reality.
A photo of some Rick haphazardly thrown on some kid's bed is always going to look like ass. It sucks, but reality is like that. All of your favorite models are products of photoshop, all girls on online dating use careful angles, frozen dinners never look as good as they do on the box, etc.
>>11160551
>>a bloo bloo
https://youtu.be/oMo1ytl4J_E?t=1m50s
Poor/fa/gs BTFO
Does this guy really claim that the fashion media does not mention his shitty forums because of the barrier of entry to their marketplace?
Like, oh if those fashion writers would just get 100 posts on our forums and make a few trades, they would realize we are the true avant garde... ??
>>11160503
>105 people want this
But how many people actually intend to buy it?
I "want" stuff on Grailed all the time because it's interesting, not because I want to own it.
>>11161848
please use this pic
>>11165659
i need more captions nigga
>>11165659
idk, just write "grow! grow!" in a tought cloud above his head or some shit like that idk im not a doctor
>>11165490
Welcome to his sad, sad world.
>>11165659
jesus christ that hairstyle on the left truly makes my dick crawl up into my abdomen 2/10 wouldn't hit with a bat
>>11166221
idk why it's always women who look like rats who wear it as well it freaks me out baka
>>11161848
>>11165659
lmao faggot get your shit memes out of here
>>11166430
shit typo
>>11160691
post pic b
Goofy faggot hipstet author is mad because everyone is hipstering it up now.
Tell me how much happy hour and starbucks sucks (though starbucks is average bullshit sorry seattle) since every 2bit fag is doing it now.
Fuck it, bring back anti-fashion
>>11160503
>because of the internet being full of Satan Juice people only pay what shit is worth for pieces on a free market instead of obeying my consumarxist theory of value, this is the worst thing to ever happen ever
everybody already said it but Christ what a fucking gigantic retarded megadouche
>>11161040
>most pretentious thing i read since adorno.
kek, stealing that
>>11166711
>adorno is like, so pretentious!
undoubtedly said by someone who's only looked up culture industry on wikipedia
>>11166764
adorno is intentionally obtuse in his writings, and wrote during a time when cultivating a mystical personality was very much in vogue in academia.
though there is something to be said for the practice of decoding theory as a meditative performance in and of itself, who has time for that when the stakes are as high as leftists purport them to be?
most of adorno's main points can be summarized down to one marxist word: superstructure. he just found a fashionably difficult manner of expressing that idea, and his legacy lives on in every undergrad who becomes infatuated with the frankfurt school.
>>11166793
wow, you have seriously and fundamentally missed the point of a great many of adorno's writings if you think that. not only are his critiques of marxism very overt, but his writing style was attempting to be a deliberate break w/ the post-enlightenment era "rationality project". adorno is ridiculously dense, no doubt about it, but you're missing an insane amount of extremely important and interesting concepts and commentary by reducing him to marxist bullet points.
>>11166951
such as all of the ones you neglected to discuss just now?
>>11160503
the entire premise of the argument assumes designers wouldn't be creative without a ridiculous profit motive, if true (doubtful) this isn't a problem because as u said popularity is increased by the internet, economies of scale, learn to economics before u embarrass yourself again
>>11166956
have you read negative dialectics?
>>11160520
ironically not hyped shit, thats when i stopped buying ro that goes for less then a $150 yeezy, boost, or amd
>>11160503
>How did the secondhand market get to the point where 105 people cannot find $171 for a wool jacket that is a collector’s piece? Do all these people live off their parents’ allowance?
yeah, this is my main issue with Grailed. Right now I have a listing with just under 100 people wanting it. I get constantly lowballed and offered trades for shit items. I have even accepted multiple offers and the people haven't paid. Why the fuck is it okay to accept a counter-offer and then just not pay? It's equivalent to winning an eBay auction and not paying, but Grailed is somehow fine with it.
Also internet in general is killing fashion. It's turning into this competitive, nerdy online sport of one-upping other dudes and gaining approval of anonymous people you will never meet. I have also gotten into lifting the past year (been into fashion for years), and I view /fit/'s CBT (current body threads) exactly the same as WAYWT threads. It's all dudes super caught up in something that the general population doesn't care about or value at all. I guess the positive part of lifting/exercise is you're almost guaranteed to look better. Lots of kids who waste their money on "high fashion" end up looking like shit.
>>11167057
The only thing Grailed has fucked up on is binding offers, if they had brought in binding offers from the beginning or at the end of beta it would have been fine but as is brought up in the article (the only legitimate criticism in there) is the culture of lowballing
>>11167057
>It's all dudes super caught up in something that the general population doesn't care about
I mean its a hobby. I wouldn't go into a model trainset thread expecting them to want to impress the world at large. that said a lot of faggots don't know how to do things for themselves.
>>11160503
Who cares, let the plebs give me resell money while I cop the /fa/ pieces for a steal
>>11167057
>Also internet in general is killing fashion. It's turning into this competitive, nerdy online sport of one-upping other dudes and gaining approval of anonymous people you will never meet.
See, this issue wouldn't even exist for you if you didn't perceive it. Stop browsing fashion forums, do your fashion thing the way YOU want to do it without caring what others do. Or in Tyler's words
Nigga just walk away from the screen like nigga close your eyes
>>11167057
>>11167546 is right, there's a distinct type of person who takes photos of themselves for the internet
>>11166434
"We have also coined the meme "goth ninja""
>>11166764
this
>>11161628
That's just how the secondary market works. It always worked this way.
You're getting assblasted because now that THE INTERNET EXISTS people are using it for whatever, including selling used items.
Welcome to the new millennium, senpai !
Btw, when was the last time you bought something in a brick and mortar store, and not online?
Don't worry, the primary market will deal with it and adapt. The question is, will you adapt, or be left behind?
>>11165365
>
Was thinking the exact same thing.
+1
>>11167057
100% on the binding offers. All it's done is create a culture of people who send shit just to see how low you'll accept, and then never buying. IDK why it's so hard for people to just wait until they have an actual intention of buying
