The door in my wardrobe

//// Everybody wants a piece of Jimmy

Posted on | November 14, 2009 | 6 Comments

I skipped the H&M IRL chaos today — but to be honest queued to web shop for a while. With no possibility to fit the clothes on I was mainly interested in accessories. Jimmy Choo is definitely not “the thing” for me and I’m not dreaming their actual stuff at all. But when H&M pricing meets decent quality and even slightly interesting design I’m always curious. Back to that later.

The thing I’m writing about here is quality and design. A regular H&M pair of shoes costs about 40 € — material is very probably polyurethane and the designer is nameless. Now we have here real leather shoes designed by Tamara Mellon, who gladly presents her face in the PR of the collaboration. Shoe prices start from 60 € flats ranging 80 – 100 € heels/flat boots to 180 € (for thigh high leather boots). These prices are still very accessible, even with smallish Finnish income you could still indulge yourself with pair or two within a year. Not saying that those Jimmy Choo designs are the most practical ones to invest your hard earned money, that’s not the point here.

But if that is the price of mass produced but thoughtfully designed and decently manufactured product why is not everything available for us consumers to buy well designed and decently manufactured? The fact that designer actually wants to be presented in context of her work is actually a really good general measure of at least acceptable quality.

I want the faceless designers to step forward and insist that the general quality should be such that they can proudly add their names to the products. I want the nameless designers in the industry to demand such a freedom in their design job that they don’t need just copy items from the high end brand catwalks. I want the unknown designers — and bit better known manufacturers — have that much responsibility in the production that they can proudly tell where and how the product is manufactured and how the materials are produced. That will probably add another ten to twenty euros to the price.

But hey, we can afford that.

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Discussion

  1. kirsi
    November 14th, 2009 @ 5:40 pm

    En voisi olla enempää samaa mieltä! mutta niinkauan kuin (tyhmä) kuluttaja maksaa muovisista räteistä, mikään ei muutu.
    olikohan se hesarissa tässä taannoin juttu siitä, että käyttökelvotonta lumppua tulee nyt noin 30% enemmän kuin ennen; siis tätä keinokuituvaatetta, jota ei voida uusiokäyttää edes lumppuna. me kirjaimellisesti hukumme tähän p-skaan.

    mutta hyvä kirjoitus, hyvä kun otit asian esille! olen lukenut kirjoituksiasi alusta saakka jo neuleblogin puolella, mutta taitaa olla ekoja kertoja kun kommentoin. on pitänyt onnitella myös opiskelujen aloittamisesta. onnea siis. liittyykö alasi mahdollisesti designiin tai muotiin?

  2. Jalouse
    November 15th, 2009 @ 1:43 am

    I´m so delighted that you wrote this post! This is one of the main reasons, actually, why I like to shop mostly second hand.

    And hey, my new comfortable pair of Choo flats is there in that pic.

  3. stellagee
    November 16th, 2009 @ 3:14 pm

    i’ve been thinking about the issue of cost generation (a posting sure to follow) lately and have come to the conclusion that we really need tags that inform us about everything: the designer, the manufacturer, the material origin and processing, the cost of shipping, the profit margin, etc. – ideally, that is. i’m afraid transparency would completely reshape our idea of affordability, that is, i do not believe a ten or twenty euros would actually cut it. but we can actually afford a hell of a lot more…

    and my choos there as well.

  4. Kamicha
    November 16th, 2009 @ 5:19 pm

    Kirsi, tervetuloa! Opiskelu ei liity muotiin, eikä ehkä ihan designiinkään (se oli kyllä alun perin ajatus), enemmänkin taidetta.

    Jalouse, I’m jealous! I saw them live today (just a quick lunchbreak visit to H&M) and they are absolutely the cream of this collection.

    stellagee, that would be ideal.

    I guess that one thing why these collaboration things are so affordable is that they are very high demand and only few items are sold on sale prices. Clothes market is really perverse, I don’t even want to think how large portion of all seasonal stuff is sold on very low sales prices… …and of course this all should be considered when pricing…

  5. michele
    November 17th, 2009 @ 9:44 pm

    excellent points

  6. Affordable Luxury « Meidän Pariisi
    November 23rd, 2009 @ 5:41 pm

    […] tuontanto-olosuhteista, yrityksen suunnittelu– ja tuotantoprosessien läpinäkyvyydestä (josta Kamichakin kirjoittaa) tai […]

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