Pardon my rant ! (Part Deux)
Mario Moore
“Pardon My Rant” is a monthly series where Greg, the style editor, goes in on things he hates from Fashion injustices to Man buns.
photo courtsey of Soraya Zaman
How many people are excited about H&M’s upcoming collaboration with Kenzo? Well, let me tell you who isn't. Me.
I hate when luxury brands collaborate with fast fashion companies. It really cheapens the brand. If you don't know what fast fashion is, it’s a contemporary term used by fashion retailers to express designs that move from the catwalk quickly in order to capture current fashion trends. Fast fashion clothing collections are based on the most recent fashion trends presented at Fashion Week in both the spring and the autumn of every year. Emphasis is on optimizing certain aspects of the supply chain in order for these trends to be designed and manufactured quickly and inexpensively to allow the mainstream consumer to buy current clothing styles at a lower price. This philosophy of quick manufacturing at an affordable price is used in large retailers such as H&M, Topshop, and Zara.
I have two problems with fast fashion:
1) it’s way too trendy and poorly made and
2) they don't care about the environment.
So, the clothes either fall apart or fall out of style in the next six months. In an article written in Esquire magazine, H&M said it manufactures 600 million items a year for more than 3,200 stores in 55 countries. As the company grows, its demands for cotton, electricity, oil and water become immense—even as it claims to focus on organic cotton (which, in 2014 only accounted for 13.7 percent of its cotton).
As I mentioned before, the clothes are poorly made, which is one of the reasons why it hurts the brand. There is a lot of craftsmanship and quality control that goes into making luxury clothes. For example, I was watching a documentary the other day call Dior and I, based on Raf Simmons’ first collection with Dior. There was one scene where the seamstress were in the Atelier (fancy term for studio), making a gown and hand-sewing pearls all over the dress. Maybe you didn't get that. I just said these two ladies were hand-sewing pearls on a dress. I still have a hard time cutting my sandwich in half for lunch. I couldn't even imagine hand-sewing pearls on a dress. Those are the types of things that go on behind the scenes of Luxury fashion brands. Next time someone asks you why did you pay 150 dollars for a t-shirt, you tell them that story. H&M doesn't care about quality at all; it just wants to knock off brand designs and sell them to you at a lower price and for lower quality.
When they say making things accessible to everyone, I think they were talking about clean drinking water (unless you’re Governor Snyder) or a quality school system (unless you’re the Detroit Public Schools System being ripped off by administration). It definitely doesn't apply to Luxury fashion.
If you can’t afford it, don't buy the watered down version. Instead, save your money and invest in quality pieces that will last you for years to come— not weeks.
PS : you don't want to end up looking like these clowns
Last year at an H&M store for the collab with Balmain Video courtesy of the shade room
If you have any style questions, feel free to shoot me a tweet @wheresgregory_D or email me at blackmensguide@gmail.com