It is not always easy to replace your old shoes or clothes as soon as they wear out. We tend to make use of our wardrobe as long as we can. The issue is even harder for the poor who have to wear the same things for years.Poverty is not easy, but for some, it can apparently be made fashionable. Worn clothing is hardly a new look - distressed jeans have been popular for decades - but some high fashion brands, like Golden Goose, have taken it to a new level.
Italian luxury brand Golden Goose released its new season featuring worn out, distressed sneakers with a whopping price tag of $530. The shoes, called "Superstar Taped Sneakers," are advertised on the brand's website featuring "crumply, hold-it-all-together tape details" and "a distressed leather sneaker in a retro low profile." As soon as the sneaker hit Nordstrom's online store, the public's outrage about the Italian fashion house's perceived mockery of poverty started pouring in.
However, this is something that fashion does all the time, and Golden Goose is not the only one to be blamed.
It all started when Calvin Klein released its first ripped jeans. Back in the day, ripped jeans were far from fashionable, rather the usual sign of overuse. With the influence of rock stars of the '80s, the distressed jeans of the poor became a fashion item, and Calvin Klein was the first luxury brand to turn them into profit.Over the years, the fashion industry has released new collections season after season, and it has come to the point where there is nothing new and exciting left to present to customers. That's when they turned to the streets and saw all the people who could not afford high-end brands.
Earlier this year, French fashion house Balenciaga released a series of plastic T-shirts that retail for $848. However, the biggest fashion faux-pas of the brand was a bag that looks like a plastic IKEA bag that cost $2,100.
In 2017, the French ready-to-wear brand Maison Margiela's new "Future Destroyed High-Top Sneakers" hit markets with a price tag of $1,425. The kicks look like they are falling apart; the leather has clearly seen better days. In addition to the slices, rips and cuts marring the leather upper, the sneakers feature heavy scuffing and discoloration and even have a huge chunk of leather missing from the tongue.
It is not possible to predict how far the fashion industry will go in the name of originality; but are we, the consumers, are so desperate to be "fashionable" that we will resort to wearing insanely overpriced, ridiculous clothes?
