MrBern
I'll Lock Up
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A machine might make pants more cheaply, Mr. Sternberg said, but for a designer who wants to be known for quality, what would be the value in that?
Rregardless of how much of it is handmade, handsewn, machinemade, and machinesewn, its $54 of cloth thats assembled into a $110 Union-made garment.
All the markup after that...would probably be less if it were a Chinese business. Other business models seem to prefer less markup & more sales.
Butthis is intended to be a luxury garment, so theyre selling the prestige.
Which is why these sell out.
And BTW, there are some websites that sell to reenactors. Vintage style uniforms. Even when they come out poorly, they are sold and then the complaints roll it. Some of those sites have gone to China for new production. Its cheaper & more efficient and the reenactors, who would prefer MadeInAmerica, dont complain as much.
cptjeff said:No, they said 'key details' were handmade. Like buttonholes. Didn't say anything about the stitching, and any supposedly handmade anything has machine stitching these days. It's a matter of where, and a matter of how much.
And machine stitching isn't actually bad- hand stitching just makes for better marketing. There are a few areas where it does matter, but khakis aren't one of them.
Also, they're adversing split waistbands as a justification for the price. It's not. You can buy $50 slacks with one. Doing those various things by hand doesn't improve quality any, it just drives up the labor cost so they can drag out articles like these to justify the price.
I will hand them the basting though. That's a real, honest to god added value. Not one I would feel is important on a pair of khakis, but it is something that does provide a legitimate benefit over your standard run of the mill pants.
No matter how they talk about it, there is very little difference from much cheaper pants. You're paying for the name.