Opinion on fashion brand outerwear Acne, Mackage, The Arrivals, Sandro. How much of the price is the name?

[MattieXMoto]

I left a lot of brands off as too many to name. Wanted to get general opinions on quality vs paying mostly for the name for leather and or shearling outerwear. vs more boutique names like RMC, freewheeler, aero, vanson, y2 etc.

Vs

Belstaff
Acne Studio
The Arrivals (newish for female shearling Moya)
Sandro
Mackage
Allsaints
Ralph Lauren
Could go on and on

Too kick things off my opinion is the fashion brands are all trying to maximize profit by leveraging their distribution and brand/marketing while lowering production costs to china, turkey, india, portugal. Some sourcing higher end raw materials but mostly not. and they need to continue to pump out new styles every season.

I believe in general they are overpriced new, but could be had for values preowned on classifieds, ebay etc.

Whereas the smaller names not avail in lets say a mall or dept store offer great quality to price. But also are even better values.

 

[MattieXMoto]

PS. And with Schott's size and revenue, would you bucket them with the fashion labels even with all Made in USA?

 

[Canuck Panda]

Normal retail stores are running on at least 70% margin, just to cover all their expenses like rent and wages, anything lower would have to be on some type of guarantee sale/consignment deal from the suppliers. Minimum wage in Vancouver is gonna be over 16 dollars in a week. There was a time (not long ago) it was under 7 dollars... Don't even get me started on rent/property taxes...

The luxury brands must be running on at least twice the normal margin or more. Celebrity endorsements are not cheap... Even for the middle tier luxury brands they have cost of hosting events and so on. Plus they have to spend a lot of money on dealing with customer service.

 

[MattieXMoto]

Here is a perfect ex. I actually had this LengendaryUSA exclusive cockpitusa G1. I would bet quality was better than thia Acne bomber being sold for 3X.

 

[dinomartino1]

PS. And with Schott's size and revenue, would you bucket them with the fashion labels even with all Made in USA?

PS. And with Schott's size and revenue, would you bucket them with the fashion labels even with all Made in USA?

Schott became a fashion brand years ago, with the corresponding hefty increases on everything the sold, a lot of their stuff has always gone to Japan which you will never see on the US site, of course their leather jackets are stiil way ahead of the "fashion brands" who might make the odd leather jacket.

 

[Craig from Craigslist]

Respectfully, I'm going to push back a little on your premise that most brands fall very neatly into categories of "fashion" or "boutique" brands. Vanson and Schott regularly collaborate with Supreme. Johnson Leathers has collaborated with Junya Watanabe before. Some of Aero's most famous patterns and sought after jackets on the second-hand market came from their collaboration with Levi's. Vanson even did a collection with Harley Davidson and Jason Momoa recently.

Generally though, I do agree that many brands likely try to maximize profit by finding cheap labor and using cheaper materials than some of us would like. That said, I have a hard time approaching that topic with much nuance if we're going to talk about a bunch of different brands with varying audiences in mind at the same time.

 

[Manolito]

Schott US's products are made in the USA in their own union endorsed (if i remember correctly) factory, with their own trained workers and machines.

Makes a lot of difference to me compared to Belstaff, The Kooples or Sandro who commission workshops here and there, especialy here and there where the labour is not too expensive, even though these workshops have nothing to do with the brand to begin with.

It makes me feel much better spending my cash to Schott than to the other mentionned brands, and is much more important to me than to know if their jackets are endorsed as "fashion" jackets by whoever...

 

[Edward]

Much depends on what you want to bracket as 'fashion' - I mean, ultimately, once we move beyond choosing the most available, purely utilitarian option and start buying for style / a particular look / perceived exclusivity, isn't it all fashion?

It is sometimes possible to distinguish a niche brand from a mainstream fashion brand, of course, though there are plenty of those which have sought a very large profit margin vs cost. Overseas production is definitely one thing that can cut cost, though it's also often done to in turn keep retail price down. I remember the quality of a standard line DM boot dropping very markedly over the course of the decade from when I got my first pair in 1993. Initially, the saving they wanted was made because a decent wage for a skilled worker in China was much less than in England. (This happens in many industries outside clothing retail; many UK financial companies at one point shifted their call centres to India because they could pay someone there about a third to half of what they had to pay in the UK - and there it was a desirable graduate job, well-paid against the local economy at the time.) The quality drop happened after that, when they started cutting the quality of the materials going into the boot. The profit margins weren't increased dramatically by all this - what they were actually doing was seeking to keep the retail price to what it had been despite rising inflation. The issue they had was the market simply wasn't prepared to pay what it would have cost to, initially, keep producing it in England, and thereafter to the same quality. More recently, they have introduced a 'Made in England' line - but it's much more expensive than was formerly the case. I don't have any time for the 'fast fashion' culture, but all the same there comes a point where an increasing number of people just can't afford what Western production costs. I make no pretence of being able to see how that could change.

In terms of value, I've only heard of two of the mainstream fashion brands listed in the OP - Belstaff and Ralph Lauren. Belstaff aren't what they were if you buy the fashion line - personally, I always considered a Barbour International every bit the equal of a Belstaff Trialmaster, at a markedly lower price. If you find the dedicated motorcycling range from Belstaff, though, the quality is still there, and like for like the pricing isn't bad. RL seems nice enough at mostly prices I'd expect. I nearly bought a suit from RRL once, but while the jacket and waistcoat were lovely, the cut of the trousers was modern - "waistband" three or four inches below my natural waist, and cut way too tight in the leg. They were something insane like 15" around the hem in a 42" waist! No, thanks. The other listed brands I don't know, but I expect they're unlikely to produce much I would wear.

As a general rule, I've found plenty of more affordable brands every bit as good for my purposes as either the big names or some of the Japanese super-exclusive brands. I find it's often a mistake to write off known brands as selling "name alone" - plenty of the stuff is very good. Whether it's worth the retail price will be a matter for the individual, of course. I find with clothes as pretty much every other consumer product the Law of Diminishing Returns is writ large. For every jump in price band there's typically an improvement, but the significance of the improvements diminishes as the price rises. It's entirely a matter for the individual, within the scope of their own budget, which incremental improvement is the one which no longer justifies the corresponding price rise.

 

[TartuWolf]

Irrespective of quality / value, one thing that I find important when thinking boutique vs "fashion" brands is the size of the company itself. I much prefer to give my money to small scale establishments like Aero, SB, Vanson where each worker is known and valued due to the low number of them (at least that's how I imagine it). Basically supporting small business vs supporting massive corporations. Sure it has nothing to do with the final product, but it helps me justify the purchase and be more emotionally attached to it if I know it was made by a smaller company. Might be naïve, but some thoughts to contribute to the thread.

 

[navetsea]

when it comes to brand, I only buy from small brands especially local brands that their product is still the main focus and not the brand itself, otherwise I just go custom. in asia custom is a viable route and rarely seen as bespoke or other superlative option meant for rich people only, everybody can afford custom clothes here there are lots of tailor for every budget and there are lots of material choice for every budget too, some fabrics supplier shop sometime also offer tailoring service to make pants, shirts.

but answering to OP, sometime or most of the time though mass market fashion brands know better to make good looking 3D pattern since they have a huge stake to produce things that would compliment and sit cleanly on a lot of people with different bodytypes to be instantly look good on them on first try compared to small setup companies that boast on "old way" or "top quality japanese material" or "heritage" while they are just started making pants and jackets less than 10 years ago.