Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

raptitude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 256 posts

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#161

Post by ABCLAW »

namdnay wrote: post #135
anemoiac wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh lord, being “forced” to provide work in order to receive the work of others I didn't write the comment you responded to, but I don't think its author was advocating for the mythical "free lunch." I read their comment as a statement decrying the seemingly artificial constraints built into modern (American, I presume) society that force workers to make an essentially binary choice between a stable, secure life and…

But how is that binary choice artificial? You’d have exactly the same choice 10000 years ago. Either go and hunt and forage for food, or starve

This is a false dichotomy. Parties do not have to have binary, 1 and 0 values for how much power they have in a given transaction, and remarking that employees having little power places them in the same place as ancient hunter-gatherers is... perhaps somewhat dishonest?

If we're experiencing what it is to have an employer have 8:2 relative power to an employee, that doesn't mean that a ratio of 6:4, while still favoring the employer, is no different.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#162

Post by savingsPossible »

deltron3030 wrote: post #139
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then a huge industry copying them at various levels and with various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or whatever. This results…

Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing a certain way. It's valuable and sells because social ladders are everywhere, we're all apes to a degree. It's not a suprise that the epic centers are urban melting pots with a higher population…

Maybe both?

There are social ladders, and there are people using social ladders to sell clothes they started working on last year?

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#163

Post by gmadsen »

captainmuon wrote: post #13
ilamont wrote: post #5

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of suc…

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

The isnt entirely true. clothing companies mimic what was on the runway a season before and mass produce it for consumer consumption

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#164

Post by ABCLAW »

crazygringo wrote: post #132
captainmuon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

> It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". To the contrary, public opinion does decide. Brands are trying to guess what will sell and be in fashion, and produce that. But they get it wrong all the time , as sales plummet for a particular season collection because consumers don't like it but really like another designer who guessed better. The fashion industry isn't m…

I've gone through probably 300 slide decks from various industries that explicitly state that 'consumers in x demographic sector will need to be re-educated about the value of [something they didn't want]'.

I've seen it in regards to premium breads, in-app purchases, crude oil solvent levels, public infrastructure features, clothing, etc. This isn't a new thing. Sometimes you just spend money to fabricate culture when it isn't on your side.

>There isn't one person deciding what gets produced.

Is this really an appropriate standard for examining whether or not an organization can push culture rather than merely adapt to it?

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#165

Post by TuringNYC »

deltron3030 wrote: post #139
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then a huge industry copying them at various levels and with various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or whatever. This results…

Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing a certain way. It's valuable and sells because social ladders are everywhere, we're all apes to a degree. It's not a suprise that the epic centers are urban melting pots with a higher population…

>> Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing a certain way.

I've seen former peers and fellow students borrow and become indebted to become part of the group this way. Great if the subject can afford it, not so much if the subject is now enslaved to debt or is misallocating funds. Then, perhaps find more welcoming social groups?

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#166

Post by clydethefrog »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #2

I've noticed an interesting congruity - people in the FIRE community tend to target saving two-thirds of a modern western income, with most finding that living on less than one-third begins to have serious impacts on quality of life. From some studies I came across while studying sustainable energy it also seems as though a well-designed community in which residents make certain lifestyle choices can reduce resource…

A big part of FIRE is putting your income i to index funds that get profit from mindless consumption, unlimited growth and capital extraction. I think if everyone would do that there wouldn't be any return on the investments.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#167

Post by quesera »

hermannj314 wrote: post #128
bulletsvshumans wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and then pull their customers by the nose ring into purchasing. "Twice a year Pantone hosts, in a European capital, a secret meeting of representatives from various nations' color standards groups. After two days of presentations and debate, they choose a color for the following year." "OVER 20 YEA…

And, amazingly, in the year 2000, the color they chose was cerulean blue.

That is exactly why I chose that example. It was the last one I remembered.

Pantone sells color chips. They are not designers, and they do not make or sell fashion.

The color of the year is just a marketing stunt which the media laps up, but the fashion industry completely ignores.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#168

Post by crazygringo »

ABCLAW wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". To the contrary, public opinion does decide. Brands are trying to guess what will sell and be in fashion, and produce that. But they get it wrong all the time , as sales plummet for a particular season collection because consumers don't like it but really like another designer who guessed better. The fashion industry isn't m…

I've gone through probably 300 slide decks from various industries that explicitly state that 'consumers in x demographic sector will need to be re-educated about the value of [something they didn't want]'. I've seen it in regards to premium breads, in-app purchases, crude oil solvent levels, public infrastructure features, clothing, etc. This isn't a new thing. Sometimes you just spend money to fabricate culture whe…

Well sure every company is trying to convince customers their thing is best. That's just marketing.

But different companies can be trying to convince things that are totally opposed to each other too. It's still not monolithic. (Regardless of whether it's "one person" or not, it was just an illustration.)

At the end of the day it's still customers buying what they like from a range of companies that are all competing with each other, some succeeding and some failing.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#169

Post by coldtea »

chrisco255 wrote: post #142
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks kind of planned but it's not. It's just that some things fall out of fashion for whatever reasons... "Not planned? Whatever reason?" There are huge billion dollar campaigns for what things "are in fashion" this season. For starters, the thousands of ads by fashion brands with the same "current fashion" messaging. Without that, the majority of the population could not care less what some "small proportion" of…

The people chasing "this season's fashion" are rather niche. People care less and less about this stuff as they get older. We also work in an industry where free conference t-shirts and khaki shorts are perfectly acceptable work attire. It's been over 100 years since blue jeans were invented and they're still quite popular. And if some people get enjoyment out of trying out new fashion styles, who am I to judge? No d…

>The people chasing "this season's fashion" are rather niche.

The people who consciously chace "this season's fashion" are niche [1].

But even more so, people who are bombarded with messages to buy new clothes, and that this style is now obsolete, get this instead, are pretty much everybody though.

[1] Though not that small of a niche: a big percentage of women do it quite a lot (as evident by the success of that side of the fashion industry and peripheral industries like accessories, perfumes, cosmetics, and such), and men have increasingly being doing it ever since the 80s too, especially if we include things like sneakers and so on).

As someone wrote, it's not like 250 million Americans, men and women, each individually by themselves, decided bell-bottoms are a good idea some year in the 70s...

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#170

Post by quesera »

bulletsvshumans wrote: post #55
quesera wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that simple. Fashion is an industry where hundreds of individual designers, some with the backing of megacorps and some without, try to meet popular interest (or to lead it), with production times measured in weeks to months, and with seasonal variation. There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and then pull their customers…

> There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and then pull their customers by the nose ring into purchasing. "Twice a year Pantone hosts, in a European capital, a secret meeting of representatives from various nations' color standards groups. After two days of presentations and debate, they choose a color for the following year." "OVER 20 YEA…

Pantone was the reference intended by my parenthetical.

There are some downstream effects, but they are overwhelmingly not relevant to fashion design, no matter what their marketing material claims.

Post reply on HN