Live data from Hacker News

Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

digest.bps.org.uk

271–280 of 287 posts

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#271
post #224
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're owned by Tata Motors now, the manufacturer of the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car.

Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti are also owned by Volkswagen. That doesn't make them any less expensive.

Expensive yes. Reliable, dunno. I have an Audi, also a Volkswagen group car. It's fun, sporty, feels "expensive" but it has the worst reliability of all the cars I've owned, on par with Fiat. I use to joke that the four circles represent the amount spent on maintenance and repairs.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, some more expensive clothes have a much better fit. I have been buying $150 jeans most of my adult life and recently read a comment on Reddit that expressed disbelief that someone would pay more than $30 for a pair of jeans.

And many others are just more expensive. I'm one of those $30 jeans people. An old girlfriend once convinced me to try on a pair of $200 jeans ("you don't have to buy them, just try them on"). I did it just to shut her up and looked at myself wearing $200 jeans in the mirror. Fit exactly the same, material seemed better quality, stitching was the same, etc. Yes, better. But definitely not $170 better. Then again, I t…

> I did it just to shut her up

...I assume you weren't surprised when she decided to change her status to your "old" girlfriend.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#273
post #121
post #6

The article's title is "Showing off your status and wealth makes you seem less co-operative", and the title here on HN is absolutely wrong. I like wearing flashy clothes myself, and I would even say it has proven advantageous to cooperation in my line of work, so I was curious about this article. However, nowhere is it stated that flashy clothes make people less likely to cooperate with you. They say wearing clothes…

One case where that works against people is sales. For example, we had a sales rep for some software we use that would always show up with gaudy gold rings on almost every finger, an obviously-5-figure watch, high end suit, etc. It sent a pretty strong signal to us that their margins and commissions had a lot of room to negotiate down. I suspect we negotiated harder with this organization than we would have otherwise…

Pretty sure the guy knew exactly what he was doing. First, the fact you were negotiating means he already got over the first step, which is simply to engage in a negotiation at all. Then he set himself up so that your team felt you could push extra-hard, resulting in a discount you all probably high-fived about. So he sets his initial price above his peers and even with your super discount you ended up at the same price as everybody else. Or maybe you did pay less... it's software! Marginal cost = pennies. Cheesy sales guy still made a fat commission.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would buy clothes with no distinctive marks if I could find them. Uniqlo

What about Asket in EU?

I’m a big fan. Used to only shop Uniqlo, M&S and gap but the quality of these brands have gone downhill massively.

Asker’s chinos are the comfiest trousers I’ve ever worn. The Egyptian cotton tees are also great.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#275
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. It took me some time to find a brand that doesn't dazzle everybody with their logo, uses the fabric and design that suits me, is durable enough and so on. I place a substantial order and forget about clothing for a few years.

What brand did you opt for over Uniqlo?

I don't believe my answer would make any sense for anybody beside me as I am a very peculiar person and chose the brand after trying dozens of others.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#277

I was having this talk the other day: I hate "high end" logo clothes and don't want to compete with people that showcase their logo clothes. The average clothing store is decent enough for me. I would buy clothes with no distinctive marks if I could find them. Just plain material and colors.

[deleted]

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#278
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nothing is lamer than a regular ass t-shirt with the logo of some luxury brand. To me this is just truly paying for the brand and not an actual quality product. A terrible waste of money in my opinion.

An interesting thing is people who buy knock-offs of those things for cheap. I'm not sure why, but I think there could be some kind of peer pressure-like phenomenon. I'm not talking about people who get donated clothing, as they have little choice. I mean people who go out of their way to get the knock off if they cannot afford the real one (which they may wish for).

If you were to spend just a few minutes browsing "hype beast"-like forums/communities around the internet, you would likely arrive very quickly at the conclusion that it isn't about looking put-together and wearing a genuinely fashionable outfit, it's about how many dollars worth of products you can comfortably wear at a time (to get "the drip"), even if that means layering it up in ways that absolutely do not work aesthetically. A truly bizarre offshoot of fast-fashion.

Lots of folking out there going into major debt just to own designer goods. They definitely seem to believe in the "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" thing, but usually work in dead-end jobs without any chance of career progression.

Judging by the interest in 'fashion reps', I would say it's very much a peer pressure issue, but one that extends far into adulthood for some folks.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#279
post #170
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m of the opinion that truly good clothes do not need to sport a logo at all. Unless you can see/feel the quality, why pay a premium just to show people you spent 500% more on your shirt?

Logos are for people who are insecure about status. Next level up involves partial counter-signaling by avoiding logos entirely. There are many layers of status displays. I think SSC's analysis of fashion as cellular automata is the most coherent writing on this.

> Logos are for people who are insecure about status.

This reads very clueless to me. Most brands put logos on their clothes, even cheap mall brands put logos on their clothing.

Re: Wearing flashy/status clothes makes people less likely to cooperate with you

#280

Now redo the study, but IRL and with actual status clothes == high quality materials, perfect fit, nice flashy style (that means zero logos!). I made this experiment: I have few really cheap suits (looking OK but that's it) and few very expensive suits. When I wear the cheap ones, people are normal with me. When I wear the expensive ones, people wearing normal clothes don't notice and people "in the know" (wearing ex…

It totally depends - know rich people who wear understated but expensive clothes with no labels. Also know the ones who like peacocking - flaunting the big Armani/DKNY/GUCCI logos. Most wealthy people IMO don't want to draw attention to themselves. The nouveau rich are the ones screaming for attention!

> The nouveau rich are the ones screaming for attention!

You’d think HN would be the last place where you’d see slurs for people who didn’t inherit their wealth.

Post reply on HN