I’ve never really understood the appeal of paying more for a shirt just because it has a brand like Nike or Adidas or something with another brand that sells a product printed across it when a plain, unbranded one costs less.
If you think about it, walking around wearing a giant logo is basically acting as a walking billboard for that company. Usually, if a company wants to advertise on a billboard, they have to pay for the space. But with branded clothes, people not only provide the advertising space for free, they actually pay extra for the privilege.
It feels a bit backwards to me. For those of you who prefer branded clothing, what makes it worth the extra cost for you?
Edit: I’m not speaking of sports equipment. Just clothing you would wear to the movies, the store, etc.
I found out that the $130 name brand of a particular item lasted about 10x longer than the $35 no-name equivalent. Someone who’s pretty thrifty helped point me toward the brand. If part of what you’re paying for is sturdier materials and build, it might be well worth the extra cost.
For most things though, it’s not worth the price as far as I can tell. Nobody really cares if you wear no-name clothing, or if they do, they’re an asshole you want to avoid anyway.
Especially for athletic gear, the ones with huge branding is cheaper when considering quality you get and how long it will last.
But I’ve dropped $50+ each on plain tshirts multiple times too. I’ve got some that are probably a decade old and some that are less than six months old but no idea which are which because that’s how well they hold up.
I’ve also got a bunch of cheap ones for stuff like yardwork.
But for people that buy heavily branded sports clothing for it’s intended purpose, the heavy branding actually makes it cheaper than competitors and everyone is aware of it.
The thing is those people tend to be in good shape and will wear that stuff out and about in town. And anything attractive people wear, is what everyone will start buying.
Like, yoga pants started being worn as regular pants by women who actually did yoga. They tended to have nice buts from yoga, so then other women just started wearing them expecting the same thing.
Or like how Carhartt made an entire new line of clothes that is nowhere near as rugged yet more expensive, just because people want the “rough” look.
It’s just people who are emulating others without understanding what they’re emulating, that’s why teenagers and 20 somethings are always the hardest hit by this stuff.
I usually pay about $3 for a blank t-shirt. I have a few that are over ten years old, and they’re still fine.
I have no interest in being a walking billboard for any brand. They should pay me to wear such clothes.
I need to flex to others that I am their social superior.
Kirkland
It’s not that I intend to have a sports logo on my shirt, it’s just this sporting company happens to make a shirt that breathes well without being a cheap, thin fabric.
If you count band shirts as branded (idk why you wouldnt), It’s because I want to support the artists. Almost all of my shirts are band shirts I’ve bought at gigs. Yes they’re expensive for what they are but that money is going to my favourite bands so they can keep making more music. Plus it saves me from ever having to go shopping for t-shirts. Win-win.
https://www.ssactivewear.com/ps/tops-t_shirts-shortsleeve
It’s not super easy to find, but there are stores that sell just plain clothes before they’re sent to print shops.
But otherwise, it’s kinda hard to find quality clothes with no branding on it. It’s not like you go to a store and there’s one plain shirt and then the same thing but with a big logo on it.
My favourite shirt is a Nike one that just saying “running” with their tick
Every time I see it in my wardrobe I start laughing. Gives major background character vibes
I might buy a brand because it’s good quality (like Duluth Trading Co. pants or LL Bean coats) but IDGAF about the brand name itself. In fact, I would prefer it to be subtle or even invisible.
Maybe I just had bad luck but I went through about 5 pairs of Duluth work pants in like 2 years before I gave up on the brand. The crotch seam would always start ripping from me crouching and doing regular work stuff. Got some pants from the army surplus that still look brand new years later
Huh, I’ve had great luck with their firehose flex triple stitched stuff. Nothing wrong with surplus though!
I hear you. Branding the products people buy is the reason we see thousands of advertisements/promotions on an average walk. It’s subtle but my phone has a big H on it fo its camera lens manufacturer, Hasselblad.
I’m not the target demographic for your question, but I decided to voice my opinion anyway. Perhaps to feel self-important; perhaps to help others make informed choices and validate their decisions to walk away from the companies that harm society and, in some cases, destroy villages of lives.
Monologue - tl;dr
What is supposed to happen is this: Products are branded so people can know where to go to get a similar product. Word of mouth leads to a store, a logo fed to you a thousand times with the name leads to global recognition and persistent memory. To entice more customers and more money, the seller ensures high quality manufacture that appeases the customer, whether it be weatherproofing, non-scratchy material or durable seams.
Now that these clothing brands have become large companies, some publicly traded, the focus shifts. Mass manufacture leads to much quicker manufacture, if a given line assembles a given piece, such as a pocket or buttons, therefore less money can be paid in labour per item. Rephrased; more items can be made in a set time period.
Two other caveats happen to jeopardise what was supposed to be a way to know the good from the bad: the corporate groups that own the brands also learned that some materials, cheaper to source either by being easier, or by hiring in locations with the lowest available legally mandated wages, also provide a kind-of suitable similar form and function to the expensive, original materials. This is because the capitalist economy drives people insane and everyone in business management positions are groomed to consistently minmaxx their I/O. MORE money gained; LESS spent.
The second downside to this trend is that, undeniably, the overwhelming majority of consumers are more than content to continue spending their dwindling expendable money on recognisable brands regardless of quality. This behaviour – preferring the short-life, 75% viscose, plastic and synthetic clothing at £10 a shirt over organic materials at £30+ a shirt (depending on your regional economy, prices differ) – enables these megaconglomerates that control the corporations to exploit the workers through labour conditions while exploiting the end users through paying for the brand whose quality no longer exists.
Doc Marten, a few years back, ended their ‘lifetime guarantee’ range of boots. Around the same time they weakened the manufacture process, resulting in rapidly deteriorating (sometimes one month to one week) products, including the glue on the soles, the seamlines, the finish on the boots being made of a thin material that gets damaged by heat from the sun and humidity in a 60%RH climate. But at least they don’t charge more money for these, what I would call experimental failures or bootlegs, except they passed QC, are original, and are mass-marketed now.
Advice: When shopping for products new or uncommon to me, I always spend at least a couple hours on the internet looking for local and national sources, researching average prices; popularity markers like reviews and ratings (though it can be skewed/falsified); and evaluating price differences in materials and feature inclusion; which companies damage or take advantage of the least lives (ethics); and finally which offers the best for the least, because while I also have to minmaxx the money my life is forced to revolve around, I refuse to sacrifice product quality, nor sacrifice the people involved in its production, and the former usually indicates the latter.
(Well, this is going in my ‘Monologues’ notebook.)
To conclude, I do not implicitly trust well-known brands, or the generally most popular brands, because they charge for the brand itself, but often provide lower quality. Nor do I trust the no-brands, or the Chinese clone companies on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Alibaba/AliExpress, and definitely not Temu, Shein and TikTok, because they almost certainly do always exploit labour and use the absolute worst materials that can be used for the product - the differences being they only look for a much lower profit margin than the conglomerate brands; and instead of avoiding state taxes by donating comparatively less to charities (that they sometimes own), the no-brands avoid state taxes by dodging below the usually recommended regulatory requirements. For example, on customs labels for imported tobacco, it can be listed as “assorted vegetables”; for electrical gadgets containing batteries, “cables/small toys”. I avoid ≤£2 and ≥£200, I instead stay between £10 and £100 for clothing.
I trust based on source reputation, the experiences of a handful of other people (preferably verified reviews), and finally my own experience, if I purchased in the past. I recommend others do the same instead of blindly trusting mainstream brands… Or no-names.
But sometimes this isn’t possible. For some folk their only source for a much-needed product is very expensive, corporate, and/or has to be bespoke, such as bras, packers, certain accessible shapes of clothing, or eyewear for anisometropia or astigmatism. These narrow choices down to the rare few that provide.
I don’t get it either. I can understand wanting to wear a shirt with a movie character to say “I like this character”. But walking around with clothes saying “I like this clothing brand” is a bit stranger
Bands make almost nothing from Spotify and I’m not a concert person
You actually pay less for bigger logos.
When I find something I like, I look for that brand in the hope of finding something else I like
Except docker and Levi. They fit differently by what country they were manufactured in. Maybe Malaysian Levi’s fit well but the “exact same” pants made in Vietnam’s wont
I don’t typically buy cloths that are anything special. I mean, I might like a Nike or UA something that’s half of clearance at Kohl’s, but I don’t think I’ve even bought anything full price in my life even though I can.
That being said I like nice things people don’t notice. For example I’ll wear a $1,000 Tissot watch, my EDC bookbag is a $400 Tom Bihn bag, that type of thing. I like nice things, bitynot being flashy about it.
