aiislove
1d ago
Great post, thank you for sharing.
I have written a lot about this before but the trajectory of a nation and how we compare with our parents' and grandparents' generations is massive for our own self esteem and the vibe of a society. America is in a tough place because we're so obviously doing worse than my grandparents' generation which has largely died out about ten years ago and there's little hope among all classes that they'll be able to afford a better life than their parents or grandparents did. I suspect the opposite is true in China and that accounts for the very different vibe and outlook between the two countries right now.
aiislove
1d ago
I grew up my whole life in the midwest and never visited the west coast until a few years ago and got to visit the Bay Area for the first time about a year ago. I got the sense that it has declined in recent years while I was there and I imagine it's declined in the same way that other American cities have. But I also found the city really beautiful with incredible weather and still a million times better than anything on the east coast, midwest or the south. Californians love to complain about traffic and homelessness and a handful of other things but frankly they are all so much worse in Baltimore or Detroit or even Cleveland or Pittsburgh. All the billionaires leaving California seem insane to me, the weather and landscape of CA are unreal, the rest of the country is unbearably hot and/or humid for at least half of the year and/or suffers from terrible cold and depressing winters etc etc etc
Anyway besides all that I've been all over the world and coastal California from SD to SF is genuinely the best place to live imo. Granted it is expensive (still less expensive than Hawaii and a handful of other places) and, perhaps, the dense majority of people there are left leaning, though I find them less irritating than their east coast counterparts, and really quite easy to avoid if I just socialize with the Mexicans and non whitewashed Asians instead
I'm sure it's difficult and annoying to see your city decline and perhaps I'm naive and just haven't spent enough time in the area but I do think the complaints are overblown or maybe I just don't have the perspective to know what I'm missing but I've only had good experiences there
aiislove
1d ago
Yup there have been a handful of services with this model over the years, they never seem to catch on. Actually fashion startups with sort of gimmicky business strategies (rent the runway type things for example) almost never work out, I suspect investors are not usually the type of people to understand the fashion industry, and fashion companies are notoriously poorly managed in general
aiislove
1d ago
Yeah don't worry about how autistic it is, there is so much crap in the world that when you find the perfect thing just get tons of it. I have 3 pairs of my favorite pants which were a random seasonal piece from Express, I'm going to be annoyed if I can't find a 4th pair since I've already worn through the first two
aiislove
2d ago
At first I thought you were asking how many of the clothes you try on work out for you and you buy them, which my answer was going to be like 10 percent, but then I re-read your question and realized you're asking what ends up working for you after you take it home.
In that case it's probably around 75% for me. I try to be extremely picky in what I purchase because I hate wasting money on stuff that doesn't work out. The biggest culprits of things not working is stuff shrinking after the first wash and the irritation of having a slightly inferior product compared to what I already own and I can't stand to trade down when I have something better on hand. Also I have a habit of thinking something looks good in the mirror without realizing it's uncomfortable as hell which I can't unnotice the first time I try to actually wear it
For reference I have a degree in fashion design and shop all the time and this is still a terrible problem.
If I find something I like from a brand that makes the same things all the time (like MUJI, Uniqlo or LA Apparel) I will happily buy multiples of the same style in different or same colors which helps a ton but is incredibly irritating when they change things or discontinue items and you have to start all over
aiislove
3d ago
Would recommend checking out recraft.ai
Ehhhh it's kind of a mess all the way around. There are a handful of companies like Levi's which are grandfathered in and have a very specific niche that they do well enough that they are hard to mess up and I would describe as well run, though even those have rough patches.
Luxury brands are currently going through a huge problem where they've inflated prices outside of the reach of aspirational shoppers (basically everyone but the very rich) with zero increase in the quality of the goods they are selling- this is the case right now with every brand in the category from Chanel to the LVMH labels to McQueen. I believe I just read in the Business of Fashion that the luxury market (as in the number of buyers consuming luxury goods) has shrunk like 40 percent in the past 5 years. Of course before this LVMH for example was doing great for over a decade so things are cyclical and to some extent outside the control of management but the mishandling of the price point and quality control has been ridiculous and unnecessary and avoidable IMO.
Fashion management is also very prone to misunderstanding the customer's needs or desires, doing a poor job of matching expectation with product selection, they tend to fall for flavor of the day gimmicks that often fail, there is often friction between the business and creative sides of the businesses, and so on
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