Dissent at the Blog of the Manolo

Manolo says, this is one of the reasons why the Manolo loves his readers so very much, because even when they dissent from the official Manolo Party Line, they do so in ways that are interesting, polite, and well-reasoned.

Here, for the example, is the Manolo’s internet friend Sarah commenting upon the Manolo’s outrage with the Steven Madden peoples.

Sorry, I have to go against the grain here.

Ever seen those Suave shampoo commercials? Where two women with gorgeous hair flounce around for thirty seconds, and the announcer informs us that one of them spends a lot for salon products, and the other uses Suave? “If you can’t tell, why should we?”

Seven hundred dollars is an exorbitant price to pay for a mass produced product that you don’t plug into your wall. That it is not even remotely beyond the pale, in fact ‘reasonable’ as far as couture products goes, simply shows how divorced female ideals of conspicuous consumption have been removed from products that provide us value for money.

I remember being shocked when a friend of mine, a professional geisha, told me the average kimono she wore to work cost over ten thousand dollars. Then she actually went into the economics of the kimono industry, explained that every single kimono was a work of handcrafted art which kept dozens of artisans, sometimes the only living remnants of their craft, fed, and which was completely unique and symbolically sound in every detail. I was convinced at this point, and then she said, “Besides, it’s no more than you’d pay for a high-end handbag at some department stores.”

Louboutin’s name is not worth seven hundred dollars. No one’s name is worth seven hundred dollars. Value in fashion is assigned by a very small, very select cadre of people, and those values exist solely to keep a level of stylistic cache unattainable by the masses. Or else, how do you know how chic you are?

Of course, those signifiers fall apart if chicness is widespread, which is the real danger if mass market knockoffs. It is not a matter of protection of intellectual property; haute couture exists to determine the trend points upon which attainable intellectual property will be based, five years down the road. Nor is there anything patentable about patent leather, laces, shoe boots, or round toes. And if you honestly think shoe boots will be au courant long enough to constitute a ‘basic,’ or that any amount of money will make stilettos comfortable or long-lasting…

In summary, I am not offended by Steve Madden.

This is the exemplar of how intelligent and reasonable peoples should disagree! That the Manolo does not agree with this, does not change how happy he is to have received it.

As for what the Manolo believes, the Manolo can do no better than to point you to the replies of his internet friends Ninjarina, Dangster, and especially the Wannbe, who comes closest to expressing the Manolo’s own feelings with this perceptive comment below.

My dearest Sarah:

The issue isn’t whether you could or should pay $700 for shoes. Certainly the Louboutins are of higher quality, though indeed, both they and the SM knockoffs are footcoverings and therefore of similar use. The entire fashion world knows that knockoffs happen — but there is a way to do that legitimately. ABS Allen Schwartz is the absolute king of this kind of industry. He looks at Oscar gowns and then reproduces the look in an “inspired by” kind of way at a much lower price point so that people who cannot afford the Versace gown can buy it. No one has a problem with that, really, since the customer buying the ABS dress could never have afforded the Versace in the first place.

It is fundamentally different, however, to be “inspired by” someone else’s design and to produce an outright copy using inferior materials. Then to have the temerity to underline your perfidy by not even bothering to produce your own photograph, but rather stealing a photo of the original and photoshopping it, is flat-out wrong and deeply offensive. No one is offended that Madden produces cheap shoes — you get what you pay for. What we are offended by is his effort to pass them off as something else — a groundbreaking design that looks as good as the originals. (I’m betting the plastic copies just don’t look as good.) It’s consumer fraud.

That cheap shoes should be inspired by better quality shoes from serious designers is the inevitable fact of life; that unscrupulous hacks should attempt to commit fraud is not. Such things should not be tolerated.

However, there was one other part of the Sarah’s comment that has not yet been well-addressed, and it is contained in this excerpt.

Seven hundred dollars is an exorbitant price to pay for a mass produced product that you don’t plug into your wall. That it is not even remotely beyond the pale, in fact ‘reasonable’ as far as couture products goes, simply shows how divorced female ideals of conspicuous consumption have been removed from products that provide us value for money.

[…]

Louboutin’s name is not worth seven hundred dollars. No one’s name is worth seven hundred dollars.

The argument contained in this passage is not only common, but is often couched in moralistic terms.

The argument posits that items of high fashion are not “worth the cost”, and that because the utilitarian value of the object cannot match the exorbitant price, this makes the purchase of such objects morally suspect.

Yes, it is true that that one may not be able to justify the purchase of the $1000 Christian Louboutin Goya booties on practical grounds, for after all, would not stout, waterproof, leathern boxes stuffed with meadow grasses be just as useful?

And, yet, even as we seek practicality, we are ever mindful of artistic value, so that one day you are clomping through the plaza with in your stout leathern boxes (retail cost $29.95) when you see the young woman wearing leathern boxes with the delicate painted stripe down the side, and you become envious, because its looks pretty, and the beauty of this decoration imparts something of it’s superior nature to the wearer.

Suddenly you are all, “Ayyyy! Utilitarianism be damned!” Who cares if the leather boxes with the stripe cost $1.29 more, you must have the leathern boxes with the stripes!

This reaction is natural, indeed, it transcends the human, so that even animals recognize and respond to beauty, how else to explain the peacock? And like the peacocks and the peahens, humans respond to beauty, and seek to acquire beauty, even when the cost of beautiful objects grossly exceeds their utilitarian value.

That some peoples would pay $700 for beautiful and stylish shoes from master designers and craftsmen, should surprise us no more than that someone would pay $20 million dollars for the Andy Warhol painting. One may not agree with the taste of the purchaser, but one must at least understand something of the impulse that compels the purchase.

Of the course, the Manolo has simplified things greatly, and is ignoring many variables of motivation and economics, but the underlying desire for beauty, and our willingness to value it highly still pertains.

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