The Walmart Birkin- and a larger conversation about how garment workers are completely erased from the fashion conversation

This is a stupid post, and I feel stupid for posting this. But it’s driving me nuts and I really need to rant.

I follow a lot of fashion content. Mostly for vintage research but all different stuff comes across my timeline. I’ve been seeing this damn bag for days. I guess some knock off Hermes bag was being sold at Walmart, and of course because it’s viral people are flocking to it.

Now I’m not defending Hermes. Spending 20k on a purse is gross. I won’t spend that on clothes in my lifetime. Probably most people in this sub won’t either. It’s over spending to the point of vanity and gluttony to own a closet full of that. (I think they can even get more expensive, one person mentioned them costing up to 80k.) I’m sorry if you like them and I’ve offended you, this is structured more as a vent than my usual type of post.

There are these incredibly viral posts, with hundreds of thousands of likes defending this flavor of the week purse. And the people sewing that bag are not in the conversation at all. No one spares so much as a thought for the women and children whose hands have made those stupid 75 dollar purses.

I get it, we all sometimes have to buy something that’s not our ideal purchase because we need it. No ethical consumption and all that. But to see that they’re not even a bullet point in this conversation breaks me. They’re human beings. Many of them are trapped by these factories. It’s not right. For that price are there really no alternatives? It’s obviously much cheaper than the real ones, but I wouldn’t say 75 dollars is cheap for a purse. It’s more expensive than my purse. Hell, it’s even more than my nice bag for date nights.

To be clear I’m not trying to shit on people who buy the purse. But I’m so incredibly mad by the tone of the conversation around it. The way it’s being talked about as if it’s the more moral option because it’s accessible to many. And criticizing it is criticizing poor people for just wanting to enjoy something.

It’s this whole viral conversation about fashion, class, our relationship with consumption and status symbols. But not for the extremely impoverished. It’s all, “poor people deserve nice things” until someone asks about the poor people working in those factories. They’re so non existent that the average shopper doesn’t even remember they are real, breathing, feeling humans.

Submitted December 26, 2024 at 02:10AM by MissWolfsbane77 https://ift.tt/dVChysM