I’m browsing on farfetch for post inspiration. There’s a basic white cotton shirt on sale. The sale price is $870, which is 40% off the regular price of $1450.
The shirt is a Valentino classic shirt. It’s a nice looking basic white cotton shirt. But I’m thinking maybe $1450 might be a little on the extreme end for a basic white cotton shirt. Does the shirt look good? Yes, it looks good; but it’s still just a basic white cotton shirt. And you can probably find other basic white cotton shirts that look as good for under $100.
This is the shirt in question
We can all agree it’s a nice shirt. Although you can never really know from just looking at a picture, it looks like it’s a high quality shirt. Doesn’t look cheap. Probably hard for a $1450 shirt to look cheap. The style is nice. Probably nice enough for an argument to be made that it’s not a basic white cotton shirt per se. Except, it really is a just a white cotton shirt that has a little edge on the more basic button down long sleeved white cotton shirts. So…
Would you pay $1450 for what amounts to a basic white cotton shirt just to say you have a Valentino shirt?
I get that when you’re buying high end you’re paying the big dollars for the bragging rights it gives you to be able to show that you can afford the high end price tags. And I’ve said, and still do feel, that if I can afford something and I feel compelled to buy it, I’ll buy it. And I do agree that it’s not necessarily that things are unreasonably expensive. It’s that the system is so dramatically unbalanced. And if all things were equal, we’d all be able to afford the things we desire because we would have the money needed to acquire them. And because everyone would be on the same level economically, nothing would cost more than everyone could afford.
$1450 to a rich person is nothing. Ideally we would all be in the same position of being able to regard $1450 as being a more than reasonable price to pay for a basic white cotton shirt.