I don't understand the allure of wearing labels

This came up on a meme that a friend shared to a group that some of my friends are in and the point was to make fun of a friend of mine that is always proudly wearing clothes with brand names on them. This is mostly about his choices of shirt and no, I am not a snob and I have very little in the way of fashion sense but the meme really resonated with me because of a recent adventure I had been on.

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Superdry is just one of many labels that came into existence while I was already overseas and not part of the whole western marketing immersion so I didn't even know that such a company existed until my friend started turning up with these shirts on. I find it to be a ridiculous company just like "Supreme" but to be fair, I was roped in by certain brands as a teenager and even young adult.

When I was a kid, Quicksilver was all the rage and my parents refused to buy it for me. I had to save up and get them on my own. Looking back, my parents were correct on this one because there really is no difference between a Quicksilver, Superdry, Supreme, or any other brand name shirt and the plain ones you see at Wal-Mart or somewhere like that.

Well, there is a difference I suppose. One of them is $50 and the other is $7.

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This is the meme in question and yes, it makes total sense to me. Somehow somewhere along the line the industry convinced us to advertise for them and pay a premium for the item at the same time. Do you ever just stand back in awe at how utterly stupid we all are? I grew out of this when I was in my early 20's and was starting to pay for everything myself in life but my friend, who is getting near 50 years old, still buys all this stuff and pays a lot of money for it.

For some people I would imagine it is a way of advertising how much they paid for something and if that is the case, I am very happy that I am not part of that culture. If there exists a type of person out there that only wants to be around people that pay a lot of money for their clothes (or really anything else that they have) I am really happy to not be around superficial people like that. I would much rather have the money in the bank, wouldn't you?

Brand tribalism even exists because of this and I recall a time when I was in high school and an arrogant classmate was talking to the teacher of the class named Mr Reid (great teacher, that's why I still remember his name 25 years later) and the arrogant student was trying to tell Mr. Reid that "Reebok shoes suck" as he paraded around in his new Nikes. I don't know if the arrogant classmate realized this or not but both Mr. Reid and myself were at the time, wearing Reeboks. The thing is, I was an athletic type at that time in my life and actually used my shoes for basketball. I knew that this kid didn't participate in any sports so how exactly do you know which shoes are good and which aren't? Are you sure Michael Jordan didn't convince you that Nike's are good?

I now live in a part of the world where basically all shoes are made and I whole-heartedly believe that there is no difference between most shoes other than the logo that is on the side of them. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are all actually manufactured in the same factory by the same people.

I know it is cliché, but as I have gotten older I have become more attached to whatever shoes happen to be comfortable which means that since I am in my 40's, New Balance shoes are my go to. I almost always am wearing sandals anyway and the label that I wear for sandals is "whatever they have in my size."

One time I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, NYC, and we went to a store that had clothes for sale in it and it was amazing to me to find shirts, just regular shirts, that were hundreds of dollars each. Other than what was written on the tag there was no difference between this shirt and one that they would sell at JC Penny for $10. By the way, is JC Penny still a thing? I read this article about the most expensive t-shirts in the world and discovered that people are paying $2000 for Armani plain white t-shirts. Have people lost their damn minds?

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The only time I can see that a shirt would be worth that kind of money would be in really rare situations such as it was the last shirt that Kurt Cobain wore on TV before he died. Not the brand or type of shirt... THE shirt.

Recently, I was out in one of Danang's many shopping malls trying to find some shirts that would actually fit me. I am average size by western standards but a bit of a giant when it comes to your average Vietnamese person. Therefore, I am quite limited by what is available. I was getting very frustrated in the name brand stores like Nike because the shirts they have for sale in there would be 50-60 USD, were no different than the ones in the generic store that unfortunately had no big sizes, and it had their logo all over the damn thing.

I will take this to the grave as a solemn promise: I will NEVER pay $50 for a t-shirt and I don't understand why anyone would do so.