Fashion design appeared (and maybe still appears) to be one those areas where one could easily gain transcending fame and notoriety; catering to elites.
Contrasting it to software or an app (design), the thing could be used by millions and barely anyone knows who you are.
Maybe because fashion designers themselves get to appear on stage and cement their face in everyone's consciousness? Imagine if your software or app would display you, the designer, each time someone starts it up...
Hmmm Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind. The default "friend" for each new facebook account...
Art (if one consider fashion art is debatable, but it entails artistic qualities, aesthetics, impressions, emotions) appeals to different part of humans. Or if you will Pierre Cardin's and peers effect is more around what Steve Jobs / Apple was in the tech world. Not utility first .. but something else.
Fashion is hardly an industry where it is easy to achieve fame or success, let alone "immortal" notoriety like Lagerfeld or Cardin. However, it is true that countries with a lot of luxury fashion houses are more likely to consider fashion as a proper art form than not. That's an important distinction from software. Successful designers are artists and that accounts for something in the way their legacy is celebrated.
Naming companies with founder's name fell out of (ekhm) fashion in business. It used to be Bell, Ford, Disney, Helwett&Packard, now it's Apple, Google, Facebook.
Still, I'd bet an average person knows more famous visionaire/entrepreneur people (like Jobs and Gates) than famous fashion designers.
> I'd bet an average person knows more famous [visionary]/entrepreneur people (like Jobs and Gates) than famous fashion designers.
I doubt that's the case. Popular music cites eponymous fashion brands regularly. Listeners might not know what the actual person looks like, but they'd know the products and the names.
And yet I see faces in my mind when reading Apple, Google, Facebook, but no faces when reading Armani, Dior, Versace. Not even if I try. Of course that's because I'm far more interested web tech than in the fashion establishment. Would be interesting to probe for "brand/face recognition" with people who aren't interested in either, e.g. car or spectator sports nerds.
Because fashion stuff has little to no value itself, the whole 99.9% price is the brand/name. As a fashion designer you become famous first then sell just that if you want to earn big money.
Is it though? I see whole corporations running in office. Most communication goes through outlook and PowerPoint. I’ve seen people building intricate and bespoke interfaces in Access with only later the data storage layer removed from access internal to ms sql; whole graphs and pivot tables created from many data sources in excel, and even finite state machine simulators integrating real time Prometheus dashboards. Somehow the office suite is extremely powerful and it works and integrates with many things. It may not be pretty but I’ve seen many non(CS)-programmer deliver quite some business value with it.
It may have “little to no value” for some, but to others, perhaps many, there is plenty of value. Why else would famous fashion designers and the entire fashion industry be worth so much?
It’s easy to overlook the value but from a basic and utilitarian perspective, the value begins with the quality of materials and the cuts of the fabric. This is not necessarily trivial and takes someone who is skilled with the trade to understand and pioneer. It’s equivalent to a highly skilled carpenter who makes high quality and special furniture. And eventually new techniques, cuts and fabrics will make it to the mainstream.
If this sounds far fetched, some high end fashion (read: ~$150-300 for a sweater) is all about the quality of fabric and the attention to detail in the fit. These items will usually feel better, fit better and last longer. You could think of it as the difference in quality and experience between a Mercedes-Benz and a Toyota. Sure MB probably has much higher markup, but the base cost represents much greater substance as well.
Then there is novelty and this doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the clothes you would wear daily. Fashion designers are artists and the runway shows are often about novel displays in colour, shape and fabric. That’s kind of like a show. People who buy these clothes are making a statement and the markup is very much a reflection of the scarcity of these items. Like a limited edition watch or a very very expensive charity dinner with someone famous.
Not arguing with you, but that piqued my curiosity. A very long time ago I worked at a high-end men's clothing store and I have a sweater that I paid about $75 for. It retailed for $200. An inflation calculator says that $200 is now worth over $400.
I wonder what an equivalent sweater would cost today. The brand has since gone mainstream, so I can't use them as a point of reference.
As the guidelines state, HN content doesn't have to be tech-related, it just has to gratify intellectual curiosity. Evidently, HN readers find Cardin's career and legacy interesting enough to be worth upvoting and discussing.
No worries! It's just your initial comment did emphasise the question of his proximity to tech, whereas obituaries for non-tech-affiliated people appear on HN all the time - e.g., John le Carré, Diego Maradona, Sean Connery, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Eddie Van Halen all very recently.
Pierre Cardin was a pioneer in licensing his name and brand to pretty much anyone, so much so that it ceased to be a demarcator of quality but instead signalled the opposite.
The lesson here, if you want to safeguard a legacy, is to never stop caring about quality and your customers. People with no regard for your reputation will think nothing of destroying it to make a quick buck.
Pierre Cardin’s net worth was apparently 800 million USD according to a quick internet search. That is quite a few bucks. Maybe Pierre Cardin has a couple of lessons to teach us.
Once you get above 2 million it doesn't matter (2 million is enough to shed 70K per year which is widely thought to be the threshold where more money doesn't improve wellbeing).
If money is the motivator after that then you are in a race you can't win.
What cities are you living in?! £70k GBP is an insane salary, $70k USD equates to £52k, which is also _well_ above the UK average salary. Same applies to EU cities too.
Perhaps not typical, but quite nice if you can pull it off. I actually refused an offer to move to London (despite initial excitement) for a salary slightly larger than mentioned above, because it would've been a significant quality of life downgrade. Even if both partners work, being able to stay above water on a single salary does wonders for the peace of mind.
In the context of planning retirement with perpetual income coming from a lump sum, you have to take family into account (because that’s what most people end up with).
The claim was that 70k is when additional money does not improve wellbeing, not whether this is more than most people earn. Obviously the number has to be quite higher than the average income.
I live in the UK and I can assure you than earning £52k or £70k a year is not an insane salary and is certainly way below the income at which money no longer makes a difference.
Or this is £50k-70k after tax and per person in the household. In which case this means earning well in excess of £200k a year for both parents for a family of four, which is probably more realistic but also probably means this only applies to the 1%...
I live in the UK, earn less than 52k and can assure you that 70k is quite a remarkable salary to be earning. It puts you in the 94th %ile of earners. If you do not think that is a big deal, I do not know what to say.
Edit: And my comment was actually to the claim that 70k is 'very, very low'. Which it is not. The comments section of HN occasionally reads like it is perused only by billionaires.
That is not the point, which is, again, about the level of income where additional money no longer makes much difference.
I don't dispute that 70k is a very good salary but I can tell you that 70k is far from being the level at which additional money no longer makes a difference. 70k is indeed "low" in that respect, especially with a family.
An example: a good private school costs circa 16k a year. It makes a massive difference compared to your local state school. To be able to spend £16k a year cash you need to reach around this £70k income level before tax for both parents... For a single child. So IMHO, in the UK the level at which extra money no longer makes a difference to way of life or well-being is quite higher than £70k.
I do agree that claiming that $70k (£52k) is not even a living wage in some western cities seems outlandish...
>An example: a good private school costs circa 16k a year.
I think the argument is a good private school doesn't make much difference.
I can't find it now but there was some research in the UK a few years ago that showed nearly all the superior results output from private education was determined by the input. Children starting at private schools were already ahead of their peers at state schools by a long way.
Whether these children were already ahead is beside the point.
The point is that being able to afford a private school makes a big difference in what it brings to the child (education, environment, facilities, etc) and also to the potential stress and effort at the expense of quality of life it avoids (see what some people do to pass the 11+ and get into a grammar school)
This is just an example to illustrate that a £50k-70k income in the UK is far from the level where additional money no longer makes much difference to well-being.
The study is very interesting, thanks for the link.
I think, it is hard to draw the conclusion from it that increasing your income above a certain threshold does not increase your happiness in the case considered here. (They say something along these lines in the discussion section, too.)
All the study says is that "if you are a person that earns more than a threshold, you are typically not happier than a person who earns approximately the threshold salary" (very stylised).
This is not the same as saying "all else equal, if you'd earn more than the threshold salary, you would not be happier". So, in this kind of thought-experiment, where you get additional money that is free from, e.g., the typical downsides associated with it (e.g, more work, longer hours, more responsibility, or other things like that), you would not expect this to be applicable.
Hence, if you're a person who is in a position where they can simply generate more income through, e.g., licensing deals, it does not seem unlikely that more income will actually make them happier.
What you say is crazy. I live in Paris with 12k a year, no holidays and not comfortable but it _is_ a living wage, the minimum wage actually. I can imagine needing the triple of that if I took holidays and treated myself to nice restaurants and bought fancy clothes. But that's still well below 70k. So if you are the kind of person that consider 70k very low, you are also the kind of person I would remorselessly take the money from.
Paris is a big metro. I’m sure you don’t live in the expensive parts. And what about a family? Retirement? Vacations? Owning your own place?
A quick search shows the median salary in Paris is about 50k euros, which is roughly 60k USD. But being on median income is usually not that great anyway.
Not cassepipe, but also currently living on (less than) minimum wage, in an expensive part of Paris, France. I'm cooking, coding, reading, watching youtube. This year has been "great" for me. Of course I would have liked more comfort, some foods I can't affort but, but I've got a good bed, a good chair, an excellent desk, good cooking knives, an ereader with a practically infinite supply of free books, computers and hard drives (hidden) everywhere in my 20m². I write the kind of code I like to write, I'm not accountable to anyone. (not anonymous you can try to name search me to cross check)
I estimate I'd need about 30k€/y to be able to not skip on anything I'd want to do. (usual disclaimers apply: young-ish single man living alone, never had health issues, with no desire to live in any other way, etc)
Actually you are right as Paris itself is quite small and quite expensive. But Paris is a five minutes walk away so I guess it's fair to say I live in Paris. My point was not arguing on how great I live but that beyond the triple of what I live with, as a single person, I can't imagine how can someone "complain" of only making 50k or beyond, because that's like spitting in the face of the majority of the population that lives with the minimum wage.
I really doubt it's enough to live in (the real) Paris as a single person in the long run. It's estimated you need around 40k€ to live a modest decent life in Paris.
if 70k a year is very very low to you, you should really start travelling after covid ends. the poorest billion people on this planet live on 1 USD a day each.
It is “very, very low” as the level where happiness tapers off. I know I can, and will, do a hell of a lot more with 140k per year than with 70k per year.
Once you're a millionaire, I'm assuming you have purchased and paid off a home. With that in mind, if $70K/year is still well below comfortable, then I would argue their spending habits are questionable.
Where I live (Sydney Australia) after purchasing an average home [1] you would have less than a million left out of those two millions, so according to grandparent's calculation [2] you would have less than 35k/year left, to sustain yourself. That's above the poverty line which is around 24k/year [3], but well below the median salary which is around 50k/year [4].
that 'median salary' is likely having to support housing/rent which the hypothetical person in this scenario wouldn't have to account for. might not be 35k after housing, but might be (or housing/taxes).
After rent and taxes I have around 30k, due to my temporarily reduced salary (due to Covid). If it wasn’t for my wife’s help, we wouldn’t make it to the end of the fortnight. We have a teenage daughter. If this was my salary level indefinitely, it would not be sustainable in the long term because we wouldn’t be able to afford any extra spending e.g. buying a new car. We live in an expensive part of Sydney so moving to a different area would result in some savings and we would almost (but not quite) have as much as my pre-covid disposable income which was more than OK for us. Moving would not be painless though, e.g. my daughter would have to go to a new school and lose touch with her friends which isn’t easy for a teenager.
I guess what I’m trying to say is - coming back to the original comment that started this thread - in some expensive cities, 2M doesn’t really change your life much (at least, not to the extent that you can think “I’m rich now I don’t have to worry about money ever again”). Personally I’m thinking about moving to a less expensive area, now that remote work has become even more common.
Important note: all my reasoning is in AUD but probably OP meant USD 2M. That would be about AUD 2.6M. So, more than 2M but not by an order of magnitude.
I think it's also enough to live comfortably in many other cities in almost any country of your choice - Berlin, for example, is well within reach.
You can of course insist on living in an expensive place, but maybe it's worth trading in some choice in location for more freedom in how you spend your time?
A million or two allows you to live without working for your money. Five or ten million allow you to have people do anything you don't like doing yourself for you. But beyond that I don't really know what to do with money.
Wow, y'all don't have much imagination. I mean, if money were no object, I could easily want a nice little place by the beach. I'm not talking some giant mansion with loads of servants, just a nice place, let's say 2000 sq ft. Ah, here's a 3 bed/3 bath condo of 1887 sq feet on the beach ... for $4.9 million: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Malibu/26170-Pacific-Coast-Hwy-902....
Obviously there are much cheaper places to live than Malibu, but again, if I had the money I wouldn't mind living there.
What the 70k figure tells us, is that such an income (adjusting for local conditions) is roughly the inflection point of diminishing returns for basic needs in Maslow's hierarchy.
It isn't so much that people are overall satisfied at 70k, but that people with more are _no less_ satisfied. It is a plateau. Many will still want more and may be unhappy. At that point happiness must be sought by other means (love, community, esteem, self-actualization), which might indeed involve the application of money, but it requires doing something worthwhile (from the perspective of that individual). Something money enables, such as a bigger house isn't enough (by itself).
It isn't that money above 70k doesn't improve wellbeing, but that isn't sufficient by itself to do so.
For sure, and maybe he didn't give a toss in his later years, but for someone who spent a lifetime developing a reputation for style having his name become synonymous with crap, my guess is he had some regrets.
I remember buying several clothing items with that name assuming that it was a mockup label used by the store chain for essentially noname/whitelabel products. Never expected that the name could be traced to a licence from an actual person.
DW (Deutsche Welle) is a German state-owned broadcaster. They are not paid by our mandatory monthly broadcasting fee, but directly by the government with taxpayer money.
Now tell me, why does the German taxpayer finance a news agency that tells the world about the death of a French designer? They also do car tests. Isn't this the greatest waste of taxpayer money that you can think of?
That is a different story, they are paid by the broadcasting fee, which funds an (supposedly) independent broadcasting network. DW is directly funded from the federal tax budget.
I see your point sir. IMHO in these times DW is still a calm, non-biased and pleasant new source. They are not bombastic, "breaking-news" all the time sort of site. They have news from across the world presented in a matter-of-fact way like the old times (sometimes even delayed by days). So I still think it is tax money well spent :)
Hated having to pay the TV license when living in the UK, but now I appreciate the kindness of british couch potatoes whenever I watch/listen BBC World Service.
DW has information related to a lot of different areas, including arts and culture. It's a free unbiased news source. It's not just "a news agency that tells the world about the death of a French designer". You should check it out.
Many countries (at least in Western Europe?) have state-owned media organisations, usually with rather strong provisions to ensure their independence from government.
In practice, they usually end up being the most reliable and unbiased news sources probably because they are less subject to the pressure to write buzz pieces in order to drive viewership and therefore ad revenue up.
While the other successful private media organisations end up being either buzz article mills, more or less openly ideologically oriented outlets, or high quality news with more limited output.
I find the public news we get in our countries to be actually quite useful, even if a lot of them are currently under attack by governments seeking to reduce expenses and increase control by any means.
He was also in the middle of a controversy in France because he "killed" a village, by buying and not using many houses. Even a movie was made about this.
Warning: Something seems really fishy with this website. I carelessly opened it with JS, it locked up my browser and didn't want to close even when I closed the tab, using up a lot of CPU. I had to kill the process. I'm not expert enough to analyze it. Proceed with caution. (Ad blocker was enabled.)
Deutsche Welle is comparable to the BBC for Germany[0], and they are financed by the German state but stay independent.
It is more a bad website than something else.
He was a mad lad. A few years back he purchased a castle once owned by the Marquis de Sade in the town of Lacoste. Cardin liked it so much he started buying up storefronts and houses. He turned some of the houses into businesses. He launched an art festival. He was stopped from adding a golf course. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15789814
funny, in Italian it was "Levi Strauss", I guess cause Levi's jeans were far more popular than CK underwear, I thought we were the only ones who had done this switch.
99 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadContrasting it to software or an app (design), the thing could be used by millions and barely anyone knows who you are.
Maybe because fashion designers themselves get to appear on stage and cement their face in everyone's consciousness? Imagine if your software or app would display you, the designer, each time someone starts it up...
Hmmm Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind. The default "friend" for each new facebook account...
I guess I answered my own question?
Still, I'd bet an average person knows more famous visionaire/entrepreneur people (like Jobs and Gates) than famous fashion designers.
I doubt that's the case. Popular music cites eponymous fashion brands regularly. Listeners might not know what the actual person looks like, but they'd know the products and the names.
These are the first names that came to my mind. I guess a large majority of people have heard them.
It’s easy to overlook the value but from a basic and utilitarian perspective, the value begins with the quality of materials and the cuts of the fabric. This is not necessarily trivial and takes someone who is skilled with the trade to understand and pioneer. It’s equivalent to a highly skilled carpenter who makes high quality and special furniture. And eventually new techniques, cuts and fabrics will make it to the mainstream.
If this sounds far fetched, some high end fashion (read: ~$150-300 for a sweater) is all about the quality of fabric and the attention to detail in the fit. These items will usually feel better, fit better and last longer. You could think of it as the difference in quality and experience between a Mercedes-Benz and a Toyota. Sure MB probably has much higher markup, but the base cost represents much greater substance as well.
Then there is novelty and this doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the clothes you would wear daily. Fashion designers are artists and the runway shows are often about novel displays in colour, shape and fabric. That’s kind of like a show. People who buy these clothes are making a statement and the markup is very much a reflection of the scarcity of these items. Like a limited edition watch or a very very expensive charity dinner with someone famous.
Not arguing with you, but that piqued my curiosity. A very long time ago I worked at a high-end men's clothing store and I have a sweater that I paid about $75 for. It retailed for $200. An inflation calculator says that $200 is now worth over $400.
I wonder what an equivalent sweater would cost today. The brand has since gone mainstream, so I can't use them as a point of reference.
The NYT obit [1] is nicely done, and its title is well-judged, too, Pierre Cardin, Designer to the Famous and Merchant to the Masses, Dies at 98
Cardin was a businessman almost more than he was a fashion designer; if nowadays we refer to "brands", it has much to do with him.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/style/pierre-cardin-dead....
I'm very much onboard with what you wrote, but I too saw this post and wondered what it was about him that took his death to HN's front page.
Never heard of this before. Seems kind of an incredibly unpleasant thing to build.
The lesson here, if you want to safeguard a legacy, is to never stop caring about quality and your customers. People with no regard for your reputation will think nothing of destroying it to make a quick buck.
If money is the motivator after that then you are in a race you can't win.
Also, if you are curious, I believe this is the study people frequently cite: https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_...
I live in the UK and I can assure you than earning £52k or £70k a year is not an insane salary and is certainly way below the income at which money no longer makes a difference.
Or this is £50k-70k after tax and per person in the household. In which case this means earning well in excess of £200k a year for both parents for a family of four, which is probably more realistic but also probably means this only applies to the 1%...
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f....
Edit: And my comment was actually to the claim that 70k is 'very, very low'. Which it is not. The comments section of HN occasionally reads like it is perused only by billionaires.
I don't dispute that 70k is a very good salary but I can tell you that 70k is far from being the level at which additional money no longer makes a difference. 70k is indeed "low" in that respect, especially with a family.
An example: a good private school costs circa 16k a year. It makes a massive difference compared to your local state school. To be able to spend £16k a year cash you need to reach around this £70k income level before tax for both parents... For a single child. So IMHO, in the UK the level at which extra money no longer makes a difference to way of life or well-being is quite higher than £70k.
I do agree that claiming that $70k (£52k) is not even a living wage in some western cities seems outlandish...
I think the argument is a good private school doesn't make much difference.
I can't find it now but there was some research in the UK a few years ago that showed nearly all the superior results output from private education was determined by the input. Children starting at private schools were already ahead of their peers at state schools by a long way.
The point is that being able to afford a private school makes a big difference in what it brings to the child (education, environment, facilities, etc) and also to the potential stress and effort at the expense of quality of life it avoids (see what some people do to pass the 11+ and get into a grammar school)
This is just an example to illustrate that a £50k-70k income in the UK is far from the level where additional money no longer makes much difference to well-being.
It's absolutely the point. You are saying a private education is essential to wellbeing and I'm saying it's irrelevant.
>and very, very low.
The median wage in the US is $36,000, less than half of that.
A quick search shows the median salary in Paris is about 50k euros, which is roughly 60k USD. But being on median income is usually not that great anyway.
I estimate I'd need about 30k€/y to be able to not skip on anything I'd want to do. (usual disclaimers apply: young-ish single man living alone, never had health issues, with no desire to live in any other way, etc)
I really doubt it's enough to live in (the real) Paris as a single person in the long run. It's estimated you need around 40k€ to live a modest decent life in Paris.
Yesterday I have been told $80K is the actual median income but $200K is minimum comfortable in SF (never been to there, can't confirm).
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/sydney-s-median-...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25580987
[3] https://apo.org.au/node/276246
[4] https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/providers/housing/affordable/man...
I guess what I’m trying to say is - coming back to the original comment that started this thread - in some expensive cities, 2M doesn’t really change your life much (at least, not to the extent that you can think “I’m rich now I don’t have to worry about money ever again”). Personally I’m thinking about moving to a less expensive area, now that remote work has become even more common.
Important note: all my reasoning is in AUD but probably OP meant USD 2M. That would be about AUD 2.6M. So, more than 2M but not by an order of magnitude.
You can of course insist on living in an expensive place, but maybe it's worth trading in some choice in location for more freedom in how you spend your time?
Thanfully it's not mandatory to live in those cities...
They're not even the best cities to live, considering international rankings...
If people are teenagers or starry eyed 20-somethings dreaming of making it big in LA, NY, or SV, yes.
If people are 30 and above, they are very much interesting and places people want to live...
Obviously there are much cheaper places to live than Malibu, but again, if I had the money I wouldn't mind living there.
You can go live on an island in Greece, or Eastern Europe, or Columbia - and 70K in those places will GO FAR:
Housing: Check Nightlife: Check Can't speak for the men, but good looking women: Check Cost of food: Check.
All depends where you want to live and lifestyle you want.
I think you meant Colombia :)
It isn't so much that people are overall satisfied at 70k, but that people with more are _no less_ satisfied. It is a plateau. Many will still want more and may be unhappy. At that point happiness must be sought by other means (love, community, esteem, self-actualization), which might indeed involve the application of money, but it requires doing something worthwhile (from the perspective of that individual). Something money enables, such as a bigger house isn't enough (by itself).
It isn't that money above 70k doesn't improve wellbeing, but that isn't sufficient by itself to do so.
[1] https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/10489/pierre-cardi...
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- https://www.palaisbulles.com/dream.php
- https://www.challenges.fr/luxe/visite-guidee-du-palais-bulle...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle
DW (Deutsche Welle) is a German state-owned broadcaster. They are not paid by our mandatory monthly broadcasting fee, but directly by the government with taxpayer money.
Now tell me, why does the German taxpayer finance a news agency that tells the world about the death of a French designer? They also do car tests. Isn't this the greatest waste of taxpayer money that you can think of?
Hated having to pay the TV license when living in the UK, but now I appreciate the kindness of british couch potatoes whenever I watch/listen BBC World Service.
In practice, they usually end up being the most reliable and unbiased news sources probably because they are less subject to the pressure to write buzz pieces in order to drive viewership and therefore ad revenue up.
While the other successful private media organisations end up being either buzz article mills, more or less openly ideologically oriented outlets, or high quality news with more limited output.
I find the public news we get in our countries to be actually quite useful, even if a lot of them are currently under attack by governments seeking to reduce expenses and increase control by any means.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle
(and I only learned that yesterday, despite being French I have always watched this movie in English)