You can’t wear that!
By
Two sentences confirmed my most cynical beliefs about the apparel industry.
Most glaringly, Banana Republic has acknowledged that it struggled to sell a blazer last year because women couldn’t fit their arms into the armholes. Yes, a venerable clothing brand that raked in $2.65 billion in 2015, manufactured a jacket that was physically unwearable.
Tsk and for shame. What silly ladyfolks thought they had the right to put their arms in armholes? Didn’t they know the correct thing to do was buy the jacket and then drape it over their shoulders? Or better yet, go to the nearest Who the Hell Named this Store? Banana Republic, give a clerk a wad of cash and leave without causing a fuss.
No really, how did this happen? Did BR use a fit model with arms the size of straws? Or did it decide fit models were too expensive, someone came up with some random numbers and called that a measurement?
No doubt it was something even dumber, but all the CEO would admit is that errors sort of happened in the general vicinity of the jacket, so I doubt I’ll ever know, but I will assume not giving a fuck was a key cause of the problem.
As an aside, the article touches on what I think is the biggest problem with women’s clothing – It is about as durable as single-ply toilet paper, so that the retail price of 99.9% of all women’s clothing is at least a gazillion percent more than what it took to make it.
Did Banana Republic think women wouldn’t notice that some of its dress pants cost $98, but are unlined and made of synthetic fabric? Did Anthropologie think shoppers would blindly plunk down $88 for a shapeless T-shirt dress made of spandex and jersey?
Sure, why not? The market demands that women buy shoddy clothing that loses its shape when subjected to such extreme conditions as body heat or humidity above 30%, so we damn well ought to!
