When it comes to the importance of branded clothes and how much they matter, people tend to be polarized, and it is hard to find someone in between.
I used to care a lot about brands in high school and college, but I started to care less and less lately. However, in this article, I don’t want to only talk about the worth of branded clothes but about why they matter to so many people.
I discussed this topic a lot with my wife, and we ended up with some interesting conclusions that are not so obvious when it comes to why people spend money on branded clothes.
Do branded clothes matter?
No, branded clothes don’t necessarily matter when it comes to attractiveness, good looking, style, and product quality, even if many disagree, especially on the last one. This means that you can find good-looking clothes that have the same quality as the branded ones but are much cheaper, but without the brand tag.
Finding them is a bit harder, and you might have to spend more time looking for exactly what you want, but it is possible.
However, let’s see why branded clothes might matter for some people:
-Social status
The brand name matters to many people, and this is what gives value to branded clothes. It might be superficial, but most people want social status, and this is a sure way to achieve it in many groups.
It’s easy to say that this is toxic, and people should not be rewarded for their branded clothes and so on, but it is not how we want it is what it is.
Also, many people associate branded clothes with success and doing good in life, and in some situations, this might make the difference between sharing an opportunity with you or not.
I’m not saying that everybody judges people by the brand of their clothes or that this is ok, I don’t really like it, but many people are doing it even if you and I don’t like it.
It’s easy to judge people who care about brands and consider them as a social status signal. But, at the same time, most of us want to have a better social status, and everybody has different ways of achieving it, for some, it might be by talking about philosophy, looking smart, talking big, having a pet, being a rocker, and so on.
So, why do we judge someone that spends money on clothes but we don’t judge someone that spends money on useless books(yes, there are some useless and even toxic books)? The answer is that we consider them smarter, and this, in some situations, is what they want to achieve. Isn’t that funny?
I want to say that everybody wants a better social status, but we judge people that want to achieve with other means that we don’t understand.
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-Happiness
Some people buy branded clothes just for themselves and because it makes them happier. It might be the fact that they afford it, it might be a reward for their hard work, might be because the social status as well.
Many people might consider branded clothes not worth it, but how do you measure happiness and how much it costs?
We all get happiness from different things, a simple walk in the park gives me happiness, and for that reason, I’m doing it daily. And saying that branded clothes shouldn’t bring you happiness to some people is like telling me that a walk in the park shouldn’t bring me happiness because it’s a waste of time.
I hope you see the point, sometimes we see things differently, and this is all that matters when it comes to happiness if they don’t make sense to other people around us.
Are branded clothes worth it?
We all tend to justify and praise our purchases, so if we buy a house, it is for sure the best deal we’ve done, and no one is as lucky as we are for doing that, it is the same with a car or clothes.
So it is quite hard to have an objective opinion here since everybody who buys branded, more expensive clothes will tend to say they are better quality, last longer, and so on.
So let’s see what makes branded clothes worth it:
-Better quality check
A big brand will have more employees that have to do a better quality check when it comes to their products, that doesn’t mean that the quality will be much higher, but rather more reliable.
When it comes to non-branded clothes, in my opinion, it is more of a hit or miss than branded clothes.
So while most people, including me, believe that you can find the same quality at a lower price, the success rate might be a problem.
-Easier to find what you want
If you are looking for something very specific and you don’t want to spend money on any brand, you might be looking for a while. When it comes to a plain one-color T-shirt, yea, you might find it in a lot of places and much cheaper than a branded one, but if you want a specific material, pattern, type, and so on, finding a cheaper one might be challenging.
-Guarantee
Many brands have a 30 days guarantee or something along this line, while some non-branded clothes will not have it.
There are cases when you buy something, you even try it once, but you find something is wrong with that only when you get home or after a few uses. In that case, with non-branded clothes, the money is more likely lost.
Some branded clothes are worth the extra price for those added benefits, but not all of them, in fact, many of them aren’t. Also, it is a diminishing return, if you buy a T-shirt for $15 from a brand and it would cost $10 a non-branded one, those extra benefits might be worth it, but if you buy a $200 T-shirt, having a guarantee and finding it easier is not worth it and it is probably not much better than the $15 one.
When it comes to those super high-end clothes with outrageous prices, it is more the social status aspect than anything else.
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When to buy branded clothes?
There are some moments when buying branded clothes is the best idea:
-When you don’t find exactly what you want in another cheaper place.
Sacrificing your look and your style for a few dollars saved is not worth it. I don’t want to encourage you to buy expensive clothes because that is the only way to look better, but if you find a $50 branded pair of jeans that looks much better than a cheaper one, you should go for it.
-You can’t afford to spend time looking for cheaper clothes
As I said, finding cheap clothes of good quality might be challenging, especially if you have something very specific in mind. For some people, the time spent looking for cheaper clothes might be worth more than the difference between a branded and a non-branded one.
It might be way faster to go to a shopping mall and find a brand that has what you are looking for and buy it, compared to looking in other cheaper stores that usually have more generic clothes(to appeal to more people). They might also not have the size you are looking for, the guarantee that you can return it if you don’t like it, and so on.
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Conclusion
So, the answer to how much the brand of some clothes matters is not as straightforward as it might seem. It can matter a lot for some people or not at all for others, and they both might be correct.
Branded clothes have some advantages, but the most obvious reason people buy them is for social status rather than quality or anything like that. For some people, it might be a convenience, but here we are talking about someone that can easily afford them without thinking twice.
