Week 2 - Uyen Ngo

Don't get me wrong, if I had money I would likely choose the luxury goods over fast fashion. What can I say, I am also bougie broke. However, this week as I was staring at my bank account of $11.40, I started to realize how hard this challenge was going to be. I have recently been convinced by my friends to all spend memorial weekend at a lake. This meant that I would start having to buy swim suits and water shoes as well as outfits to relax in. However, especially for an event like this, it is hard to justify spending more than$10 on a shirt when it is very likely that I could lose or ruin the shirt. Not wanting to take the limited clothes that I actually adore in my closet but also having the desire to look fashionable on my vacation, I am left with a dilemma. 

I found, it's been easy to critique fast fashion and say that we are going to be good people and it would be easy to stop supporting them. But this week, it became obvious that that is not the case. It's not just clothes that these companies are selling you, it is the convenience and low commitment that these clothes bring. But I have also found that I often think of consumerism as very black and white. It's either fast fashion or straight up luxury brands. However, luxury brands don't necessarily mean it is the best. Over time, "the marketing of luxury goods has become increasingly complex, being associated not only with conveying an image of quality, performance and authenticity, but also with attempting to sell an experience by relating it to the lifestyle constructs of consumers" (61). If this is the attempt of luxury goods these days, then who is to say that luxury goods are of ethics either? What is the truth is that luxury goods are just a way to state your status and they have become so increasingly revolved around this that their priority is no long to produce ethnically high quality product? This realization that my personal solution lies in a more complex medium in between is starting to come into realization. And this week, it is starting to become harder for me to resist the urge to purchase Forever 21 products and its also been difficult with the limited time from midterms, to put in the work to find a solution that does not mean going to find luxury goods. 

Works Cited

Nadine Hennigs. “When the original is beyond reach: consumer perception and demand for counterfeit luxury goods in Germany and South Korea.”