Marc by Marc Jacobs is to Shut Down

[bowyark]

http://www.whowhatwear.com/marc-by-marc-jacobs-folding

Obviously not many of us care about Marc Jacobs, but his comments on the disappearance of the midrange are interesting.

"[Marc by Marc Jacobs] wasn’t supposed to be a second line or the poor-relative-of," the designer continues. "I’m sitting here in a $2,000 cashmere sweatshirt hoodie that we’ve made for 15 years, and Adidas track pants and a cotton shirt from American Apparel. I have a Prada fur coat upstairs; on a daily basis I will wear everything from American Apparel to Adidas to Marc Jacobs to Prada. I love that mix of things, that high and low, that rich and poor, all of those contrasts, the everyday and the extraordinary.”

[Faust]

First, this just confirms what I wrote last week

"The high/low divide has been erased by cheerful championing of fast fashion on the part of fashion magazines full of “get-the-look-for-less” articles and celebrities who proudly display their it bags next to their flip-flops"

So, Marc helped dig his own grave.

Mid-range has been disappearing for a while and will continue to disappear because the new generation has chosen fast fashion - it's still cheaper and just as good, or nearly just as good, which is just as good. H&M opens 300 stores a year. You cannot compete with that. It will be them, Uniqlo and Zara on every corner.

[cjbreed]

but....but h&m and zara are just so awful

many many years ago when i lived in miami i had never heard of zara and they opened a store there. i walked in and bought 4 or 5 button front shirts to wear to work and literally every single one of them was worthless after the first wash. i was stunned. i thought i had gotten such a deal. i didn't even really know that clothes that shitty existed and were marketed in such a fashion!-y way. this was over ten years ago and my wife and i still laugh about it. they were instant rags.

[Faust]

It seems that things have gotten better. As Elizabeth Cline pointed out in her book, Overdressed, it's not that people expect fast fashion to be good quality - everyone knows it's not - but they expect it to be good enough for what it costs - and it generally is.

And it doesn't help that high fashion designers have been cutting corners like motherfuckers to increase profit margins. And now they are eating their own shit.

[scanner]

I don't know, I can never get AA tee's to look anywhere close to decent even after hand washing and babying them. Any mid to high level tier from the cheapest Saint Laurent to Drkshdw or Rick and BBS hold their form and finish much nicer and look good as new.

That said, I have Uniqlo tee's from like 3 or 4 years ago that look surprisingly decent after being stored away and washed without a care in the world.

[Faust]

Ok, I did not meant to turn this into another tired "I have designer stuff and fast fashion stuff" quality debate - I'm sick of them myself already. Let's stick to the topic at hand.

[cjbreed]

well....

"I love that mix of things, that high and low, that rich and poor, all of those contrasts, the everyday and the extraordinary.”

"His goal, he says, in folding the bridge line into his eponymous line is to achieve that mix more seamlessly."

so his intention to mix the high/low more seamlessly is achieved by closing the low and making it all high. just cheap high. marc by marc jacobs will now just be marc jacobs? does that just dilute and cheapen marc jacobs until it becomes michael kors? will the same item, rebranded as marc jacobs, be more expensive or the same?

[Faust]

He's following the Dolce & Gabaana model, who were the first to realize that few people give a fuck about quality anymore, bought back the D&G license and rolled back into the mainline. When quality is going away, all that's left is branding, and why brand low when you can brand high?

[samlasamla]

First, this just confirms what I wrote last week

"The high/low divide has been erased by cheerful championing of fast fashion on the part of fashion magazines full of “get-the-look-for-less” articles and celebrities who proudly display their it bags next to their flip-flops"

So, Marc helped dig his own grave.

Mid-range has been disappearing for a while and will continue to disappear because the new generation has chosen fast fashion - it's still cheaper and just as good, or nearly just as good, which is just as good. H&M opens 300 stores a year. You cannot compete with that. It will be them, Uniqlo and Zara on every corner.

And Forever 21, haha.

[NOHSAD]

Mid-range has been disappearing for a while and will continue to disappear because the new generation has chosen fast fashion - it's still cheaper and just as good, or nearly just as good, which is just as good. H&M opens 300 stores a year. You cannot compete with that. It will be them, Uniqlo and Zara on every corner.

This statement right here, is apparently the cause for a lot of high end designers to be quitting their branch lines as of late. Jean Paul Gaultier recently announced that he's quitting his men's RTW line for similarly the same reason Faust mentioned (mainly in his recently sz-mag Op-ed post). Hell, his advice for people who can't afford the mainline and couture pieces was to go the high street route (H&M, Zara, Uniqlo: fast fashion) as he said "There are labels that do inexpensive clothes very well, like Zara, H&M, Uniqlo. People can dress well for not too much money," he said. "So why go and buy expensive clothes?"

[C.R.E.A.M]

Thing is MARC by MARC JACOBS was just Made in China shit sold at a relatively high price. Straight garbage. GAP garments are better quality for example, and way cheaper. MARC might be just above H&M and ZARA when it comes to quality. But that's it.
So i think it's more honest to go directly to those two giants and pay little money instead of giving more to M by MJ.

What's weird to me is that this line was making really good, way better than the main line, anyway bringing lot more $$$ than MARC JACOBS.

[Faust]

Having read some more on the subject, here is what I think is happening. The line is not being discontinued - it's being folded into the mainline. They have figured out that diffusion lines are getting killed anyway, so why not use the prestige of the main line to pump the garbage out. It's pure marketing and a classical story to use a brand name to push shitty product (see Starbucks). First, build the brand name using quality, then drastically decrease quality in order to expand margins but use the brand name to justify the pricing. Since the new generation does not give a fuck about quality anyway - fuck, they don't know what quality IS, branding becomes more and more important. They are not the first ones to do it either - some years ago Dolce & Gabanna bought back the D&G license and then discontinued it by folding it into the mainline.