How and why do people who aren’t actually well off pay for this stuff?

Rightly or wrongly, i just assume it’s fake. Was in the coop buying some milk and there we 2 women trying to work out if they could afford the food in their basket. They were wearing “gucci” sliders and “LV” bags. Do i think they spent their cash on designer clobber, but couldn’t afford to make a cheese and ham sandwich? Absolutely not!!

High emd fakes from turkey sold at markets or online. They prob spend all their money on little luxury items as no hope of big flashy cars houses or holidays. Same reason why nail bars still doing well £30 for a little treat. Its their money can spemd as like.

Trauma doesn’t work like that. He obviously intrinsically links expensive clothes to his worth as a person, as that’s what he was taught. It’s deep rooted. He spent most of his life feeling worthless because he had shit clothes. He didn’t fit in. Now he can afford expensive clothes (he’s a doctor) he doesn’t want to feel like shit again. He can fit in now. Obviously he knows his bullies were dicks, but subconsciously he would feel worthless again wearing cheap clothes.

If you grow up in an area where everyone has fuck all except the odd new pair of expensive trainers or hoodie, those things become very precious and coveted. They don’t covet 5-bed detached houses or private education or skiing at Whistler. They desire achieveable rewards, like a posh T-shirt.

I’m not sure where all the mock incredulousness is coming from. It’s very basic psychology.

YES, down to the horrible haircut.

I still think of that and wonder what the hell my mother was thinking.

I don’t think they had more than one per family 😉

No, the child in About a Boy look?

Was there a pecking order for helicopters?

Lots of people happily live in debt. We always thought the same about holidays a relative went on, transpired there was 13k pounds of credit card debt that paid for them! There's also Vinted, knock offs etc. There will also be people who just really value them, it's not my pr your choice for finances but some people will save towards these kind of things and it'll be their splurge item - the rest of the time they might scrimp on things, or not do certain things, because this is their luxury (which is fair enough - each to their own)

The use of charity shops? Yes, it has became massively trendy in the last 10 years with all those influencers, but I have been at it for at least 40 years.

You have a point there… the children with new rich parents were always making a fuss about brands and how fantabulous things their family owned, without the parents saying ANYTHING when they were showing off, while the parents of the children who were properly rich told off their children straight away if they were acting like dicks.

I was bullied in private school but there were a lot of new rich in it, while my sister went to a school with the kind of rich people who had a helipad in the garden and nobody ever commented on her clothes.

I think those who have a much higher income tend to have higher outgoings- larger mortgage, investments, pensions, private school fees maybe. Not always, but a lot of the time. If you’re on a very low income you’re just literally living day to day. In some ways you might have more disposable income and less incentive to bother to save it. (And I’m saying that as someone who has lived on both sides of the coin - at one point we were so broke we couldn’t afford to fix a lighting issue / damp issue so we all lived downstairs for 2 years and didn’t have working lights upstairs)!

Didn"t that look become cool later on though?

I was bullied through out primary school for not wearing the right clothes and yes it affected me but I don’t think it was so much about the brands but as for the fact we looked like that child in the “About a Boy” movie.

The bullying may still be whispering in the background as people tell me all the time that I look very classy, but honest to God, 90% of my clothes come from charity shops… and will never buy something just because of the label.

So agree, this shit stays with you.

Fair point, at least just buy one pair of trainers a year then, or does that push you down the pecking order if everyone else is buying 3 monthly?

Knock off fakes. Hard to spot unless you look carefully.

Many probably inherited nice wedges of money but it was likely instilled in them from a young age to respect money, appreciate value and to maybe have some gratitude as well, or were they just total dicks like the wannabes in a slightly different way? LOL

Well if everyone has one and you don't then there's even less status. You might not think they have status, but they feel by the ownership of these items that they do.

Not necessarily, in fact you can get some branded stuff in offer that gets the logo out of using the same factory or the same fabric but the quality is far from being the same.

Somebody I knew at school got bullied because they couldn"t afford clothes, saw them doing swimming class once in their Y-Fronts LOL, they joined a boxing gym and got really good, the bullying stopped. As an adult we should be able to look back and see that the people doing the bullying were just sad dicks, he would be better served to invest/save the money IMO unless of course he is loaded then it doesn"t really matter except that the psychological wound won"t heal by still dancing to the bullies tune of You need this and that designer shite to be accepted.

Its better quality ?

I have always wondered if people are poor out of trying to pretend they are well off.

All that branded overpriced tat, especially that with massive logos… It reminds me of when DS was in private school.. all the new “rich” parents living on credit but showing up always wearing expensive branded clothing, changing phones and cars they could hardly afford while the proper rich and the aristocrats were showing up with no brands in sight, wearing some old wellies and driving very old Landrovers.

Wonder if that is why they are well off, they wouldn’t spend their money trying to prove their value to anyone.

Of course they do. There is far more social clout from wearing bog standard grey Nike joggers than wearing the Primark equivalent. My DF always refused to buy brand name clothing for my brother and he was bullied mercilessly in school for being a “tramp”. That shit stays with you. He spends a fortune on clothes now - not sportswear but high end designers and always looks impeccable. I suppose subconsciously it’s his way of saying “You all made my life hell because you thought you were better than me, but look at me now”.

We used to have a bloke that came to our door for that sort of thing. All stolen/ off the back of a lorry.

Loads of fakes about, job lots from Turkey then sell over here.

People also take out credit cards or installment purchases if they want the real deal but most folk I know are happy with the fakes.

Who is saying they can't afford it?
Yes some people get into debt but not everyone (and "rich" people can be in debt too).
As I pointed out many comments back a lot of "named" clothes - especially sports wear - come from Sports Direct or TKMaxx and they aren't that much more expensive than supermarket clothes.

Define better off? To have a very large mortgage you need the income to service it, so by definition not better off. If you mean better disposable income that’s down to the choices people at both income levels make. It’s easy to cry that your disposable income is lower than someone on benefits while you’re paying your very large mortgage, reducing working hours to avoid tax and pumping money into pensions. That’s not the same as not having enough to save, or ever buy a house and it doesn’t make the poorer person better off.