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

Why don’t you ask your colleagues?

This!!

I dont care for brands. Personally never understood the concept of wearing a brand when we all know how the workers who make these clothes are t treated in poverty ridden countries earning like a pound. Whether it's a fake a brand or even normal essentials majority is all made by workers and materials from foreign countries that earn less then we ever will. I'm living on the poverty line and as long as my kids and me present ourselves as clean and in clean clothes I don't really care. It's more about how you dress rather than what you dress up in brand wise. But I guess going back to OP when you have very little people use the money for their own vice. Like my vice is food. Others is nails. Others it's clothes. And for others it's alcohol etc when you have nothing you want happiness from something.

😉

and most of the general public dont have a clue

You do protest too much

I’ve argued about this on MN before. It’s not a popular perspective with the “all posh people roll around in dog haired cashmere” but here it is:

I’m a bit posh and have money. Same with my friends. Outside of work (which frankly is also full of mostly rich posh people) I spend time at fairly exclusive clubs/events, charity lunches and the usual season activities. Again full of the same sort of people. I appreciate this will raise eyebrows but I’m being honest.

if you think we can’t spot this seasons Dior or a VB dress at 100 paces you’re mistaken. Everyone knows the difference between a D&G or an Erdem print. Even the Row or Loro Piana are instantly recognisable and certainly not the quiet people pretend they are.

pretending otherwise is absurd.

Same for houses. People know the difference between a Sanderson or Mulberry fabric. They can tell which interior designer you’ve worked with or where your kitchen is from.

same signals just to a different audience

All fake. Embarrassing. That’s how the lower class live. They try to evidence they have more money than they do. Classless.

I think some of it is trying to compensate for low financial status and “pretend” that things are better than they actually are. My friend is a single mum on benefits and her 17 yo son recently got his first job to save for his driving lessons, university and so on. They are classed as poverty-line poor using the official classification. He recently purchased a £124 T-shirt and proudly showed it to me and told me how much it cost. She was very happy with it, not at all concerned.

Probably fake goods.

You sound like Scrooge McDuck.

Well not really because the OP explicitly stated that they can't financially manage to buy expensive items. The other alternative is that the people they're benchmarking themselves against actually have a lot more money than the OP thinks - that's probably the most likely option.

Because they think it makes them look rich when in actual fact it has the opposite effect effect in my eyes

Or, you could save your money instead?

Yes, I was commenting on the huge gulf between prostitutes on "dirty money" and people working hard for theirs. There is a gulf, but it's nothing to do with hard/easy work.

I own a lot of FatFace stuff, all of it’s from Vinted.

You're claiming that you have a high household income but also that you can't financially manage to buy expensive items so either you're very bad at managing your finances or you're deluding yourself about your income. The high earners I know have vast amounts of disposable income.

Are we allowed to use the word chav these days? 😬😳 I always thought it was quite offensive to the more sensitive people in these woke times... I remember a thread where someone was quite chastised for using the word.

It's not that lucrative unless you are a "high end" operator.

To do well at that you need to have good conversational skills and be intelligent as well as very attractive. Sometimes you need a couple of foreign languages for the non-English clients
You also have to be prepared to provide "niche" services. 😮

This is what i am told, anyway...

Because idiots are brainwashed into thinking a logo makes something worth a lot

😆

I agree, it's what peoples' priorities are.

I used to know a couple who had 2 (expensive, like Egypt, USA) foreign holidays a year, every year.
They bought their house in the 80's and it was in an 80's time warp. (Think dado rails at 3' with striped paper at the bottom and flowered paper at the top in shades of cream/beige, and a kitchen with pine units in a sort of orange shade).

I haven't seen them for years but assume it's still the same.

You can keep your foreign holidays for me and I'll have a designer kitchen instead !

Well, why do people spend £££s on handbags? It's one thing I don't get. How many bags does a person need?
People have their own priorities.

I don't get why people want to spend £££s on a holiday abroad. Simply do not understand why all that money for a week or 2 and nothing to show for it.

It's like we're all different.

Indeed. My current promise to myself is a MaxMara coat. I may get over this, I don't need another coat. But still feel like I want one. This is because I've bought the hype.

And I'd have to buy it on credit!

" the marginal benefit it gives them over their immediate peers and competitors."

What are the main benefits? ( Remember they are all draped in labels)