Friday, November 30, 2007

All You're Doing is Paying for the Name

As many of us may have been a culprit of this act one time or another, buying expensive brand name items is unnecessary. I am sure that we would all like to have the most expensive, brand name items, but in reality, one can buy an extremely similar item for less than half of the price of the real thing.

At NIU I see girls walking around in Ugg Boots, Coach purses, Tiffany's jewelry, Gucci sunglasses, and other designer high price items. I am sure most females have these at least one of these items, if not all of them. All of these luxuries are not necessary to purchase.

Below are links to pictures of a real and a knock-off Coach purse. Although each purse is a different style, the print is extremely similar. Prices of real Coach purses range from $128.00 to $700.00, while knock-offs range from $20.00-$60.00. That is a big difference in pricing!

real Coach purse

knock-off Coach purse

With the money that one would save from buying the cheaper item, he or she would have money for other items, or would have money to save. Both of these ideas seem a lot smarter compared to blowing all of the money on one item. As many people continue to pay a great amount of money for authentic items, they may want to remember one thing. All they are doing is paying for the name.

1 comment:

lazarus8964 said...

It’s an interesting topic to tackle. I agree that constantly buying the latest fashion to keep up with so insane standard is not the way to go, and is not a good way to spend money. I personally don’t really care if a shirt or a pair of pants has a certain brand on it. Most people would be shocked to hear that because I seem to be always wearing some form of Abercrombie & Fitch. But people don’t know that I’ve had these cloths for a long time, some shirts really don’t fit anymore. My brother was big on brands and demanded Abercrombie stuff, and since my parents thought I emulated my brother, they thought it was only fair to get me Abercrombie stuff. I am not brand loyal to any one brand, but in my experience, the more expensive a brand, the more resilient it is and the longer the clothing lasts. I’ll probably have these cloths for years to come.