the merch industry has gone too far

this is what im having for lunch

Yes spending 300+ dollars on a grey tee that says “I told ya” is very dystopian.

yeah im not paying $300 for a t shirt, and in my opinion, those 'designer' shirts are probably made in the same sweat shop as the $5 one.

There's a Belgian popstar (edit: her name is Pommelien Thijs!) who, instead of selling merch, created 4 designs that they printed on shirts that fans already had and could bring to the show. I thought that was quite cool!

I can attest that every single time I go to my local goth club, people start conversations with me by talking about the band on my tshirt, no matter which one I'm wearing. So definitely can confirm that merch is a good conversation starter.

A few weeks ago a delivery guy commented on my t-shirt when I answered my door (merch for the band health) and he was intrigued and said he'd listen to them. Next time he delivered to me he told me he had actually given them a listen and liked them. It really was a nice human to human moment I got to share because I have that merch.

Buying a whole outfit for a single event and then discarding it afterwards is unthinkable to me.

I’m an American living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and people here have been OBSESSED with Yankees baseball caps since around April. Every time I go to the grocery store - a five minute walk from my apartment- I see AT LEAST 5. 😭 it’s been wild. I ask Dutch people and they’re just like ‘it looks cool, and New York is cool’. Lol. Apparently in the 90s there was a similar trend here, my colleague told me that he had a baseball hat from some random team in Wisconsin. He picked it because he liked the colors. You’re the first person I’ve seen acknowledge the madness of Yankees caps in Western Europe!

It’s like she knew I just sat down to draw

Kanye West wasn't the first person to bring merch to malls by any stretch of the imagination. Bringing band t-shirts to every corner of America was Hot Topic's entire brand identity. They had their start just going around to concerts and buying up as many extras as possible to bring to people who couldn't go see the bands in person. Eventually, they expanded to nerd culture & pop culture properties and that associated merch, but their whole ethos has always been to feel like the t-shirt stand at a concert venue

Restaurant merch had been around forever. Every dad I see on vacation has a Hard Rock Cafe t shirt from somewhere.

The merch of bands does really change the smaller the band is, buying a vinyl and a t-shirt puts much more money in the pockets of small bands than it does grammy award winning artists and is still a conversation starter. Multiple local bands t-shirts normally leads to people actually knowing members of the band personally and is always so fun being out and about. Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX don’t need my money, but the band playing for $15 tickets in a tiny venue does.

As someone who sucks at conversation, I look at ur clothes to see if there’s anything I can comment on and it would be sooo embarrassing to ask abt the band on ur shirt, thinking we can connect or at least start a conversation and u don’t even listen to to them 😂😂 I wouldn’t know what to say!

One thing I think is funny is according to an official Challengers prop auction, the I TOLD YA shirt Zendaya wears in the movie is a J.Crew shirt with I TOLD YA screen printed on, not the Loewe one. That made an Etsy knock off feel more authentic to me lol, but I still haven’t hit checkout

whenever a restaurant or a store hands my dad a branded bag for the stuff he bought, he always asks them as a joke if he gets a discount for the free advertisement😭

I enjoy buying/wearing t-shirts from concerts I attended or merch of an artist I support. But most of the time I resorted to buy from Etsy because “official” merch prices are not wallet friendly.

The elephant in the room is consumerism and capitalism. Most merch is not ethically made, environmentally unfriendly, and overpriced/poorly made for what you get anyway. Why does Taylor, a billionaire, really need more money? Couldn't she, for charging so much, at least use better materials or labor?

As a musician in an underground music scene, Merch is DEFINITELY not dead. PLEASE KEEP BUYING INDIE ARTISTS MERCH! In fact it’s our bread and butter on tour. It’s how we break even on the road, how we connect other fans to each other etc. I sought out the music of bands that had cool tshirts and ended up loving so many new groups as a result. We even trade merch with other bands when we are fans of each others. Yeah, the aesthetic has been co-opted by the masses, but there are still plenty of folks out there, silk screening shirts in their basements, and utilizing local printers for the rest. Seriously. Erewhon does not need you to rep them to keep running. A local band playing your city really really does.

That part about second hand clothing ending up in places like east Africa is so real. I am a fashion designer from Kenya and i grew increasingly frustrated by the slow and inevitable death of our textile industry as i watched cargo ship loads of second hand garments from America arrive literally ever month. The sheer amount of second hand clothing is insane. I've seen entire little league team t-shirts sold on the streets. When vendors can't sell them they just discard them on pavements and streets. Walking around Nairobi you just see heaps of garments trashing the streets especially around 2nd hand markets. It's quite awful. So please if you are from the west and you see this comment please encourage each other to make less, spend less and ask for better quality clothing that you can keep for much longer.

It's a "classy if you're rich, trashy if you're poor" kind of trend. Growing up, my parents didn't have a lot of money but I have a picture of myself in a Hard Rock cafe sweatshirt (even though we have never been to one and my parents didn't speak English so they didn't know what it meant). I guess it fit me at the time and my parents liked it, so they bought it for me second-hand.