2.2. BRANDS TAKE OVER THE HISTORIC CENTER

MENU: 2.2. BRANDS TAKE OVER CENTER

"YOU'VE DISCOVERED THE RUE DE SÈVRES!" SAID A COUSIN LONG AGO. 

It was then a street for couture at affordable prices, but now one finds brands alone:

   Rue de Sèvres facing métro Sèvres-Babylone, in the heart of the left bank.

      Whatever their ethnicity, models are interchangeable members of the middle class.

Brands raise prices exponentially: a friend working for a well-known name was stupefied when an invoice showed wares produced in Bangladesh marked up 2000%.

Made in Bangladesh by Rubayat Hossein with Rikita Shimu, 2019

The movie begins with a fire in a workshop and continues with the difficulty of union organizing, especially for women (please  and scroll down). 

•  Headline in The Guardian: "'Virtually the entire' fashion industry is complicit on Uighur forced labor, say rights groups:"

•  The environmental impact is often disastrous. "Responsible" production is rarely verified.

• Quality can be cut when it hurts the bottom line.* 

*A Dior lipstick fell apart after I used it twice. A coat bought for 700€ at un upscale department store (Le Bon Marché) did not fit professional production standards. The wife of the former director of Établissement Michel (hatter Chanel bought toward 2010) said that commercial directors were not trained in crafts and might not know the effects of their cost-cutting decisions.

Clients whose wealth is recent may not know what quality is,
and when they buy for the label do not care.  

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In brief 

• Ads hover over the river 

• A left-bank oasis evokes a recent past 

• Skip the grotesque profits: affordable shopping in "real" Paris 

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Next,

2.2.1.

Ads hover over the river