How Premium Mediocre Conquered Fashion
The end of the article hints at it, but I think this stuff really represents the &quot;high end&quot; of the fast fashion cycle. You got the logo, and you spent enough money to feel like you&#x27;ve bought something premium, but actually it&#x27;s low quality, disposable tat.<p>I&#x27;m vaguely aware of a lot of this simply due to working with a tracking product for fashion brands, but where I&#x27;m really aware of it is with watches, which are a bit of a hobby for me.<p>Notably, brands such as MVMT, Vincero, Daniel Wellington, and Michael Kors, take the cheapest of the cheap quartz movements, case them up - particularly with MVMT and Vincero - in cheap, generic cases, with straps made of the lowest quality materials, slap their logo on, do a ton of <i>fantastic</i> social media marketing, and then chuck on a ridiculous markup to charge sometimes hundreds of dollars or pounds for these effectively disposable time-pieces.<p>MVMT in particular have come in for a lot of flak recently, because people have started calling them out on the fact that you can buy the exact same watch, minus the MVMT logo, on Alibaba for $5 as opposed to $100.<p>Still, overall these brands are absolutely killing it, and aren&#x27;t having a great effect on more established brands that produce higher quality timepieces. These are brands that offer objectively better products, but aren&#x27;t nearly as savvy with their marketing: Timex, Seiko, Orient, Citizen, Tissot, Inox, Hamilton, Zeppelin, Junkers, Junghans, and the list goes on. None of these specialise in luxury watches, but in the same price range as the fashion brands they do offer <i>good</i> watches, many extremely stylish, that will last for decades.<p>Premium mediocre might also be the reason that TAG Heuer get such short shrift amongst watch aficionados. They&#x27;re nominally a luxury brand, and they certainly do make some decent timepieces. For example, the Monaco is a classic and - for a horology geek - their high end chronographs are seriously impressive (and way the hell above my price range).<p>Nevertheless, you really get ripped off on TAG&#x27;s entry level quartz pieces. These are still kind of pricey, but the quality isn&#x27;t there. For example, they will cheerfully charge you well north of £1000 for a quartz Aquaracer with a misaligned second hand. Not OK, but a lot of people buy into it because it makes a TAG Heuer attainable.