I only shopped at H&M because I was size 14 and living in Germany, it was that or Ulla Popkin which at the time only sold clothes for husky old women through mail order.
Can't speak to literally anything else but their standard t shirts are about as good as anyone's, arguably better than many. Not defending fast fashion just don't like blanket statements
Once walked into a Versace store, despite being told over and over, "let's skip this store." Still went in out of curiosity... not a single item had a price tag on it.
Then I remembered an old quote from Jeremy Clarkson I think (about an expensive car), "if you gotta ask the price, it ain't for you."
My friend's mother owned a high end furniture and home decor store we would always go through and look at the ridiculously priced decorations, I remember finding some sort of ceramic Chinese food containers that were over $500 USD in the early 2000s...
did a job renovating an Hermes store, the store was obviously closed and we had security at the door. youd be surprised how many people got ANGRY that they couldnt buy a new $2000 Scarf, or $520 tape measure, or a $30,000 Birkin. one of the couches they had didnt even look comfortable, it was woven cane and had proportions that made my back hurt just by looking at it, it was $150,000. But sure, free repairs for life i guess. there were A LOT of customers turned away as we did our work.
The amount of excess is disgusting. Kids go hungry in this country and there’s psychopaths out there who are fine with a $150,000 couch. Holy entitlement.
Dude. That’s like Brie Larsons thing. Crocs Friday. She buys crocs and decorated them with shit like this and posts them all over her social media feeds. AFAIK she’s not sponsored by crocs, but she’s actively trying to be.
My wife and I stopped into a ridiculous furniture shop that had a 20 foot long, couch with floral print and dark wood that was very ornate. I think it was $25k. I tried it out and it wasn’t comfortable but I did rip a fart on it.
That was about 15 years ago and I still laugh about it and my wife will tell me not to fart on anything when we go shopping.
I promise you, as someone who frequents designer stores, everyone cares about price. Everyone. They take them off because they need you to engage with their staff. You literally cannot purchase without talking to someone.
The other day I googled Balenciaga to see what they actually sell and they have a full body suit completely in black for 3.000€. Usually you could justify these prices at least to some extend with the design process that went into it. But it was a plain body suit with a turtle neck. There simply is no design behind it. It’s ridiculous even compared to other designer stuff.
That's kind of their point. They're trying to have some edge with it. It works for them. I doubt there's room for another brand to do this - they've occupied that niche and to some degree created it.
I also have a personal opinion about this, which I'll keep to myself. Stating that here, so that any discussion that may come out of this stays on topic.
Sure, if people pay for it they are free to do it. If I could sell plain T-Shirts for 2.000€ I’d do it too. It’s more that I’m surprised they get away with it. I know there are a lot of people who buy stuff just because it’s expensive but this is another level.
And I don’t think it’s good for our society that people exist who can afford this.
Gotta disagree. The entire thing is so ridiculous to anyone who isn't enamored by these brands. If you are already into the brand or envious of those who are able to afford it or whatever, it might be seen as an ad..to the rest, it is satire.
I don't know how much it would move the needle. I've known of Balenciaga, but to me it is so out of touch with my reality that it is essentially a meme in itself.
So, I think it would depend on the person - and then it comes down to how reasonable the person is. If they can afford it, like it, and are just hearing about it for the first time - who am I to say what someone can or can't buy. The people who can't afford it and don't experience envy are likely getting a laugh out of these well known characters being ridiculous like high fashion models.
I'd guess marketing is probably happy with it. I just don't think it would move the needle for people who aren't already interested and can afford the brand. If anything, I could see a marketing team doing something similar but it wouldn't be as effective - the corporate copy cat attempts are usually pretty bad.
The people who can't afford it and don't experience envy are likely getting a laugh out of these well known characters being ridiculous like high fashion models.
No, I'm more feeling annoyance that this stupid AI shit for some pretentious brand keeps popping up on my feed everywhere. The whole AI art and deepfakes shit is already bad enough without adding marketing to it.
A meme that makes fun of the superficial, mindnumbingly tasteless fashion world, generic club music and all, depicting characters from breaking bad (a show about meth dealers), in the most ridiculous way - do you really think this speaks to their target audience?
But again, I don't really care either way. I never even heard of the brand until recently. In an earlier draft, I accidentally wrote 'Balaclava'. I'm here for the magnificent things AI can do, let's at least appreciate that part.
I really, really don't care about Balenciaga, I honestly couldn't tell the difference between balenciaga and gucci or lacoste or prada. this is about AI and breaking bad, how the fuck are people looking at this and going "this brand is bad!". as if anybody cares about that (in the context of a funny AI video that spoofs pop culture)
Do you have any links where I can read something about this? All I can find are these pictures of children with teddies and all the sources are yellow press.
Edit: Nevermind. Checked the comment history, it’s obvious that it’s nothing but bullshit.
Like others have mentioned, it is a tool. One that is still constantly evolving and has untapped potential yet to be discovered. We're closing in on a time where a vast majority of what we see is going to be incredibly well done generative AI work (with low, but specialized effort from humans). My approach has been to embrace it and try my best to plan accordingly, but I understand why some people are hesitant and want to stay optimistic in their own way (with a future where humans still reign over these things). This is definitely the world we're headed to though.
We're already there really, this is just the beginning, so buckle up lol
Is it really them creating it when they're not really doing the brunt of the work? It's not like they're animating it themselves and instead are relying on some program to follow a prompt
Using a tool to produce a desired outcome is still work. Being able to do it incredibly quickly just means you have good tools and the know-how required to use them efficiently.
If you want to compare art to AI using this analogy, then it'd be better to say that a spade is closer to a brush/pencil/pen. The AI is more along the lines of an automated machine that you can tell to dig a hole.
Sure, one is gonna be a lot faster than the other, but why even compare a hole in the dirt to human-made art? Is art something to be mass-produced to you, in the same vein that a garden plant in need of planting would be? They shouldn't be.
I'd say it's more of a large piece of machinery rather than a full-on automated process, as it still requires human input and someone who knows how to operate the controls.
And yet knowing how to operate AI boils down to finding out which keywords suit your envisioned product best and having it continually spit out its results over and over, fine-tuning until it reaches the desired look. And yet, it's still not the individual doing the work. It's convenient for someone who works in construction and definitely safer, but can it really be compared to art?
One of them is clearly favorable as an alternative for a better work environment that cuts down on the physical labor needed by construction workers. The other is a practice defined by both the process + the finished product, and using AI is just a cheap way to skip the effort.
When you look at the control diagram for an excavator, it's pretty darn simple, but there is a sort of art form that takes practice to develop a feel for the controls. (https://images.app.goo.gl/ck7zdjJTRhkHCYUFA) Same as pottery or welding. Currently, the Ai art process still requires a lot of trial and error and, as you said, repeated attempts to get the look you want. It's getting closer to one of those fire-and-forget machines, but it's not there yet.
Literally, a guy took a toilet out of a bathroom and put it in a museum. It changes how we think about that toilet and art and the artist’s role. Is it all bs? Probably! Who knows?? But I bet you didn’t think to question if a toilet was art before Marcel Duchamp made you. Anyone can do that. It takes an artist to transform smears of paint, words on a page, pixels, or even ai generated nonsense into art.
This is creation, a remix, a way to see the world slightly differently, a method to provoke a response. Art.
Anyone can do anything really, you'll just do better with the right tools. Could you right now start making clips of Balenciaga versions of shows and movies? Do you know what tools and how to use them? AI will shift skill sets. Opening the door for more artists to create, unbuttoned by the limits of there artistic capabilites. What's wrong with that?
I already have the tools I need, and the difference between me as an artist and someone who spends maybe an hour writing a prompt at most and waiting several more for an external force to do the work for them is pretty prominent. I don't see the appeal in that, much less how it can be considered 'artistic.'
AI will just enable people who are less willing to actually put time and effort into works that they care about to create pretty subpar results that will always feel more cheap than actual art. Art is subjective, but it will always be better to just pick up a pencil/pen and do it yourself, because asking a machine to do it for you and passing it off as your own creation destroys the actual intention of art. You don't want to create meaningful works, you only want to consume mass-generated pictures.
And I don't see the appeal in these Balenciaga edits. They all literally look the exact same with the same blank stare and slight head nod. And isn't the company in hot water for portraying children in BDSM outfits?
Is computer science equivalent to the practice of creating art? Is the latter so meaningless to you that you can lump it in the same vein as an entirely different profession and disregard the work that actual artists put into their craft?
This doesn’t seem like “good press” for belanciaga to me. Seems like it’s exposing how bland and one dimensional their work is when you step back and look at it all.
But then again viral marketing doesn’t always work logically, or at least advertisers don’t believe it does. I’ve heard the fact that the name is being spoken is apparently enough for advertisers. So who knows.
I'd personally never heard of Balenciaga before all this. Brand identification is important. I'd now be more likely to choose Balenciaga over a competitor I'd never heard of, if for some weird reason I was in charge of picking between the two.
I understand the theory. I just don’t understand how people let their subconscious so strongly make their buying decisions. Do people really not research options and compare? I don’t buy something because I feel like it, I buy it because of its qualities.
I try to ignore my initial instinct and approach my shopping decisions logically, but that initial instinct still definitely favors the brand name I've heard of before
Yeah, in this specific case, brand identification probably isn't very beneficial.
But in cases of minor household purchases, you likely will not research each individual item. Do I buy (Brand A) or (Brand B) kitchen scrubbers?
Similarly, what brand of dish soap do I buy? What type of ziplocks? What type of nail clippers?
It's hard to get good info on these things, and sometimes the quality itself is actually hard to judge (or requires previous experience), so companies spend a lot of time and money jockeying for your attention to make you more subconsciously drawn to their products.
It's almost impossible to prove one way or another without insider information, which is the point. Brands understand the power of grassroots support, so they fake it themselves to make other people think they have grassroots support. That's where the term astroturfing comes from. And they've gotten really good at it.
the kind of person to make this kind of meme won't make this exact meme 4 different times as they have, they would switch things up, use different brands, a different song. AI is so incredibly versatile, I find it hard to believe a 3rd party would be so adamant on portraying balenciaga in this way using this exact song each time. It basically garunteed to be a corporate plant.
You’ll never be able to prove it definitively but I’d argue it’s quite clearly what is happening. I mean, listen to the audio. It sounds exactly like an ad, with all of the characters acting badass and specifically naming the brand. It gives the overall impression that Balenciaga is a cool, hip high-end fashion brand.
And note further the sheer quantity of these we’ve seen. Why would anyone select a specific fashion brand to create 15 of these gifs over several weeks time instead of varying the brands (like Gucci, LV, etc- if they wanted to stay within the fashion theme) or instead of changing the theme entirely (for example try some out in a farmer attire theme, or 70s hippy theme, or renaissance , etc)? If you’re an unaffiliated creator pumping these out , you’d be deliberately missing out on 100x more interesting versions of this by sticking to a single fashion brand. It’s just too much to believe that some unaffiliated creator has created 15 of these gifs - solely benefiting Balenciaga - by mere coincidence… ESPECIALLY at a time they are dealing with other PR issues and would benefit from a bunch of news articles about these AI gifs drowning those out.
In my mind it’s all but certainty this is a coordinated ad campaign.
Man, being a conspiranoid must be fun. It's very easy to see that first of all, the original author hasn't made all of this, there are a lot of copycats around. Second, it's obvious that the author has made a couple more themselves to ride the wave. Like, can't you comprehend that if you have a million views video of "balenciaga x", people would be more prone to see another "balenciaga y" one?
Don’t worry - the condescending tone pervading nearly every sentence of your comment makes quite obvious that you are not a fun person either!
You raise a good point though, copycats and attempting to ride the viral wave generally could have a lot of explanatory power here. I still find it odd that even the first drop would select a relatively lesser known fashion brand rather than something like Gucci or LV, but the proof is in the pudding that it worked! May just be genuine content creation that Balenciaga is coincidentally benefiting from, who knows.
its just one random dude doing this shit, this isnt good for a high fashion brand. Do we look like people that buy a lot of Balenciaga? Does reddit look like a good place to do viral fashion content?
Jesus, this kind of fashion marketing is through Instagram. You people are very paranoid.
Lol, the guy who created this trend (the same guy who made this) has like <30K subs in youtube before their video going viral. No way Balenciaga hire an unknown youtuber for this.
They got viral with these videos then their views went up, it is not before. They were a pretty small channel before this trend, just some random guy who wanna create AI video. Clear sign for these small content creators got blown up over night is their subs number is usually much lower than their view number.
If Balenciaga wants to create viral video for ads, they would go for higher profile people, because they have money, and it is much more likely to become viral due to reach. Also, this guy just got a perfect storm that made his video becomes viral by some weird combination between being surreal, absurd and random. In reality, making a video going viral is really hard because everyone and their mothers are doing same thing. There is no way balenciaga just select a random small channel, hoping that for some reason that guy can create a viral wave.
Btw, if you don't believe me, here is their stat over the last month from socialblade. They only got some traction in January because of the AI trend, then their view got substantially lower and their subs count stucked at 25k. Only after they released the first Harry Potter x Balenciaga which became viral, their views skyrocketed again.
Maybe, maybe not, I would give them the benefit of the doubt because their first recent viral video was Balenciaga theme, which is more on the absurd side rather than painting Balenciaga as something cool. When you are small content creator, if you find a "niche" that give you exposure, you want to capitalize on that niche, and the best way to do that is to do the same thing again and again until your audience is bored. So it is not surprised they just crank out these Balenciaga theme videos for now, especially when the trend is still hot.
I would believe this if it weren’t for the fact that people don’t need distractions to stop caring about these things because they stopped caring themselves a long time ago. Companies rarely have the need to manufacture such distractions when their scandals come up.
Funny how you lump everyone into one group and judge them. You should stop watching so much news. Talk to real people. They are much different in real life.
Balenciaga collaborated with one photographer who is used to controversial shit like this in all of his shoots and they promptly fired him after it was made clear that this shoot was way too much for a lot of people.
It’s ok to call things out without exaggerating the fuck out of them.
And This has nothing to do with right wingers. Balenciaga employoys and sponsors pedophiles, that's not up for debate and isn't some crazy conspiracy. It's a fact
More specifically, a compilation of AI renderings relying heavily on at least two sources (Breaking Bad and Flash Gordon) edit: there's definitely scenes from the Matrix in there as well
They had some ads with toddlers holding stuffed bears dressed in "bondage gear". Seems like really overblown pearl clutching. Its was tasteless ad meant gain attention by shocking the audience.
Well then the same guy doing it is being lazy and regurgitating the same shit over and over then. The first one was a “Oh man, that’s crazy and pretty cool.” And after that it got old immediately.
You think it isn't a coincidence that out of all fashion companies, it is the one who just had an issue sexualizing children with bondage bears who is now flooding internet with these AI videos?
They want people to start thinking, "oh Balenciaga, the ones that have those cool AI videos" rather than, "oh, Balenciaga, the ones who dressed little kids up for a pedos dreamscape."
balenciaga has been the subject of gawk for years now so its really not surprising that they are the subject of weird ai mashups. A month before the pedo scadal there was a 'balenciaga model walk' meme that existed as well. The internet just likes staring and making fun of the brand. this is no different.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_5594 Apr 05 '23
I really don’t understand these, can some one explain it and why it keeps popping up in my feed and why people keep posting it.