>Once you spend enough time on activities which sharpen your visual aesthetic sense, you see a clear difference between mainstream bland models from H&M and Topshop on hand and small designer shops on another and understand why it's worth to spend more on them.

Fair enough, but it makes little sense for someone who hasn't 'spent enough time on activities which sharpen your visual aesthetic sense' to shop for expensive clothes; the result is usually going to be terrible.

Of course. Im not saying that everyone should do it; I'm just saying that when you see people doing it, it's not necessarily vanity or stupidity.

I guess my point is that those people often also haven't 'spent enough time on activities which sharpen your visual aesthetic sense' - fashion is mostly a group signalling phenomenon. I.e. people do it, because everyone else in the group they want to identify with does that.

you can say this about any single aspect of existence. more expensive food is generally healthier (BIO, non-GMO, free-run chickens, wild salmon etc.), driving more expensive cars tends to transform driving experience from necessary-evil -> OMG-so-awesome-joyful-beautiful-thing-I-want-to-do-for-rest-of-my-life. And so on.

It's all about priorities. Some people, for whatever reason, need to impress others by all costs, appearance including. Hence they dress as they dress. Some consider quality of personality much more important, if appearance is not outright disgusting. Some look at cars in similar way. and so on..

It's not about impressing anyone: it's about aesthetics for it's own sake. And carefully chosen wardrobe says a lot about it's owner's personality, of course.

carefully chosen wardrobe tells you only that given person cares a lot about the impression he/she is trying to make on others. like with makeup it isn't hard to "fake" the impression in any direction you want, although the underlying person is still the same person.

personally I like to know people as they are, not the masks they put on. sometimes much less nice, but closer to true themselves

> Once you spend enough time on activities which sharpen your visual aesthetic sense, you see a clear difference between mainstream bland models from H&M and Topshop on hand and small designer shops on another and understand why it's worth to spend more on them.

Maybe expensive clothes are prettier, but there is a hidden assumption in your conclusion, namely, that one wishes to wear clothes that are aesthetically more pleasing. This is not an obligation: you can also not care about it.

No, I only assumed that some people want to. There's a lot of folks who are quite happy working on Cobol systems too, and don't see what all language fuss is all about.

It's the notion that you only buy expensive clothes because you're stupid victim of fashion industry that I disagree with.

Only if you value those differences. I'm not even the type to shop at H&M, so it's really hard for me to see value in boutique fashion.