![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Digested, Then Spat Back as Luxury
Aug. 27th, 2007 12:28 pmThe POINT of using hemp fibers in clothing is that hemp is easy to grow, sturdy, and cheap.
So why, pray tell, is all the hemp stuff priced higher than regular stuff and marketed as luxury? Supply and demand may explain part of it, but I can't help but think it's because people decided to market it as something that's a luxury, and a way to show you care more about the environment than the teeming masses, instead of marketing it as a competitor for the regular stuff, and try and show the benefits to the teeming masses.
The same can be said of many of the other "luxury" "eco-friendly" things on the market now. Most of them can be produced for close to the same prices as regular mass-marketed junk, but they get a "luxury" markup, which defeats the point. It keeps it from wider adoption, and marks it with class signals, which can make the "teeming masses" resent it, instead of use it and gain the benefits of it.
Which is flat out stupid.
So why, pray tell, is all the hemp stuff priced higher than regular stuff and marketed as luxury? Supply and demand may explain part of it, but I can't help but think it's because people decided to market it as something that's a luxury, and a way to show you care more about the environment than the teeming masses, instead of marketing it as a competitor for the regular stuff, and try and show the benefits to the teeming masses.
The same can be said of many of the other "luxury" "eco-friendly" things on the market now. Most of them can be produced for close to the same prices as regular mass-marketed junk, but they get a "luxury" markup, which defeats the point. It keeps it from wider adoption, and marks it with class signals, which can make the "teeming masses" resent it, instead of use it and gain the benefits of it.
Which is flat out stupid.
