It’s not the first time i’ve heard of stampedes and women beating each other up to have a piece of Stella McCartney’s line, but this is getting ridiculous. From an AFP article this morning on her launch in Australia:
“Someone just ripped a jacket out of my hands,” shopper Lori Herbert told the Daily Telegraph, which quoted another woman as saying she feared for her safety during the rush as a clothes rack was rammed into her side.
There is no moral story behind this, but I’ll get philosophical for a second. I’ve actually gone to stores on launch day of a must have product (for example Viktor and Rolf at H&M) and have fought (with as little violence as possible) with the patrons for a piece or two; but the whole elbowing, sideswiping, pulling items out of another customer’s hand or arm is a bit much. It has come to be accepted as the nature of shopping for items that are wanted by the masses. What got to me this time as opposed to other instances of the all out brawl is that I’m coming to think that maybe, just maybe, stores WANT this mayhem. They may even ::gasp:: encourage it. It generates great PR for both the store and the designer. This is neglecting the fact that someone may actually get hurt.
The answer has always been something along the lines of “we didn’t anticipate such strong demand for the designer.”
Hello?
It’s Stella McCartney at Target, it’s not like she hasn’t debuted a lower priced line at a retailer before with similar results. There’s got to be a better way.
::slowly gets down… and walks away from soapbox::
One Comment
oh my, they obviously didn’t get the memo that in order to be stylish, one must also be gracious (at least that’s what my mother told me).
2 Trackbacks
[...] Papierblog wonders whether fashion is getting too violent, especially after the debut of Stella McCartney’s line at Target in Australia. [...]
[...] Papierblog: Eva wonders whether fashion is getting too violent especially after the debut of Stella McCartney’s line at Target in Australia [...]