Josh not so Goot

The Daily Telegraph on Sunday published an article by writer Melissa Hoyer about Australian designer Josh Goot going downmarket. The Australians seem to be up in arms about their golden boy designer selling out to Target. I don’t blame them. Here’s what Goot apparently did. He created derivative pieces of his full designer line that sells at higher end prices for Target in Australia that naturally sells at mass market price points and now the customers that paid full price are really pissed. Furthermore, the intelligentsia (using the term as loosely as possible) of the fashion world are railing against the practice of going downmarket for a big payday in the first place. Where were they when Stella McCartney did the same thing? Oh I know, they were sycophantically praising her for bringing her pieces to the masses.

I digress.

Some quotes in the piece are really hard on Goot regarding the reverse bait and switch:

Australian publisher (of Vogue and GQ Grant Pearce) told the Telelgraph,

“Yes, it makes designer fashion accessible to the whole market, but it does dilute the designer’s value of their existing brand, Getting a fledgling, if not currently of-the-moment designer to do a one-off collection is a current fad but I fear it can be detrimental to their long-term success”

I wonder if fledgling designers will begin questioning the leap downmarket going forward?

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