Lifestyle
Ghosting is ruthless. So why are we all doing it?
Alexis Fischer was excited to jump back into the dating world after being single for two years.
The professional dancer-turned-entrepreneur took time to heal from her breakup with her ex-boyfriend of nearly four years. She also wanted to focus on building her business, the Move by Lexfish app, where she teaches virtual Pilates, dance and other fitness classes. Then, in May, she was accepted on Raya, an exclusive, membership-based app that initially focused on dating but has expanded into a digital spot to build friendships and business relationships.
Dating in Los Angeles can be messy. In “Date Cute” we’ll explore common dating problems and provide tips on how to date better.
Fischer started messaging two men and eventually went on multiple dates with each of them. She kept in touch with them via text and FaceTime, and things were seemingly going well, until all of a sudden: crickets.
“I’ve been ghosted twice in the past month,” a teary-eyed Fischer said in a video on TikTok , where she has more than 28,000 followers.
In dating, ghosting is when someone ends all communication without giving the other person any warning or explanation. In the video, Fischer went on to talk about how the experience bruised her ego and left her feeling rejected. Dozens of people commented, saying that they had had similar experiences.
“It was just absurd to me,” said Fischer, 30, of the South Bay, told The Times. “You start to question yourself, like ‘Did I say something? Did I do something?’ And you read back all your texts and just kind of go crazy.”
It wasn’t as if she thought either of these men were “the love of her life,” she said, but she would have preferred for them to let her know that they didn’t want to date her anymore rather than disappearing and causing “emotional turmoil” for her.
“We need to all collectively be better,” she said in a follow-up TikTok video. “We don’t need to ghost. We are better than that. Send a clear text, a voice note, call them … Just be clear.”
With the rise of online dating and social media, ghosting has become a common experience for many people. A 2023 Forbes survey, which polled 5,000 U.S. residents who’d actively been on dates within the last five years, found that 60% of respondents said they had been ghosted before.
Meanwhile, 45% said they have ghosted another person. Findings also show that men and women are equally to blame: Forty-four percent of men and 47% of women said they’d ghosted someone before. (This study didn’t appear to be inclusive of all gender identities.)
Ebony Utley, a professor of communication studies at Cal State Long Beach, said ghosting has likely been around forever. However, because there are now so many ways to reach someone whether it’s via phone, email or lurking on their social media, ghosting has become more intentional.
“We don’t need to ghost. We are better than that. Send a clear text, a voice note, call them … Just be clear.”
— Alexis Fischer, in a recent TikTok video
L.A.-based marriage and family therapist Ali Cortes said the COVID-19 pandemic has played a role in people communicating less with others.
“It’s a trend that is acceptable,” Cortes said, adding that no one likes to be on the receiving end of it.
Many experts agree that ghosting is generally frowned upon with the exception being if you feel unsafe around someone or if any red flags such as lying or abusive behavior pops up.
Letting someone know that you’re no longer interested in them can feel nerve-wracking. (We all get it.) But getting ghosted feels way worse. Here’s what experts say you should do instead.
What actually happens when people ghost others?
There are several reasons why people ghost. Some do it because they’re afraid of confrontation. Others think they are sparing the other person’s feelings, while some simply don’t think they owe the other person an explanation.
“People lie for two reasons,” said Utley, author of the 2019 book “He Cheated, She Cheated, We Cheated: Women Speak About Infidelity.” “They lie to protect themselves, and they lie to protect other people. So ghosting lets people do both at the same time.”
A ghoster may think, “‘I protect myself from being a bad person,’” Utley said, “‘and I protect you from hating me by not explaining the real reason why I don’t want to know you anymore.’”
No matter which way you slice it, suddenly disappearing without letting the other person know can cause more harm than good. Although research hasn’t fully explained the psychological effects of ghosting, a 2020 study published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health related its effects to “ostracism,” which could cause feelings of “loneliness, depressed mood, frustration, anxiety and helplessness.”
“It is disrespectful,” said Cortes, who’s also the founder of Bienestar Counseling, Coaching and Consulting. “Because there’s no feedback, it leaves the person out in the cold.”
“[Ghosting] usually interferes with our self-esteem in some way. And if that happens to you recurringly in patterns, then you really start to think, ‘Oh, snap. It’s me. People just don’t want to be in communication with me.’”
— Ebony Utley, a professor of communication studies at Cal State Long Beach
Utley said that when people are ghosted, they often revert to their “little kid state” where they think that everything is their fault. Questions including “Is it something that I did? Did I make them mad? Was I not good enough?” might circle their minds.
“It usually interferes with our self-esteem in some way,” she said. “And if that happens to you recurringly in patterns, then you really start to think, ‘Oh, snap. It’s me. People just don’t want to be in communication with me.’ And it might just be you’ve run into a bunch of a—holes.”
But if the person doing the ghosting were candid, then you’d know whether the issue is you (for example, they said you came on too strong), and as a result, you could decide whether you want to work on those personality traits.
What should you do instead?
Ghosting is easy — that’s why people do it. But if you’re willing to do the alternative, here are a couple options for what you could say.
If you’ve lost interest in the person you are dating and no longer want to communicate with them, Cortes recommends using the sandwich method, in which you deliver negative or constructive feedback between two slices of positive comments.
You can start by thanking the person for sharing their time with you and let them know that you’ve enjoyed getting to know them, Cortes said. Then insert your reason. Some examples are “I’ve realized that I’m not ready for a relationship right now,” “Our values don’t align” or “We don’t want the same thing.” Wrap up by saying something such as this: “I want to respectfully let you know so that you can move on, and I can move on as well,” and then tell them to take care.
Another option, says Mike Chang, a marriage and family therapist based in Glendale, is “making it more about you” and less about the other person. It’s fine to keep your explanation for ending the relationship brief.
“I think people have preferences when it comes to what kind of person they want to be in a relationship with, which is totally fine,” Chang said. “But nobody wants to be told that they don’t have something or a trait that [you’re] looking for.” A key reminder: If your comment isn’t constructive, keep it to yourself.
Let’s be friends
It may be tempting to end this tough conversation by saying “We can be friends” as a way to cushion the blow. But experts warn that you shouldn’t say this or agree to it unless that’s what you actually want. Doing so can sometimes make the other person think they still have a chance with you romantically. It can also leave the door open for them to cross your boundaries.
Instead, Utley recommends saying something like this: “I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, but I don’t want us to be in communication anymore.”
“Yes, it is a very difficult thing to say,” Utley said. “And, yes, it’s a very difficult thing to hear. But if you don’t want to be in communication anymore, you’re going to get that. That person is not going to keep reaching out to you, and if they do, you might have to get the police involved. But at least you’ve been clear.”
Should you have this conversation in person?
When asked whether you should have this conversation in person, via text or over the phone, Utley advised picking whichever one makes you feel most comfortable.
Any of these options is “better than nothing,” she said, “because sometimes those in-person conversations end up being conversations when you really just want to end a relationship.”
If you think an in-person conversation might go sideways or put you in a dangerous situation, then a phone call or text might be best, Utley said.
“If I do this one hard thing of rejecting [someone], I’m actually helping both of us have a healthier dynamic with other people.”
— Ali Cortes, a L.A.-based marriage and family therapist
Ultimately, no matter what’s said, there’s still a chance that the conversation may not be well received.
“I think how the other person responds is a variable that we can’t control,” said Chang, who’s also the program director for Lighthouse Counseling Solutions. They might be mature about it or they might have a complete meltdown. However, it’s not your responsibility to make the other person “feel better about the breakup because they are going to interpret it however they want to interpret it,” he said.
Your only job — and the only thing you can control — is being transparent, clear and respectful about your desire to end communication.
The long-term benefit
There could be another positive outcome from having this conversation. Utley said learning how to communicate effectively can help you become a better friend, parent, sibling, neighbor, employer, colleague and employee. “This kind of practice is going to help you if you ever have to deliver bad news to anyone, anywhere, at any time,” she said. “Practicing these things now will help you do that and make all those forthcoming situations in your life a little bit easier.”
Cortes likes to think of this skill as an act of kindness toward yourself and the other person.
“If I do this one hard thing of rejecting [someone], I’m actually helping both of us have a healthier dynamic with other people,” she said. By saying no to this person, you are ultimately saying yes to yourself and freeing the other person to do the same.
A new dating standard
A few months after Fischer’s back-to-back ghosting experiences, she started messaging another guy she had met on Instagram. They FaceTimed several times, but she eventually realized that they were on different paths in their lives and ultimately weren’t compatible. So she decided to break it off with him.
He responded with “a nice, long message,” she said, acknowledging that he couldn’t give her what she was looking for at the time and that he respected her decision. Then they went their separate ways.
“I was a little sick to my stomach about it, and then once we had the conversation, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I feel so light. I feel clear,’” she said. “Let’s have that conversation always.”
The experience has given Fischer a new perspective and confidence about dating. It’s also taught her that being ghosted is “not a reflection of me at all because I know I’m a catch,” she said. “I know what I have to offer.”
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
You want to know where men’s fashion is heading? Follow the geeks.
These are the obsessives, fixated, with a NASA technician’s precision, on how their pants fit or on which pair of Paraboot shoes is the correct pair. These are the obsessives who in the aughts were early to selvage denim (now available at a Uniqlo near you!) and soft-shouldered Italian tailoring in the mode that, eventually, trickled down to your local J. Crew.
And where has the attention of this cohort landed now? On a vanguard of newish-to-the-West labels from Japan, like A.Presse, Comoli, Auralee and T.T.
1
A.Presse is probably the most hyped of this cohort. What other label is worn by the French soccer player Pierre Kalulu and the actor Cooper Hoffman and has men paying a premium for a hoodie on the resale market? Kazuma Shigematsu, the founder, is not into attention. When we spoke, he wouldn’t allow me to record the conversation. Notes only.
“You mean a better-fitting denim jacket that’s based on an old Levi’s thing? Yeah, OK, sold,” said Jeremy Kirkland, host of the “Blamo!” podcast and the textbook definition of a latter-day Japanese men’s wear guy. Mr. Kirkland, once someone who would allocate his budget to Italian suits, admitted that, recently, over the course of two weeks, he bought four (yes, four) jackets from A.Presse1.
“I’m not really experimenting with my style anymore,” Mr. Kirkland said. “I’m just wanting really good, basic stuff.”
Basic though these clothes appear, their hook is that they’re opulent to the touch, elevated in their fabrication.
2
Over the years, the designer Ryota Iwai has told me repeatedly that he is inspired by nothing more than the people he sees on his commute to the Auralee offices in Tokyo. When asked recently if he collected anything, he said nothing — just his bicycle.
3
The true somber tale of this wave. The brand’s founder, Taiga Takahashi, died of an arrhythmia in 2022 at 27. The label has continued to plumb history for inspiration. The latest collection had pieces that drew on bygone American postal-worker uniforms.
An Auralee2 bomber looks pedestrian until you touch it and realize its silk. Labels like T.T3 make clothes that echo the specs of a vintage relic yet come factory fresh, notched up, made … well, better. They bestow upon the wearer a certain in-the-know authority.
And so there is a hobbyist giddiness present on Discord channels where 30- and 40-something men trade tips on how to size moleskin trousers by the Japanese label Comoli; at boutiques like Neighbour in Vancouver, British Columbia, where items like a $628 dusty pink trucker jacket from Yoko Sakamoto and an $820 T.T sweater sell out soon after hitting the sales floor.
What’s notable is how swiftly these geeky preferences have wiggled into the broader fashion community. While I was in Paris for the men’s fashion shows a year ago January, all anyone wanted to talk about were things with a “Made in Japan” tag. I would speak with editors who were carving out room in their suitcases for Auralee’s $3,000 leather jackets.
But these were clothes being shown away from the fashion week hordes. The A.Presse showroom was on a Marais side street in a space about as long as a bowling lane and scarcely wider that was crammed with racks of canvas, silk and denim jackets with Pollock-like paint splatters. There were leather jackets as plush as Roche Bobois sofas and hoodies based on sweatshirts made in America a half-century ago.
I got the hype. After 10 days of puzzling over newfangled stuff on the runways, the display of simple, understandable shapes we’ve known our whole lives, but redone with extra care, couldn’t have felt more welcome.
Kazuma Shigematsu, the A.Presse designer, said he had collected a trove of vintage pieces that he housed in a separate space to plumb for inspiration. He made new clothes based on old clothes that benefited from a century of small design tweaks.
By this January, A.Presse had upgraded to a regal maison facing the Place des Vosges, with giant windows and even more reverent hoodies, even more tender leathers. Back in America, I asked an online department store executive what his favorite thing from Paris was. He took out his phone to show me photos of himself trying on a zip-up leather jacket in A.Presse’s high-ceilinged showroom.
On Their Own Terms
4
“We never think about trendiness or popular design details,” Ms. Sakamoto said through a translator. “It’s more like functionality, everyday use.” The label has a thing for natural dyes: pants stained with persimmon tannin, yellow ochre and sumi ink, shirts colored with mugwort and adzuki beans.
The sudden popularity of these labels outside Japan can make it feel as if they are new. Yet each label has built a respectable business within Japan, some for more than a decade. Auralee was founded in 2015. A year later, Yoko Sakamoto4 started its line. A.Presse is the relative baby of this cohort at five years old.
“A couple years ago, we would have to buy off the line sheet or go to Japan and see everything,” said Saager Dilawri, the owner of Neighbour, who has an instinct for what spendy, creative types lust after. “Now I think everyone from Japan is trying to go to Paris to get into the international market.”
This movement’s “Beatles on Ed Sullivan” moment occurred in 2018, when Auralee won the Fashion Prize of Tokyo, granting the designer, Ryota Iwai, financial support. Soon after, Auralee was given a slot on the Paris Fashion Week calendar.
“I had never seen a show before, never thought to do it,” Mr. Iwai said through a translator in February, days after his latest runway show. He has now done five.
As we talked, buyers speaking different languages entered his storefront showroom and ventured upstairs to scrutinize items like a trench coat that looked as if it was made of corduroy but was actually made from cashmere and wool and an MA-1 bomber jacket with a feathery merino wool lining peeking out along the placket.
5
The Cale designer Yuki Sato travels throughout Japan to find textiles. Unusually, the company manufactures everything, including leather and denim, in one factory.
At Cale’s5 display off Place Vendôme, the designer Yuki Sato described denim trousers and pocketed work jackets as “modest, but perfectionist.” On the other side of the city, at Soshi Otsuki, whose 11-year-old label Soshiotsuki has gained attention for its warped vision of salary-man suits, I encountered buyers from Kith, a New York streetwear emporium better known for selling logoed hoodies and sell-out sneakers than for tailoring.
6
Nearly a decade into its existence, Soshiotsuki has hit a hot streak. Soshi Otsuki won the LVMH Prize in 2025, and he already has a Zara collaboration under his belt. An Asics collaboration is set to arrive in stores soon.
Talking through translators with these designers, I began to worry that it might be unfair to group them together simply because they were all from Japan. Auralee simmers with colors as lush as a Matisse canvas, while Comoli’s brightest shade is brown. Soshiotsuki6 has mastered tailoring, while Orslow is known for its faded-at-the-knee jeans channeling decades-old Levi’s.
Rather, as with the Antwerp Six design clique that sprung out of Belgium in the early 1980s, it is these labels’ origin stories that thread them together.
“They’re being encountered on their own terms and respected on their own account, and they happen to be Japanese,” said W. David Marx, the author of “Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style” and a cultural critic who has lived in Tokyo for more than two decades.
“It is a new era of Japanese fashion on the global stage,” Mr. Marx said.
A Love Affair With Japan
Western shoppers have a history of falling hard for clothes from Japan. In 1981, when Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto crashed onto the Paris fashion scene, buyers swooned for their brainy, body-shrouding creations.
7
Recently reintroduced as Number(N)ine by Takahiro Miyashita.
Years later, Number(N)ine7 and A Bathing Ape synthesized trends we would call American — grunge, streetwear and hip-hop — polished them up and sold them back to the West.
8
Years before American men were trawling the internet for A.Presse, they would scour forums for deals on Visvim’s jeans and sneakers. Today, Visvim has stores in Santa Fe, N.M.; Carmel, Calif.; and Los Angeles.
Into the 2000s, clothing geeks were swapping tips on forums like Superfuture and Hypebeast about how to use a Japanese proxy service to buy Visvim’s8 seven-eyelet leather work boots or SugarCane’s brick-thick jeans.
Along the way, “Made in Japan” became a shorthand for “made well.” This was more than fetishization. As America’s clothing factories became empty carcasses pockmarking the heartland, Japan’s apparel industry grew steroidal.
“Japan still has an incredible manufacturing base for apparel that goes all the way from the textiles to the sewing to the postproduction,” Mr. Marx said.
Today, many Japanese labels produce most of their garments and, crucially, their textiles in Japan. When I first met Mr. Iwai years ago, I asked how he managed to create such lush colors. He answered, as if noting that the sky was blue, that he worked with the factories that developed his fabrics. As I spoke with Mr. Sato in January, he shared that Cale’s factory had been in his family for generations and also produced for other Japanese brands that I would know.
Chris Green, the owner of Ven. Space, a boutique in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn that has helped to introduce a number of these labels to an American market, suggested that because Japan is a small country with a fervent fashion culture, a competitive spirit has been stoked.
“They have to be able to cut through the noise,” Mr. Green said, with brands trying to prove that their cashmere sweater can outclass their peers’, that their silks are sourced from finer factories. What’s more, he said, once these brands have nailed a design, they stick with it. That is something that is important to men, in particular, who hate when a brand abandons its favored pants after a season.
Before he opened Ven. Space in 2024, Mr. Green was an admirer of many of these labels, purchasing them during trips to Japan. As we spoke, he was wearing a pair of Comoli belted jeans that he bought five or so years ago. A similar style is still available.
Primed for What They Were Pitching
At the close of the 2010s, streetwear was running on fumes. Quiet luxury was entering at stage left. If the Row and Loro Piana were expert at subtle, fine-to-the-touch clothes, so, too, were the likes of T.T, Graphpaper and Yoko Sakamoto.
“I went from this guy that wears pear-shaped pants to just wearing, like, a denim jacket,” said Chris Maradiaga, a tech worker and freelance writer in Vancouver. His wardrobe today consists of Comoli’s black-as-night trousers and a purple-tinged coat by Ssstein. His kaleidoscopic Bode jackets gather dust.
That Ssstein clothes have landed in the closets of men on the other side of the world defies the early guidance relayed to Kiichiro Asakawa, the label’s bushy-haired designer. His “senpais,” or mentors, warned him that his reduced designs might leave Western audiences cold. “You need something powerful,” they told him.
He tried, but it wasn’t necessary. It’s the most minimal designs — his cotton gabardine zip-ups, his “easy” pleated trousers — that people are most interested in now. “It actually makes me very happy,” he said through a translator. “My instincts were right.” Mr. Asakawa won the Fashion Prize of Tokyo in 2024.
Adapting to North American Markets (and Men)
Several Japanese designers noted that they had modified their sizing to accommodate larger, American bodies.
“I’ll ask them, Can you lengthen the pants by three centimeters? Because you need that for the Western market,” Mr. Dilawri of Neighbour said, noting that the designers were receptive to those requests.
A number of labels, like Comoli and Soshiotsuki, are already oversize. That’s the look.
9
Kiichiro Asakawa ran a Tokyo boutique, Carol, before starting Ssstein in 2016. It’s still there. He, too, said he found inspiration in the everyday, for example when watching an elderly couple have dinner across a restaurant.
There is also the matter of price. On the whole, these clothes are not cheap. See Auralee’s silk bomber jacket, which could be military surplus but feels stolen from a sultan’s palace. It’s roughly $1,700. Ssstein’s9 Carhartt cousin chore jacket with a cowhide collar and a factory-massaged fade? About $1,000. Anyone who has traveled recently in Japan, where the yen is tantalizingly weak, will tell you that these Japanese-made clothes, after being imported, are far pricier in North America.
Yet, as luxury fashion labels continue to price out the aspirational middle-class shopper, many of those same shoppers have convinced themselves that the Japanese labels are a better value. A cashmere coat at Prada is $10,000, and you’ll need $1,690 to own a cotton-blend cardigan from Margiela. Similar pieces from Japanese labels can be half that price, or less.
“Brands like Bottega, Balenciaga, the Row — all that stuff — are so unobtainable,” said Mr. Kirkland, whose clothing budget has shifted to A.Presse. “I will never be in that price bracket,” he added, “but I’m wealthy enough to buy a chore coat for $800.”
Of course, Mr. Kirkland and all of the fans of these labels could own a chore coat for far less — but then it wouldn’t be “Made in Japan.”
-
Lifestyle8 minutes agoYou’re Invited! (No, You’re Not.) It’s the Latest Phishing Scam.
-
Education14 minutes agoOhio State Details Relationship that Led to Former President Walter Carter Jr.’s Resignation
-
Technology20 minutes agoBEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN
-
World26 minutes agoLandlords allegedly posting ‘Muslim-only’ apartment ads in violation of country’s equality act: report
-
Politics32 minutes agoLeavitt explains why Iran’s seizure of two ships doesn’t violate Trump’s ceasefire
-
Health38 minutes agoHighly contagious stomach bug spreads fast, hitting certain patients hardest
-
Sports44 minutes agoWWE to hold premium live event in Saudi Arabia amid Iran ceasefire
-
Technology50 minutes agoToyota’s CUE7 robot shoots hoops using AI