$600 for sneakers that look like they’ve been run over twice and dragged through a mosh pit? Golden Goose built a brand on selling artificial distress as luxury, and people actually buy it?!
Golden Goose is a clothing/sneaker brand founded in 2000 in Italy by Francesca Rinaldo and Alessandro Gallo. The entirety of their brand is built around selling old and dirty-looking shoes. Somehow, the brand manages to sell dirty and worn-looking shoes for hundreds of dollars. How do they do it?!
The entirety of the Golden Goose brand is their “lived-in” look, which is accomplished by applying distressed finishing techniques to their sneakers, creating an intentionally worn-in aesthetic. However, if I wanted dirty shoes, I would just do that myself.
To me, this has to be some marketing scheme; there has got to be something that we consumers don’t know. Just take a look at these pairs of shoes on the website, the “Women’s Running Sole in black nappa and suede” is selling for $660! Or these “Women’s Super-Star in silver leather with contrasting inserts” for $575. I just want to know who is buying this? Is this a money laundering scheme? Are there actually people dumb enough to buy these?
This isn’t fashion, this is lazy product making disguised as modern art. Who is paying hundreds for shoes that look like you found them in a dumpster? Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and wearing ripped jeans, but dirty shoes? Really? Is this what fashion has come to?
