Companies (Burberry is mentioned, but it goes unsaid that others engage in it) routinely burn stock to preserve exclusivity[1]. It's a pretty serious issue.
[1] https://www.vogue.com/article/fashion-waste-problem-fabrics-...
This is a very niche feature of low volume brands.
This is exactly it. The actual landed cost is 1/10th of the sales price, and most of the rest of the margin pads the marketing and exclusivity machine. If for instance LV starts selling their $200-landed Neverfull bags at $500 or even $1,000, all the infrastructure sustaining the image becomes unsustainable.
My personal opinion is that the business model of selling status items - specifically those which only have status because of an artificially limited supply they control - is inherently predatory and should be restricted. Not because I'm the morality police and want to stop people from buying a bag that says "I spent $2000 on a bag", but because there is nothing that stops the company from cost-reducing that to oblivion. If you are going to sell a $2,000 bag, it should be marketed on quality, not a cult.
Clothing has been used as wealth/class indicator for thousands of years, trying to change that will be extremely difficult lift.
IMO selling the clothes to people that otherwise couldn't afford them is always better than destroying them, so EU is doing the right thing here.
That is a feature, not a bug. Risk-taking in "apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear" which results in wasted resources is not something to incentivise.
We wouldn’t have 99% of the technological advancements we’ve made without a fuckton of failure and waste.
The "fuckton of failure and waste" which has brought technological advancements to humanity didn't come from destroying unsold clothing, and the risks involved in actual technological advancements are orders of magnitude larger than the risk of not being able to destroy unsold consumer products without penalty.
Premium brands really don't want to seel it UNLESS it's to the right people for the high price: https://fashionlawjournal.com/deadstock-destruction-why-fash...
I understand this argument in engineering and medical fields, but in clothing industry, does incentivising risk and innovation really matter that much?