
LOT – A subscription-based service which distributes a basic set of clothing - state
https://www.lot2046.com/
======
allenz
This is by Lapka co-founder Vadik Marmeladov.

[https://twitter.com/vadikmarmeladov/status/85147501833262284...](https://twitter.com/vadikmarmeladov/status/851475018332622848)

In 2013, before Lapka was acquired: "He was dressed head-to-toe in tailored
black garments... he confessed to me that one day, if his company ever got
big, every employee would dress this way. “That’s the dream, anyway,” he said
with a self-effacing laugh."

[https://www.fastcodesign.com/3050743/why-airbnb-just-
bought-...](https://www.fastcodesign.com/3050743/why-airbnb-just-bought-a-
quirky-russian-industrial-design-firm)

See also his personal site
[http://www.vadikmarmeladov.com/](http://www.vadikmarmeladov.com/) which
showcases similar design principles and includes "our Codes of Practice":

1\. Wear the uniform

2\. Think long term (like 30 years from now)

3\. Build stories and languages, not things

4\. Create your own universe

8\. Do not build utilitarian products. However, use them as a medium to
express yourself

20\. Move to LA

23\. Use only one font, just a few colors, and just a few shapes

28\. Remind yourself daily: you and everyone you know will die

30\. We are 2046 kids

~~~
microcolonel
Too bad it sounds a bit nihilist-marxist (a hundred million dead kind of bad
ideas), if it were not associated with that it would be a cool thing.

~~~
beaconstudios
nihilism (or more broadly, existentialism) is not directly tied to marxism.
Both are materialist philosophies, but taking one does not require that you
take the other. "Fuck the corporations" is also a pretty common attitude on
the right as well as the left.

~~~
humanrebar
The right distrusts both public (government) and private (monopolistic
corporate) bureaucracies as oppressive. The left gives more of a pass to
government bureaucracies because they have faith that they can be
democratically checked.

~~~
twoquestions
Careful with that wide brush of yours, there's a whole multidimensional
universe of political alignments out there that are obscured by the American
'Left' and 'Right'.

------
adjkant
For those who think Soylent provides too much taste and want to express that
thought externally, but just aren't quite sure how.

~~~
zedadex
Turns out those folks in the 1984 commercial were just economically like-
minded individuals who decided on conformance as an ideal for mass-producable
lifestyle goods with a collectively minimized footprint

and that regrettably misguided soul was disrupting their crowdfunded marginal-
cost movie night

:(

------
jressey
Protip: Hanes t-shirts are about $7 at target, boxers $12/3 at T.J. Maxx. Get
good, comfortable shoes, no matter the price.

This is insane, but a work of art if it's parody.

~~~
intoverflow2
> Hanes t-shirts are about $7 at target

How do they feel on your skin? I've been wearing AA triblend tshirts for I
think over 10 years now. With their recent closure in my country I tried a few
other high street brands that were a lot cheaper, looked the same but felt
like sandpaper on my skin compared to what I was used to.

~~~
emodendroket
The main thing against my skin daily is undershirts I buy from Costco and they
feel pretty good.

~~~
sharkweek
The kirkland signature ones? those are my favorite

------
garethsprice
Really like the totality of the aesthetic here - clothing, skincare, music...
Nicely put together. Love it as an art project.

My thoughts are that the tattoo machine is the boondoggle piece that helps
position the collection - it's fairly common in high fashion collections or
new brands positioning themselves.

For example, Warby Parker's monocle, Saint Laurent's $1,200 roller skates and
guitar cases, Hermes' $500 riding crops - complicated and impractical pieces
not really meant for mass consumption, but they create conversation and help
position the statement the designer is making.

~~~
RubenSandwich
I didn't think of that, but that makes sense. I first saw the tattoo machine
and was instantly turned off because it broke the minimalistic and utilitarian
vibe of the rest of the collection. Also, I wouldn't trust myself or any of my
friends to give me a tattoo... I'd rather go to a professional for that, the
internet is already filled with bad tattoos.

------
liber8
The footer on the subscribe page quotes Jerimiah 29:11 (" For I know the plans
I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.") and lists this coordinate
(32.7663,-117.1293), which googlemaps says is on a hillside above the 805
freeway in San Diego.

This is clearly a treasure hunt or an art project, right?

edit: also, the instagram is pretty artsy:
[https://www.instagram.com/lot2046/](https://www.instagram.com/lot2046/)

~~~
utternerd
Interestingly the coordinates I get in the footer are 33.6751, -117.7339 which
is some undeveloped land inside the Orange County Great Park - perhaps what it
gives back is based on GeoIP?

~~~
psiclops
Yeah I wasn't getting coordinates till I turned off ublock

------
pbnjay
Alright I'll bite... $49 is some cheap entertainment and I'm totally intrigued
at this point!

My only fear at this point is that it's completely legit and someone actually
thinks this is a good business.

Subscription confirmation:
[http://imgur.com/PKVip3w](http://imgur.com/PKVip3w)

~~~
gotrecruit
jesus christ... seriously? a few months ago, i started a subscription box
service with a friend and so far we've made only one single sale. our product
is food related, and although we have plenty of competitors, we believe we
offer some of the best value for boxes out there. yet, no matter what we do,
it seems we have difficulty converting sales. our price tiers start at only 10
bucks!

and yet, something like this... which seems ridiculous to me... people are
actually willing to pay $49 just for "entertainment"? just for fun, to see
what comes in the box? damn it... that is some serious marketing magic. you
even think it's "cheap"! i'm genuinely either impressed by the person who
started this (or stuff like this), or just baffled by those who actually pay
for it.

~~~
pbnjay
TBH If it's a food-related box for only $10 then I wouldn't expect to be
getting quality. Don't compete on price! There's no "entertainment" value in
eating cardboard (no dig on you, i have no idea what your value prop is or any
details beyond "food related" and "only 10 bucks"). I also have plenty of
opportunities to eat well where I am.

For $49 I'm getting something I can at least wear for a year. I know a lot of
people (not me personally) who would pay $49 for a good t-shirt from some
fashion brands. I'll get a few more things than a t-shirt.

The "marketing magic" certainly piques my interest, but lets face it you can't
even get decent seats at a concert for $49.

Also I want to be clear: if this sucks and isn't worth $49... I'll clearly
cancel after one month. There's no committment period that I agreed to...

~~~
gotrecruit
Actually, we really do ship out quality products even for our lowest tier box.
I sell candy boxes, and we never procure second-rate products for our boxes -
always premium brands, premium products. our goal from the start is that,
because our business model is designed not to profit from the candy sales but
from other derivative or peripheral services instead, we have absolute zero
concern about making profit on our boxes. which means that we will always find
the best ratio between shipping weight and box weight in order to make sure
our customers get the most value for their money, which is to say for what you
receive, you are unlikely to be able to put together the same box for the same
price. not to mention, as we source directly in asia, we get access to
interesting seasonal or limited edition flavors only available in asia, which
as a candy lover myself can be really awesome and exciting.

------
gergles
Sizes 28-34 on the pants, which I think will exclude a large potion of the
market that would pay $50 a month to have clothes mailed to them.

~~~
tutufan
It's clearly satire. But even in satire, fat guys like me are left out... :-/

------
Benjammer
What in the world is a full tattooing kit doing in there?

~~~
jwilk
It ensures that people don't think it's serious.

------
otto_ortega
What kind of joke is this?

Who on Earth needs a new set of clothes EACH month, all looking the same?

If it is some sort of art project attempt, well... then I guess it is beyond
what I can grasp as I can't figure the point of it.

~~~
jpalomaki
Because you want to avoid making unnecessary choices. Having to decide when to
order new to replace old is one extra thing that will take cycles from
something more important.

[https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-steve-jobs-wore-
the-s...](https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-steve-jobs-wore-the-same-
outfit-every-day-f792072f7ecf)

~~~
literallycancer
Exactly. It's minimalism at it finest.

~~~
epicide
This isn't minimalism. The clothes themselves are of a minimalist art style,
but the service is elitist and wasteful.

If you want to only have simple clothing, that's perfectly fine. If you don't
want to have to spend a lot of thought on clothing, that's awesome! I'm the
same way.

However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a
schedule is extremely wasteful. It's basically planned obsolescence in
clothing form. It is just as simple to go find a few articles of clothing you
really like and wear those until they are no longer wearable, then donate/sell
and replace.

Minimalism is about maximizing the value out of things you own while
minimizing their impact on your life. This accomplishes neither.

~~~
literallycancer
>Minimalism is about maximizing the value out of things you own while
minimizing their impact on your life. This accomplishes neither.

That's largely a matter of personal taste.

>However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a
schedule is extremely wasteful.

High price doesn't necessarily imply wastefulness, unless you mean that you
are wasting money? But that's a function of your earning potential, not only
the item price.

It's only wasteful if you end up with too many pieces. If you know your
t-shirts last 2 years on average, and you need 12 of them, they getting a new
one every 2 months is no more wasteful than any other purchasing pattern that
keeps you stocked.

------
kimburgess
Completely appreciate this is not for everyone, but this looks fucking
amazing.

I've been wrapping myself in mainly the same setup from
[https://outlier.nyc/](https://outlier.nyc/) for the past 5 years and have
been looking at subscription clothing servies pretty intensely for the past
month. This is the first I've seen that's not just turbo-generic or overtly
loud fashion.

There's a few other places that are popping up doing personalised, laser cut,
tailored t-shirts that are definitely competing for attention, but will be
giving this a test run for staples.

~~~
thenomad
_There 's a few other places that are popping up doing personalised, laser
cut, tailored t-shirts_

Links please? I'd love to find a good online source for tailored T-shirts.

~~~
jnwatson
Thank you for succinctly distilling down the generation gap between my
generation and those born after.

~~~
thenomad
You may be surprised. I'm not the median age for HN.

I do, however, like tailored clothes, because they look good. To the best of
my knowledge, that's not a generation-specific thing.

------
_red
1 Year = $588

1 Cap, 6 t-shirts, 12 underwear, 1 jacket, 12 socks, 2 necklaces, 2 pair
shoes, 3 pants, 4 sweatshirts

Uh huh...

~~~
beaconstudios
For the wealthy cyberpunk on the go

------
mtalantikite
2046 is a movie by Wong Kar-wai and was recently shown as part of a scifi
series at Metrograph called "The Singularity" here in NYC.

I mention it because part of the plot revolves around a place called 2046,
where nothing ever changes and in which people try to travel to in order to
find lost loves.

~~~
zirkonit
Vadik Marmeladov's manifesto, which was penned in 2016, instructs as a rule #2
to think 30 years ahead, and finishes with “We are year 2046 kids”. This is
clearly a reference to this.

------
splawn
This seems like it could be an ARG or something. I like it, it's intriguing.

~~~
lfowles
I'm getting that vibe too. On the floss packaging: 3:23PM 12/02/2017 IS THE
LAST HOUR

~~~
dsr_
It feels a little like TRAVELERS -- they should be in production on their
second season now. S1 is on Netflix.

The TRAVELERS are from a crapsack future; they're here in our time to change
that. This is the sort of thing that might be useful for them.

------
beaconstudios
interesting how what seems to be a dystopian-aesthetic brand has chosen to
include a tattoo kit as an essential.

also, what exactly is a "team" in this context?

~~~
gnode
Probably some kind of anarchist group.

~~~
gerikson
Anarchists who wear exactly the same clothing?

I think it's more the modern Heaven's Gate cult, saves a lot of time not
asking members to shop for themselves!

~~~
beaconstudios
> Anarchists who wear exactly the same clothing?

I think GP was referencing the black bloc tactic.

~~~
gnode
Exactly.

------
sirdavid
This could be a viral site for the third season of 12 Monkeys.

The future timeline started in 2043, and I'm pretty sure the future timeline
is now somewhere roughly around the year 2046 now.

Season 3 starts in May.

*edit, changed final to THIRD season

------
stoic
Dr Bronner's meets Project Mayhem?

~~~
adfm
His name is Robert Paulson.

------
bkmartin
I tried to subscribe... with test card data just to see if it would call out
to a processor... It did not work, but I didn't get any errors on the
screen... here is the console...
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzFTPlMnM3weVZvMV9wNW1qRzQ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzFTPlMnM3weVZvMV9wNW1qRzQ/view?usp=sharing)

------
DKnoll
That got a lot more interesting as I scrolled down.

I like the aesthetic.

------
vgprice
Damn this is edgy.

------
frik
It got more bizarre further down

"LOT 0018 — tattoo kit; coil tattoo machine"

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The image appears to have a capacitor (? it's green, which is unusual) just
randomly poking out at the bottom-right. I'm assuming that's a doctored image.

I also get a couple of strange images:

* One says "TT" and has the Manx triskelion, suggesting a relationship to the Isle of Mann motorcycle race, The TT.

* One says "poslednee gac" in cyrillic script, presumably "Last Hour" in Russian.

* One shows a tight shot of a large piece of heavy equipment, painted white and with a whiteboard with intriguing notes written on "Impete Forman / 3 Heat sheets from training / ..." or somesuch. [appears to refer to Kearny volunteer fire house in LA?]

* Another shows a man, wearing the garb supposed to be on sale, astride a black motorbike.

* Yet another shows an arrangement of 2048 in the stones stuck to the tyre of that motorbike.

* Another again quotes the Bible and has a large "60", but has a phone number "+1628 444 97 91" which appears to be a Russian number.

* And so on.

The music appears to be a serious of multiples of beats with some ambient
sound and a small amount of speech. I'm guessing at least part of it can be
interpreted as hex and converted to ascii or something similar. Later there is
some chanting and partial word elements with scrambled speech too.

My best guess is viral marketing for a movie/tv-show at this point. I thought
of Mr Robot, but it seems 12 Monkeys like from what little I remember seeing.

Whatever it is it's well made with a good degree of intrigue IMO.

~~~
gergles
> * Another again quotes the Bible and has a large "60", but has a phone
> number "+1628 444 97 91" which appears to be a Russian number.

It's +1 628 444 9791, it's a US phone number. It just says "We're sorry, the
person you called has a voice mailbox that has not been set up yet."

The Russian country code is 7.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I just Google it and it came up in a Wiki of phone numbers with Russian
details, but thanks.

------
emodendroket
If you don't care how you look just save yourself some money and go to Wal-
Mart.

~~~
lojack
This is for people who care about how they look but don't want to put the
effort into thinking about it.

~~~
emodendroket
They sell nondescript basics at old-fashioned stores too, you know.

------
cwyers
Who on earth needs new shoes every six months?

~~~
DocTomoe
Anyone who walks a lot (which a lot more people, especially desk warriors like
us, should do - it's healthy).

I burn through some pretty heavy-duty hiking sports shoes every four to five
months at 20000 steps a day. I would expect less-well-made shoes like the ones
on that site last three months at most.

~~~
mijoharas
Are you sure? I average about 10,000 steps a day (thanks android wear!) in
some normal beat up old trainers and they only get replaced about every 3
years.

It should be mentioned that this is walking in a city, I use hiking boots when
I go to the countryside, I guess the wear could be different...

~~~
emodendroket
You can keep wearing shoes that long but they're not really supporting your
feet very well.

~~~
sooheon
Your feet evolved to be walked on, it's a myth that they need "support". They
just need protection.

~~~
emodendroket
I trust my podiatrist over people trying to sell me Five Fingers shoes.

Also notice how easily I can change this argument: "Your teeth evolved to be
eaten with. It's a myth that they need 'brushing.'"

~~~
sooheon
FYI I have never worn or owned Five Fingers, much less tried to sell them to
others.

You don't change the mechanics of your teeth by brushing them, you just clean
them. It's akin to cleaning your feet. The equivalent of "support" for feet
would be if you put molded resin chompers over your own teeth every time you
ate.

And the history of medicine has been one of medical professionals being wrong
--you'd do well to take advantage of their services but also be critical.

------
troyvit
Finally, a place evil overlords can go to dress all their hench-people.

------
JohnJamesRambo
If the people that made Watch Dogs made a clothing line...

------
tankenmate
Cayce Pollard

~~~
tucosan
This is what I thought of immediately. Cayce Pollad Units:

> CPUs for the meeting, reflected in the window of a Soho specialist in mod
> paraphernalia, are a fresh Fruit T-shirt, her black Buzz Rickson's MA-1,
> anonymous black skirt from a Tulsa thrift, the black leggings she'd worn for
> Pilates, black Harajuku schoolgirl shoes. Her purse-analog is an envelope of
> black East German laminate, purchased on eBay if not actual Stasi-issue then
> well in the ballpark. She sees her own gray eyes, pale in the glass, and
> beyond them Ben Sherman shirts and fishtail parkas, cufflinks in the form of
> the RAF roundel that marked the wings of Spitfires. CPUs. Cayce Pollard
> Units. That's what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either
> black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without
> human intervention. What people take for relentless minimalism is a side
> effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has
> resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is,
> literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have
> been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and
> 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very
> austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult. — Pattern
> Recognition, 2. "Bitch", page 8.[9]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayce_Pollard#Apparel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayce_Pollard#Apparel)

------
then00b
All I needed to see to be sure this is an ARG or marketing stunt is the $299
tier package being "SOLD OUT"

------
horusthecat
Pretty sure I already saw THX1138, but I imagine what with the median age
here, most haven't

------
tobltobs
Nice and all. Please tell us what the tattoo kit is doing there.

------
rpazyaquian
Is this viral marketing for a TV show or something?

------
gt565k
Consumerism at its finest.

New clothes every month? ...

------
skocznymroczny
LOT is the name of the Polish national airlines, might be confusing to some
customers.

------
threepipeproblm
Does it come in Hamburglar?

------
if_by_whisky
I've always wanted to start my own fight club. Bookmarked.

------
jgillich
The site takes forever to load on my 1mbit mobile connection.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I see your problem, at 1 milli-bit per second that page is going to take ...
500 years.

------
infinitone
So... did anyone sub?

~~~
alexandersingh
Immediately. This is right up my alley :)

------
ris
At least it'll make the douches easy to spot.

------
delinka
This simply must be a joke.

"LOT 0018 — tattoo kit;"

------
jlebrech
interesting, aka cult starter kit.

------
kazagistar
It's like a shitty version of the numerous fashion subscription services out
there.

