“Hartz-IV Fashion”

An identity-protected reader sent along a link to an article (apparently traslated from German) about a “Berlin cut-price label” called Picaldi. It’s easy to think the European consumer as always being a refined, couture-wearing type, “not saving up their welfare money to buy the knockoff jeans that some tier 3 rapper wore on an album cover,” this reader observes.

But the latter scenario is pretty much what Picaldi is all about. One of its signature products is described in the story as jeans “that are more or less a direct Diesel rip-off,” and apparently quite popular with euro-mooks. So check it out, and get conversant with rappers Bushido and Eko Fresh, and what exactly “Hartz-IV fashion” means. Hartz-IV, I’ll just go ahead and tell you, is “German welfare money,” according to the article.