Kanye’s $120 T-Shirt vs. One Direction’s $2 Million Champagne

In the past week or so a couple of stories of celebrities and money caught my eye. I don’t usually write about celebrities (much less pseudo-celebrities who didn’t do anything for their fame), but every now and again it is worth taking a look for a little perspective.

The first story is about One Direction’s Liam Payne buying a $2 million bottle of champagne for his friend. Who hasn’t splurged a couple of million a good friend, right? The news story cited that he took home around 7.5 million (converting from pounds to dollars) last year. It seems like that was a gift of around 25% of his earnings, which is pretty sizable for anyone. Even worse, it’s not an asset as they drank it. Not since Montgomery Brewster mailed an extremely rare stamp has so much money been blown so quickly.

The other story that caught the attention was that Kayne West is selling plain white T-shirts for $120. If you are looking to get in on that, tough luck, they are already sold out.

When I first heard these stories, I had an idea to write an article asking the readers “Which is worse?” Now I see the stories as two very different things. Liam Payne’s decision seems to be a wreckless waste of his own money while Kanye seems to be simply maximizing his business potential and taking advantage of his fans (in my opinion).

As for the people themselves, I recently learned that One Direction is not same band as One Republic, and not at all related to the New Directions on the TV show Glee. I also don’t know much about Kanye other than his famous rant during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at an awards show.

Here’s what I do know. Macklemore needs to do a follow-up to Thrift Shop. The $50 Gucci T-shirt he raps about “getting tricked by a business” is a bargain compared to Kanye’s $120 t-shirts.