Rae Dunn: I made this imperfect simple functional thing and it's beautiful Karens: yes, I'LL TAKE THEM ALL AND SHOVE THEM INTO CABINETS AND NEVER USE THEM!!!
You can say that about pretty much any pottery that supplies other stores. All the home-owned pottery factories here closed decades ago, the surviving ones downsized and outsourced a lot of their everyday production to China etc. They just keep the factory for tourists and a few FANCY artisan pieces so they can boast about it. To make more than say…. 20-50 pieces a day at a PUSH, you’re going to stop hand making stuff and start casting stuff (maybe by hand). And you can cast whatever “imperfections” you like. (And sometimes you squish them getting them out and somehow that’s too imperfect 👀) I used to work for a small pottery that went through bouts of licensing/outsourcing/etc. One large store finding you in some small shop, calling you up and wanting 2000 by next month. Cool. I like money. And then it all went out of control as soon as it left the building. And you neither have the space or the staff to expand so rapidly, especially if it’s only for one summer or whatever. People selling things that didn’t exist yet, and like…. Selling 50000 of them. Translations. Wtf is “coral”- IT LOOKS LIKE CORAL TO ME! 😤 Very different quality control. Colours that literally can’t be sourced in that country. By the thirteenth alteration you kinda give up and approve stuff just because it’s the best of a bad bunch, everything takes so long and you’re running out of time (and you signed a contract and are screwed) I don’t have a clue about the cult though. America’s wild. Without the handmade, it looks like a dollar store buy and I don’t see the appeal in something so plain. It’s fine. I don’t hate it. But I’m not fighting for it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it here in stores. Being ignored. I should sell it, ship internationally and make my fortune! I bet she just wants to make things with chaotic busy flowers and never wants to look at a word on white ever again. But that won’t sell. Tldr. Yep. But money!
As a former Homegoods employee, I will never not be annoyed at the very mention of Rae Dunn. We had to discontinue selling them in my store for a while because some women mistakenly thought employees were hiding Rae Dunn stuff and were stalking us and writing down our license plate numbers.
I smugly watched this as a mom who has never heard of Rae Dunn. I thought that I had no idea what the video was referring to. Until she held up the Create. container. Then I slowly realized that the script looked familiar. I had a notebook. It was given to me by sis in law. I ran to my bedroom in a frenzy and flipped the notebook over. RAE DUNN. I literally shook my fist in the air in defeat. I have been infected.
My sister's baby was given a shirt with the same fonts. Yes, Rae Dunn. We are in the Philippines, the clothes were sent as a gift from our aunt in California
@@hanklin0707 same here. When she said Rae Dunn had an imperfectly sculpted look to it, I ran to the kitchen, remembering the mug my sister got me as a gift. You’ll never guess what was on the bottom...
Turning an artist's desire to use imperfection to show that an item was made by a human into identically imperfect mass-produced items made by machines is peak capitalism.
my mom loves Rae Dunn, and my favorite part is how all of the ‘imperfections’ are the same on each mug. the dents on each mug are mass-produced, so they manufacture them to have little imperfections and that’s so funny to me.
Oh my gosh. That makes sense. So much sense. Why was I thinking that there was dozens of people making them and that it was a quality control pwrsons dream because hey they don't have to be perfect! Damn.
@@noodlepoodle3582 its also really tacky i mean the labeling is just silly,, its like labeling everything in your house and calling it fashion. Like I know those are eggs, I know that's sugar, what in the world.
it is actually so dystopian to me that people are so obsessed over mass produced “imperfect” pottery that literally has identical “imperfections.” there’s so many unique small creators whose work is infinitely more appealing to me
I have a cookware jar I put spoons and spatulas and various things in made by my friend. It has beautiful imperfections and looks way better than this mass-produced stuff.
draakgast oh my God your comment just spoke to my soul… I thought I was the only one that doesn't get the appeal of those ugly Funko pop things. Atrocious and lazy. All the faces are exactly the same.
Imagine the teens of the next generation loving the vintage minimalistic aesthetic and the craze starts up all over again, except this time its for rare old pieces 😭
All the comments about "the thrill of the hunt" of these moms trying to track down pottery like it's an addiction, I'm just thinking... we need to introduce these women to the world of Shiny Pokemon hunting. Let them go ham on their Switch
Unironically yes. When my gacha addiction got really bad I turned to shiny hunting. Scratches the same itch, doesn't break my budget, lets me indulge in a fond hyperfixation :)
I also feel anxiety when I look at this stuff. I don’t want my own stuff to tell me what to do and what to feel. “Mix. Stir. Stay. Hope.” I’m not gonna be bossed around by my dishes. It also reminds me of something Marie Kondo pointed out in her book: constant exposure to printed words is deceptively stimulating and can be truly exhausting
Wow I couldn’t put my finger on what was so unsettling about them but that’s exactly it! All those one-word imperatives jumping out at you visually feel like intrusive thoughts, somehow. Imagining having a whole shelf of them stresses me out
@@TheFluorescentFish Yeah, it's annoying wherever you find it. A lot of ads take that imperative tone, too. I think I'd be more interested in the stuff, though, if it said something odd... like "Eat and grow fat!"
There’s also something very unsettling about the font itself. It wouldn’t look out of place on some Halloween decor, but instead it is an “inspiring” or instructive word on a stark white piece of minimalist pottery and it just feels Wrong and Menacing.
I feel like this has probably been the case for hundreds of years, (if not longer) but no one really talks about it. Mom groups are the true Illuminati! But joking aside, Mothers are often the unwritten but very true Head of the Home in traditional western culture (and probably eastern, but I don't know enough to say for sure) the motivational power and knowledge passed down from mothers to their children like language and emotionally-tied-morals/values is often unappreciated/unregistered. for example, historically, Mom groups in Victorian England had HUGE buying power for fashion, home decor, etc. You think the fathers/husbands told the staff what wallpaper to purchase and put up? HELL NO. It was the mothers.
It's not brilliant art, but Rae Dunn isn't going to go bankrupt any time soon. So, wherever she may be, she's wiping her tears with hundred dollar bills. She made something, regardless of how stupid these dishes and knicknacks may be, it is worth something to enough people who hoard these products. Innovation, in this instance, is a matter of opinion as it seems very successful
As a TJ Maxx employee, I can confirm these people exist and are extremely aggressive. We once had two women get in a fist fight over a serving platter. I hate Rae Dunn with every fiber of my being, but watching these women fight over boring ass pottery is the highlight of my day. It’s like going to the zoo.
I mean... they could take a pottery class and write words on their homework. Shoot, get a thrift shop plate and a sharpie... This whole thing is so weird!
This reminds me of the die-hard cloth diaper mommy groups for brands like Applecheeks. There are some discontinued colors that have sold for over $600. For a single diaper. Over six hundred dollars for a single diaper.
I work at tj and the Rae Dunn moms scare me. Our policies for when and how we put out stock changed because of them. I once told I woman I wasn't allowed to just grab her some Rae Dunn she saw through the window to our back room and she started cursing and demanded to speak to a manager. When the manager told her the same thing she accused my manager of not really being the manager....
@@zebraloverbridget how is it less explicit even? Nazis probably said similar shit like "lächeln fraulein" or something, I dunno, I don't speak angry compound words, But my point stands "Live , laugh, love" is culty shit
This is why I’m glad my aesthetic leans more towards maximalism, I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on pottery unless it looks like an ancient greek psykter or something from the Ming dynasty
Bath and Body Works is another store that I see people spending absurd amounts of money collecting from. They'll buy hundreds of candles and body products even though the body products have a limited shelf life.
I personally like Bath and Body Works, though I don't have a huge collection. I can attest on people obssessing on it. Lots of resellers in my country and it's a popular gift among adult women (especially the perfumes & lotions).
Wow, Bath and Body Works is still a thing? I used to be into it when I was in middle school and high school. That’s where I would go to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for my friends and family because I could actually afford the stuff there.
The most frustrating thing is people still buying me those giant gift sets from bath and body. I’m an adult women, I don’t want to wear “watermelons lemonade” body spray. I have two pricier perfumes I invest on that last me two years, and no matter how many times I tell people, they’ll buy me those sets with 28439;9 middle school perfumes and lotions. I appreciate anyone who gives me a gift, but I have no way to offload all this.
I feel like the Targets Bullseye playground items, Starbucks cups, and Hobby Lobby seasonal items are also apart of the ‘what feels like a cult but isn’t a cult’ category 😬
Yes on the Target stuff! I follow a couple Instagram pages that show it and I never actually find the items in my stores. The bullseye areas are almost always picked pretty much clean.
my sister works for starbucks and is also in a fb group for employees and i 100% agree on the cult of the cups. people are truly wild and the posts on that group really show how cutthroat some people can get over the "high-value" cups
Yes!!! God forbids I want one freakin cauldron candle to put in my halloween decor....when in stumble upon two or three resellers literally ripping apart boxes to fill their carts. What is wrong with society and making a decent living at a normal job. Nope...imma buy up ALL THE STUFF and resell it for quadruple the price!
The Starbucks cups 100% 😭 anytime there’s a limited cup that I’m actually like “oh that’s cute, I’d like that” NEVER AVAILABLE cuz the cultys have to buy all the merch up immediately 😭
I worked at [TJX store] when Rae Dunn got huge, and we would have people opening boxes off U-boats or peeking into the back room looking for it on the daily. It got to the point where we couldn't put any Rae Dunn items on hold, or even tell people over the phone what items we had in stock. And yes, we recognized all of the Rae Dunn women as they power walked to the back of the store at 9:30am, and we were warned to stay out of their way. We eventually had to separate Rae Dunn items from everything else as it came off the truck and then we would wait to put it out on the floor until about an hour or 30 minutes before we closed.
Current TJX employee here and yeah we had to stop holds on Rae Dunn stuff as well. We also for a while did the "wait until it's almost closing to put it out" but right now the hype in our store has died down. It'll pick back up when the Halloween stuff goes back out later this year, though, for sure.
I work at T.J.Maxx too and we have to do this as well (expect we wait to put it all out in the morning before the store opens so they don’t accuse us of “hiding it from them”) lolol. They are the reason why we can’t tell people we have stuff in the back or offer to look back there bc people got jealous and said we were “picking favorites” 🙄
Ahh Rae Dunn..the very mention of that name makes me quiver. I worked in HomeGoods during the peak of the Rae Dunn craze. So many fond memories of being stalked by moms that would offer me hush money to save items for them or cuss me out for “hiding” items from them. My store created alternating daily schedules of when to put out Rae Dunn items so the morning crowd wouldn’t buy everything out. I would scatter items throughout the store in obscure places and watch them go on a treasure hunt for fun. This lady I worked with got fired for operating her own lil reseller market on the side lol. Good times!
I'm a middle-aged mom who has no interest in Rae Dunn and has never purchased any but I have literally lost friendships with people who got so obsessed with it that they "didn't have time for anyone who wasn't a collector." 🤷♀️
Love minimalist hoarding. 😂 That 'clean, simple, tidy' aesthetic kind of goes away when you have 500 pieces of aesthetic pottery cluttering everything.
Omg yes" I had a tiktok on my fyp about a mom being like: Iam going to declutter the shit out of my kitchen today. As the timelapse went on I saw this huge Rae Dunn collection in the back. Needless to say that wasnt tackled at all haha
I worked at a liquor store for a while. We opened at 10am, and would always have people waiting to come in and get their morning fix. A lot of them would be in a rush because they needed it. I later worked at a Marshalls. We got Rae Dunn stuff all the time. Easter, ceramic Rae Dunn eggs. Halloween, ceramic Rae Dunn pumpkins. Christmas, Ceramic Rae Dunn Christmas trees. The rich suburban moms would be waiting at the door each morning waiting to rush in and get their Rae Dunn fix. Sometimes they would argue over who got there first and sometimes that led to altercations. The parallels between the alcoholics and the Rae Dunn moms made me realize that you can be addicted to anything.
i have one(1) raw dunn item, a mug gifted to me that reads “honey”, and i keep it turned around on my shelf because the font makes it feel like it’s screaming at me.
i didn’t realize my parents had 2 rae dunn mugs until this video lmao. they’ve got a “hubby” and a “wifey” mug and that was just because my dad wanted to find something cute for their wedding anniversary
"I spent nearly $15k in 6 months." That would bankrupt me. I wouldn’t be able to pay rent. I cannot imagine the kind of credit card debt this person must have. I was laughing up until this point and now I’m just sad lol
15k is like, a cheap car. 15k is rent for over a year. Im spending probably 3k on my honeymoon... i cant imagine being someone that spends, lets be real, thousands of their husband’s money on what? Decor????? Christ save these people
*A pottery artist:* I think I'll put some silly little words on my product :) *Every soccer mom in North America:* you could make a religion out of this!
In 2016 I was dealing with transitioning from high school to college, as well as the death of my grandmother, and during that time I got really into collecting vaporwave cassettes. That niche was starting to explode around that time, and buying them filled the social hole that had grown in my life. Once I took stock of what I had, I realized that I had about 60 or 70 tapes, which at around 8-12 dollars a tape probably meant I'd spent around 600 dollars. I never felt I was an addict but I did take stock of why I was buying, and whether I needed more tapes after that, and now my music collection has slowed immensely. This video is interesting to me because it reminds me of that period of my life. Ceramics, cassettes, action figures, Pokemon cards, what have you, it's all the same really. Rae Dunn is more cottagecore than my own collecting interests, but I get why it holds these people. It's interesting then, that if you held up a mug, and for example, an anime figure, I'd say the anime figure was more worthy of value, more artistic, despite the fact that they are in essence the same, a thing we buy to fill the holes in our lives, and maybe show some friends, or flex to randos online. I don't think $500 is bad to spend on a collection if you're financially stable, as long as the joy of spending that is worth it to you. I don't necessarily think $20,000 is a problem either, if you enjoyed getting and arranging everything, and that money is spent within your means. But it's definitely good that people can step back and decide when enough is enough. Perhaps it would be good for many men to step back and look at the things they collect as though it were a china cabinet full of live laugh love mugs, and consider whether it's worth continuing to have around. There are a lot of people who might be helped by that evaluation.
@@Fopenplop OSCOB's old label Bedlam Tapes actually used to be my favorite tape label for sure, he was dropping great stuff and everything was so well presented. I was really sad when he closed it down. Dante Mars Ajeto! and Christtt both released on there, and they are definitely faves. I hope DMA comes back some day. Death's Dynamic Shroud is maybe my number 1. I consider I'll Try Living Like This to be my favorite album of all time. George Clanton/ESPRIT is super important to me, and I love how he's grown since then. Saint Pepsiand Luxury Elite of course! Vektroid! You gotta love the classics. I loved Blank Banshee back then, but for some reason I don't care for his stuff anymore, it's strange. Not HKE, heck that dude! Lmao. I hated telepath back then but now that I'm older I can fuck with some slushwave occasionally. Oh and VAPERROR! I've been listening to his DJ Camgirl project a ton this week in fact. Vaporwave was more or less my introduction to experimental electronic, indie music, interesting music in general. I listened to everybody doing interesting stuff at the time, and was super invested in following the scene. I could list people forever. Today I don't really know what's going on with vaporwave. There are some labels I keep up with, mainly Business Casual, but not many more. Reddit R/vaporwave used to be much more usable back then and was a decent central hub for the scene. Now it's moderators have RUINED IT (which everyone said it was ruined back then, but they really did it this time I swear) and everything is so scattered, I don't know how to track things beyond following individual artists. Vaporwave has blown up in terms of the money that can be made with it, and the scope of the projects it can contain though! It's really quite something. Thanks for the memory trip! Lol
i bought a rae dunn bread box at either home goods or tj maxx when i first moved into my apartment, just because i needed a simple bread box that wouldn't draw a whole lot of attention when sitting on my counter, and now i'm seriously debating putting a hefty price tag on it and make some bank off a suburban mom that is desperate to get their hands on a white ceramic box that simply reads "bread" lmaooo
My best friend in college's mom used to track her phone and call her anytime we were near a HomeGoods, Marshalls, or TJMaxx to make us check for Rae Dunn. If we didn't stop my friend's mom would threaten to turn off her phone.
You are a saint for having captions on your videos. I was heartbroken when TH-cam removed its user-submitted cations because I struggle to follow videos and would occasionally add them when especially frustrated. It’s a lot of extra work and it’s wonderful that you do it.
This reminds me of video game collectors. Scalpers, intentional scarcity, fomo, shopping addictions, "a full collection" valued more than ones you like. Maybe this is just a larger example of how capatlism creates the same envoirnments, with different types of people, over and over.
I thought I was having a stroke when you described an exclusive, financially stressful product and then held up a cheap looking little pot with a font that looks like the love child between Comic Sans and Papyrus
Came back to comment on this video because I went to Home Goods the other day, saw a bunch of Rae Dunn stuff and proceeded to way too enthusiastically tell me fiancé all the stuff I learned from this video when all of a sudden a girl pops out of an aisle excited because she knew EXACTLY which TH-cam video I was talking about. After a quick bonding moment over Swell videos, we essentially teamed up to horrify my fiancé with Rae Dunn fan information. Thank you for the best Home Goods trip ever. ❤️
I was at a marshall once and I accidentally dropped/broke a Rae Dunn craft and you'll swear I murdered someone with the looks every middle age woman gave me afterwards as I stood there trying to get an employee to help me pick it up
OH MY GOD YOU COULD GET FAMOUS IF YOU BOUGHT TON OF THIS STUFF AND JUST SMASHED IT ON CAMERA but like obviously make something out of it, like smash it to dust and then make some pots or whatever instead of just being wasteful
As a potter who is having a very hard time making sales because of the panorama, seeing people spend that much money on mass produced stuff makes me irrationally livid.
my mom’s friend is obsessed with rae dunn and she’s been complaining that they came out with a whole new pink set or something and now she has to get it, and it’s like....... you don’t, though
i'm a former gymboree employee and i'd love to see you research the crazy obsessed moms of that tbh. i only met a few myself but it was wild when i heard them asking about collections and stuff. i worked at the 'lower end' store in the chain called crazy 8 and moms would absolutely come in and be like 'well i dont really like crazy 8 because it's trashy compared to gymboree' basically because of the price point LOL likeeee
Omg my mom was one of those mom's when I was a kid, I spent so much time watching whatever knockoff Sprout channel they would have playing in the back of kids clothing stores lmao. My mom also used to save up the Gymboree/Crazy 8 promotional cash/coupons.
Ya that was my first job and I worked there for 3.5 years. I have loads of stories >.> I spent at least 60% of my income on the clothes. I started working there when my first daughter was 18 months old, she’s 9 now and I’m just finally getting rid of her old clothes.
It's not just pottery anymore -- my local Homegoods had a whole stand of Rae Dunn body towels, hand towels and kitchen towels. There was even a set of Rae Dunn bed sheets. The pillows say "ZZZ" in that font in case you forget what to do
So wabi-sabi is about appreciating the simplicity of using the natural, aged & well-worn. And our society turned it into hoarding huge collections of low quality mass produced items. That just hurts.
You have no idea how freaked out I was for a second thinking you were calling me out before I remembered "oh yeah that's the aesthetic I named myself after"
Yeah it's sad because there are artists who make really cool unique pieces that are imperfect and beautiful and just...why would you want a mass produced thingy instead ? Like I get some people genuinely prefer certain aesthetic but I'd rather have something unique if I could afford it
My boyfriend's mom got me a hand sanitizer holder from Rae Dunn and then I noticed her entire house is littered with that...I couldn't describe how it made me feel, but the cult aspect may have hit it on the head. However, she has no social media presence, so she's just blissfully unaware that every other mom has her kitchen in their house.
I have an aunt who is super into Rae Dunn and she has always had an obsessive personality and I think its probably the same for many RD collectors. I don’t think its so much about the pottery but the need to obsess over something and if it wasn’t RD, it’d be something else.
Honestly I kinda get it. My grandma was having a hard time with her mother’s death & used to go crazy and take me to a fancy China store every day. She bought EVERYTHING they had and still has a lot of the collection today but she hasn’t bought anything in like 10 years but she definitely spent hundreds. She told me later it was an outlet for her sadness and now I feel bad for people who get caught in the chase of those things.
I have a rae dun teapot, honey pot, dog treat jar and four mugs. Most of these except for the mug and dog treat container were gifts. My mom bought me the teapot and honey pot and a mug as a housewarming gift because there were bees on it and I love bees but I had no idea it had such a hold over people
My anti vax small town real estate agent MIL is a avid Rae Dunn. She has the smallest kitchen ever & sacrifices half of the useable space for stupid pottery…. It’s insane.
God. I was once one of those “wait for an hour outside of homegoods and flock the store when the doors open” collectors. For about two years, it seriously had such an intense hold on me it was absolutely ridiculous. I was all in. Apart of all the FB pages, admin of a local groups, checking Mercari various times a day. I spent so much money on this stuff I have truly put a mental blocker in my mind on how much because I would probably vomit if I knew the true number. Fast forward to now I have 100s (300 to 400 pieces) of Rae Dunn collecting dust around various parts of my house. I HATE it. I am so embarrassed about the way I used to act over pottery that I have since completely outgrown and can’t seem to get rid off. I don’t even want the hassle of selling it and have literally contemplated about just shoving it all outside my house on the curd and posting on marketplace for someone to come and get it.
Depending on how much effort, donating to a place like good will, leaving a box on your curb with a free sign taped to it. Or a garage sale. Any way to get rid of your stuff you can do
Melt it all down into a molten effigy to Rae Dunn consumerism. Turn the items into a gargantuan misshapen blob of pottery that screams into the void "MUG", "SALT", "AGONY". Maybe the last one isn't one a Rae Dunn word, but it could be.
I’m ashamed to say I was a RD collector. About 4-5 years ago (I’ve been out of the game for a couple yrs now). A closest store was 30 minutes away so I was only a casual collector. I refused to over pay for a piece I wanted so I went to an opening maybe once a week or biweekly. Those bitches are CRAZY. I wasn’t in their circle since I never went to the same store and they were legit pissed I was infringing in their territory. And they ran...sprinted when the doors opened. I never did. I live in actual farmhouse in a farm town and it was just my aesthetic. Now I’m stuck with this shit. Too many mugs and birds houses. Can’t be bothered to try to sell it because those ladies will want to buy one mug for 3 dollars and expect me to deliver it to them 40 miles away. Nope. I’ve slowly been donating it to thrift. Yes, I wasted money. I chalk it up to lesson learned. Don’t buy into the trendy collection games.
My first job was Homegoods, I worked there 50 hours a week mostly in the warehouse for about a year. My store definitely had a group of Rae Dunn women. They would all get their Starbucks and start to gather outside the doors between 7:30-8:00 even though we wouldn’t open till 9:00. They would walk in immediately and start circling the store. If we had received any Rae dun we were instructed to put it on a tank (shelves on wheels) and set it at the front of the store for the women to get. They usually would buy what they wanted from the tank or leave after 15 minutes. I would almost never see any of these women buy anything else from Homegoods. I’ve never seen a true fist fight, but definitely pushing and shoving, and trash talking. We were instructed to tell them we didn’t know when we’d get more Rae dun, which was honestly true, every shipment was completely random. Sometimes if we opened Rae dun during the afternoon we were instructed to hold it in the back till morning to avoid chaos of too many people fighting over it. One time one of the ladies tried to give me a $25 Starbucks gift card to give her insider tips on our shipments, and then asked to speak with my manager when I explained I could get fired for doing that. They seemed to be the most interested in certain Rae dun items. The traditional style was the most popular. I’m not sure if there still is, but back when I was working there we would get items with pops of color, or different fonts/decorative motifs that were Rae dun, but would almost never sell. We would joke in the back as we opened these “oh it’s Rae dun! But there’s color on it, it’s not good enough.” The first reseller I met was telling me about how the classic cookie jar can get you up to $200 with the right collector. Thank you for this video. My old coworkers and I still feel haunted by all of this. It’s hard to explain the sheer obsession these women have and how cultish it really is. Also I always recommend washing anything you buy from any TJX store before use if you can
I'm going to admit, I was an early Rae Dunn-er, back when she was just on Etsy. I had two pieces from her but the stuff fell out of my purview. I donated them to a Goodwill when I moved apartments years ago which I am totally shooting myself in the foot for now. I remember 2-3 years ago seeing in the TJ Maxx catalog that they had spooky Rae Dunn products for Halloween, where they were black with orange lettering. And that they had made spooky cat bowls that said things like "Hiss" and "Boo". Here I was, a Halloween fan needing some cat food bowls for my kitty thinking I was gonna be able to just go to my local TJ Maxx and casually pick up those bowls. Resellers on Ebay were selling them for $80/piece!
I feel like the culture around TJX is “get it now or it’ll be gone; you can always return it if you don’t want it! (But you won’t regret it).” And that kind of primed shoppers for this frenzy behavior around Rae Dunn.
as an employee this is literally exactly what we’re told to tell people, they even have us put the same clothing items away separated in the runs so it seems like there’s only one of that item in store and you need to buy it now, we’re also told to tell people there’s no stock in the back and everything we have is on the floor which is kind of true and all the commercials push the idea that if you don’t buy it now it’ll be gone tomorrow
the minute i saw this video on my recommended, i literally shivered with fear and remembrance of working at HomeGoods - one of the worst jobs i ever worked at, i distinctly remember my boss telling me that if a customer returns a rae dunn product, then we have to immediately hide it from customers or else people will brawl over it. i remember a rae dunn woman buying out a whole collection and having to painstakingly wrap every individual one. i still haven't been inside of a HomeGoods since i left and i don't intend on returning...
I used to work at HomeGoods and I was there at the grand opening for our store. We were even warned at orientation about the Rae Dunn people. Day of the grand opening there was a huge ass line of people there and most of them were just there for the Rae Dunn. I'll never forget the crowd of people who went straight for the Rae Dunn. After our first day, the Rae Dunn was all gone.
That one just makes me sad lmfaooo. I have a few bc they're adorable but like the fact that theres a whole squishmallow exchange market? and people get so vicious about it? So weird like can't anything just be simple and wholesome?
Jfc yeah we put out an entire display the other day and this couple came in 20 minutes later and literally bought every single piece we had. Probably 6 or 700 dollars worth. I can only hope they were for a cause or something
i googled them. just to look. no thought given. no effort involved. it is 15 minutes after reading this comment and i am just now pulling myself out of a haze in which i almost bought three of these little monsters. one of them was *30 dollars.*
this is so weird cause i see rae dunn stuff at marshalls all the time and i never thought about it all that much. i've never seen 'rae dunn women' and there's always stuff laying around even near closing time
Rae Dunn peaked at my store about 2-3 years ago. The first time I heard the name was from a call at our store asking if we had any Rae Dunn. I ask for clarification on the item, cause lady, just tell me what you need, what purpose does this item serve in the house. She finally told me mugs and I send the call over to the home dept. And it was literally so funny that my coworker was like yep I'll take care of this. Sometime after that we had to go into the silence on the items. At that point I was always a little happy when a box came in and it was broken. A sick sort of joy. It's cheap pottery with childish don't printed on it. The only nice things I will say about is that some of the seasonal stuff is kinda cute. (Mostly the Halloween collection.) And they made sets of couples mugs for gay and lesbian couples. (His/his, hers/hers)
I work at a TJX store called Sierra, and even we still get these Rae Dunn products despite us being marketed as a more 'outdoors' store. And they always sell. always. It is 100% culty, the 'Rae Dunn' women are a type of their own. And we always get new ones. Plates, napkins, containers, random desk clutter, hell- even facemasks now. I have a growing hatred for Rae Dunn.
@@SwitchSilver I'm pretty sure it was set 3 black masks and they just said dumb shit like "smile" in the font. My brain cells have melted by this point.
Ug..yes. My elderly Mother still has some of those Beanie Babies in plastic cases on her shelves in her office. The things are totally worthless now and you can’t pay people to take them off your hands.
I worked at McDonald’s during the beanie babies madness. I saw Moms practically beating away grown assed women in the parking lots for harassing their children over their happy meals. We had to put a limit on how many happy meals you could purchase in one go, and these crazy people would spend the day ... and A LOT of money circling thru the drive thru. This reminds me a lot of that . ( a terrible terrible time.)
I collect Funko POPs pretty religiously and they would absolutely be a good topic for this series if you do plan to make it a series. I’ve heard/seen stories of people getting into fights over chase/alternate variants of exclusive figures. It can get that bad
I think the difference is people buy funkos of characters they like. I'm not spending money on a show I have yet to watch or hated. Rae Dun seems more like "I just have to buy everything." Collecting both can lead to debt if you enjoy retail therapy too much though lol
OMG yes! My boyfriend's sister has hundreds of them floor to ceiling in her house and every time I see it I'm like damn these could buy a new car lmao!
I never even heard of them until I started dating my boyfriend. In the years we’ve been together, his collection has gone from being worth $5000 to $40,000. He went from being able to display all his pops on his walls to having an entire storage unit full of them (one of the large units, he sized out of a small one), and still filling walls and boxes in his room with them. He also makes really good money reselling, so I can’t exactly come at him for spending $100 easily on one pop (or sometimes more) but it is a bit bizarre. He follows every pop launch instagram or social media account, waits obsessively down to the minute for launches, and if he gets a notification on his phone he’ll leap to check it no matter *what* we’re doing to see if its a pop announcement or launch. He’s bought me pops himself and I now have a $1,000 collection with some pretty rare pops, but it’s all things he’s gotten me and I doubt I’ll ever search them out on my own.
My cousin started giving these mugs away (she has over 50) whenever someone signs up with her “company”.... and guess what it’s ItWorks an mlm scheme 😅
Weirdly enough Lululemon has an obsessive community built around it too, I have an old friend who would literally by thousands of dollars worth of it and then even go to thrift/second hand stores to search for it so she could resell pieces. There's a huge resale value for it, especially certain fabrics and cuts. It's a nutty place to be. Same friend is who told me about the Rae Dunn collectors and I didn't understand it although I will probably eventually get a mug if I see one I like because I like how big they are.
The next exposè should be the craze over Disney Loungefly backpacks specifically the Minnie's Main Attractions pieces and how that whole saga has made Loungefly mini backpack collecting a current frenzy
Seeing how much some people spend on Disney hurts my heart. It’s definitely a compulsion. Going on family vacations when they live paycheck to paycheck & collecting every single thing that has any Disney element. We all collect something, it used to be books & music for me, before ebooks & Spotify. But to give multi-billion $ corporations your last dollar makes me want to cry.
I bought a Ratatouille Loungefly a few years ago (because I like Ratatouille and I needed a backpack or something when I walk my dog). Spent $40 for it, it’s reselling for something like $300 and up. Truly the take away is you can’t have anything nice or something you like to collect because resellers will always ruin it.
As soon as she mentioned men buying Rae Dunn to resell, I had flashbacks of dads selling beanie babies at McDonalds. I wonder if these men also have bins of beanie babies in their garages that they never managed to unload.
I worked at Marshall’s for 3 years and we would have women trying to sneak into the back and get Rae Dunn stuff. Or even better they would try paying us to bring it out for them. And it wasn’t like $5-$10 no I literally had someone offer me $100 to take a $10 item out
I used to work at Homegoods and I have so many stories. We had to change up our policy because someone clotheslined an old lady over Rae Dunn. One thing that I’ll never forget is a man came in with a cart full of Rae Dunn items. He said he found these all over his house and that his wife had been hoarding them. He found an even bigger stash in their basement. He said that they were going to lose everything but she was still going out every day buying this stuff and hiding it from him. He had no idea and when he found everything he told her that he wanted to divorce. So they’re in the process of getting a divorce. He was going to HomeGoods, Marshall’s, and T.J. Maxx because he didn’t know where she got each item from. It was a very long process for him and he had to do this almost daily because of the amount of stuff that she bought. I still think about him and I hope he’s doing okay.
Hi! Ex TJ Maxx worker here. I was a front end manager for almost 3 years. The amount of rude soccer moms waiting for the store to open squeaking the windows like vultures is really wild. It’s funny our store even changed our stocking hours and days! They would all figure out. My store was kinda smaller than most so these ladies would all be friends. They would text each other and buy/trade with each other. Some were kinda catty and shady but not my problem. The amount they would buy is crazy any and ALL Rae Dunn is wild too. They would buy huge canister that say TEA. or SUGAR. just bland and tasteless lol. I had one lady who would be my “friend” and try to get me to text her about new items during my shift, would even try to talk to me about her life ask about mine, and she would be so excited to see me when she was checking out with a cashier due to her retail therapy high. It’s funny we would have to train all new employees about the Rae Dunn ladies. We would tel them they aren’t allowed to tell what we have in stock they have to look for themselves. One lady started working there and she was a “Dunnie” she eventually got fired for trying to buy items during shifts (not allowed). I remember after almost 2 year there was 3 specific ladies that came in to return a bunch of Rae Dunn in batches (since they had so much) and I ask one lady and she said she hated the designs and only like them since her “cool” mom friends liked them. She also said she hated having food everywhere as well. It just goes to shot market something as exclusive and people will eat it up regardless. You can literally walk into Burlington or Ross and buy something similar but it’s not “Rae Dunn” kinda wild.
I will admit Rae Dunn is mass produced but TJ Maxx, Homegoods and Marshall’s are all owned by the same parent company TJX. The reason why resellers label them all as “rare” is because the store have no control over what the trucks bring everyday. I mean specific items are not listed to the manager just departments on the shipment Tuesday will be more Home and Wednesday will be more Women’s apparel. Also not all the stores are close together so it’s hard to travel to 2 or 3 different stores to find an item they may not even have.
My sister used to work at Marshall’s and she said the Rae Dunn women are insane😂 They would wait outside 20 minutes before open and run to the back to get their Rae Dunn
I think a comparable phenomenon for my generation is the current state of squishmallow collecting. Like they’ve also gotten super popular to the point of scalpers/resellers snatching them all up, and people trying to get to stores first so they can actually find some.
I’m actually really sad squishmallows got popular, I like them so much but now people hoard and resell the most popular ones which makes them harder to buy.
I live in a ruralish Australian city so I was completely unaware they were that popular. My friend and I just to hang around Kmart occasionally and just sit in the toy aisle debating spending money on them. There were never many there but again small store.
ugh that reminds me off the sanrio amiibo cards for Animal Crossing people scalp them and they're a Target exclusive in the US and no Target around me even sold them to begin with. I ended up buying spoofed nfc cards not even the real amiibos for like $15 when the actual card pack is $5.99 retail and most of the resellers won't sell the whole pack for under $30 like one card would be sold for $5 if ur lucky and then I realized I can spoof the nfcs myself really easily too
I have two of the 16 inch ones and had no idea that they were collector items. That bums me out. Their names are Mr. and Mrs. Fluffers and I’ve been wanting to get a mini one to be Baby Fluffers but I guess I won’t be able to find them lol
The thing is it’s actually not… color theory and other designs premises take a lot of work to get right! I will not stand for modern/minimalist slander! 😭😡😡
This is hilarious. I went to Home Goods with my sister, after having spent like 16 months avoiding going anywhere that wasn’t essential, and we were cracking up at all of these pieces that said “COFFEE” “TOOTHBRUSH” “STUFF” “THINGS” etc and we were joking about replacing all of our stuff with labeled versions. I had no idea it was a “cult”. 😅
As someone who went to art school, the idea that she would center her entire artistic identity on rebelling against some very common advice a teacher gave her on the first day is just... wild. Imagine an English teacher suggesting you use the Oxford comma and deciding to center your writing around never using a single comma ever. Inspirational.
That's not exactly the same analogy since wabi-sabi existed before Rae Dunn, and she just happened to like that style, where-as there is not any kind of writing form that is specific to -only- dropping the use of commas as far as I am aware. Essentially, a professor told her to smooth out the pottery and she said, "Nah, I like it".
I used to work at tjmaxx and I hate that lumpy pottery with a passion and it's spindly font AND THE HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS OF RETURNS FOR BOWLS THAT SAY "DOG" OR "BREAKFAST" AND YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO WRAP THEM RIGHT OR ELSE THE WHYWJOMEN WILL YELL AT YOU. BROOOOOOO. I hated this woman who would come in like 20 minutes before closing with her mega haul to return back because she would always forget which ones she already had and she'd buy in bulk to help her friends and family's collections bro I'd be scanning them shits in the DARK because it would take so long that basically we were closed and waiting for the transaction to finish. It's ugly and tacky and cougey
I have two rae dunn mugs, but I’m autistic and the shape of the lip of the mugs when you drink from them is perfect for my sensory needs. Also one was a gift, the other was $0.99 at a goodwill 🤷🏻♀️
@@AppalachianAllegory thanks for the heads up, never want to give a penny to anyplace supporting A$ 😬 I might give one a try too if there was a suitably ironic or Halloween-y enough one at a goodwill or something though. definitely wouldn't pay more than like 2 bucks for one of those mugs.
Mee too! Honestly, i thought that the Rae Dunn pottery would be more useful to people to have trouble remembering things and to us neurodivergents as well.
I found two large toiletry cases labeled “Essentials” and “Cosmetics” at a TJ Maxx and loved them so I bought them. Months later, I am now hyper aware that they are “Rae Dunn”
Right? As a creator myself, and a minimalist, I feel kind of bad for her. Sure, she's probably extremely rich, but life isn't all about money. Especially when you're creating art that means something to you. And the whole aesthetic of it is very minimalist, which seems like something that might be important to her. It must be frustrating to have people taking your creation in a direction you don't support or like at all.
@@lemonworm I get where you're coming from, but she had made a deal with a company when she was a small pottery artist to actually get her work into stores, and they started demanding more from her and eventually the company seems to have taken the aesthetic she had originally created for one piece and start mass producing it on everything. I doubt that she designs any of the pieces anymore, given her stating she was disheartened with this obsession, and the style is something that can be easily replicated by others. I don't think she wanted to have her stuff being mass produced, but to keep up with what was demanded of her to keep the deal she had to agree with it getting made in factories, and eventually the company decided that they would just have other artists produce similar art under her name and give her a small cut of it. The laborers deserve better, as well as the artists who create original work.
The Rae Dunn obsession goes hard in military wives communities,especially if stationed overseas where they are not as easily available. Here in Germany Rae Dunn pieces are sold for ridiculous amounts of money and are highly sought after. I’ve been contemplating buying some just to resell 😂
I bought a Rae Dunn waterbottle once from Marshalls once. I didn't even know who she was. I just thought it was funny because it said "ugh" on it, and as a college student, that matched my overall mood every day.
The irony of hoarding things that have a minimalistic aesthetic is just off the charts.
Agreed, it’s so American lol
Lmao so tru
Rae Dunn: I made this imperfect simple functional thing and it's beautiful
Karens: yes, I'LL TAKE THEM ALL AND SHOVE THEM INTO CABINETS AND NEVER USE THEM!!!
Yup
That’s marketing.
Rae Dunn has "I sold my soul to the devil to make my small pottery shop successful but now things are getting kinda out of hand" energy.
Shoutout to her though. I always thought to get rich you had to invent something new and innovative. She got rich with the most simple creation ever.
God this is amusing to read
this is what i believe now. girl got more than she wanted.
You can say that about pretty much any pottery that supplies other stores. All the home-owned pottery factories here closed decades ago, the surviving ones downsized and outsourced a lot of their everyday production to China etc. They just keep the factory for tourists and a few FANCY artisan pieces so they can boast about it.
To make more than say…. 20-50 pieces a day at a PUSH, you’re going to stop hand making stuff and start casting stuff (maybe by hand). And you can cast whatever “imperfections” you like. (And sometimes you squish them getting them out and somehow that’s too imperfect 👀)
I used to work for a small pottery that went through bouts of licensing/outsourcing/etc. One large store finding you in some small shop, calling you up and wanting 2000 by next month. Cool. I like money. And then it all went out of control as soon as it left the building. And you neither have the space or the staff to expand so rapidly, especially if it’s only for one summer or whatever. People selling things that didn’t exist yet, and like…. Selling 50000 of them. Translations. Wtf is “coral”- IT LOOKS LIKE CORAL TO ME! 😤 Very different quality control. Colours that literally can’t be sourced in that country. By the thirteenth alteration you kinda give up and approve stuff just because it’s the best of a bad bunch, everything takes so long and you’re running out of time (and you signed a contract and are screwed)
I don’t have a clue about the cult though. America’s wild. Without the handmade, it looks like a dollar store buy and I don’t see the appeal in something so plain. It’s fine. I don’t hate it. But I’m not fighting for it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it here in stores. Being ignored. I should sell it, ship internationally and make my fortune!
I bet she just wants to make things with chaotic busy flowers and never wants to look at a word on white ever again. But that won’t sell.
Tldr. Yep. But money!
that would explain the reaction people have to them 🤔
As a former Homegoods employee, I will never not be annoyed at the very mention of Rae Dunn. We had to discontinue selling them in my store for a while because some women mistakenly thought employees were hiding Rae Dunn stuff and were stalking us and writing down our license plate numbers.
Holy shit
jesuschrist
Why are middle aged women like this? Male fandoms are annoying too, they're angry and snobbish, but they don't stalk and harass workers over it
@@ileutur6863 Correct me if I'm wrong but they do riot and commit other acts of violence. Ah well
@@heartlknj Excuse me? I presume you're talking about football huligans here
I smugly watched this as a mom who has never heard of Rae Dunn. I thought that I had no idea what the video was referring to. Until she held up the Create. container. Then I slowly realized that the script looked familiar. I had a notebook. It was given to me by sis in law. I ran to my bedroom in a frenzy and flipped the notebook over. RAE DUNN. I literally shook my fist in the air in defeat. I have been infected.
I too also thought I was immune, but then I remembered my mom got me a mug last year.
@@hanklin0707 I thought I was safe until I remembered I have the cat water bowl that says cats rule... 😦
My sister's baby was given a shirt with the same fonts. Yes, Rae Dunn. We are in the Philippines, the clothes were sent as a gift from our aunt in California
This was extremely entertaining to read lol
@@hanklin0707 same here. When she said Rae Dunn had an imperfectly sculpted look to it, I ran to the kitchen, remembering the mug my sister got me as a gift. You’ll never guess what was on the bottom...
Turning an artist's desire to use imperfection to show that an item was made by a human into identically imperfect mass-produced items made by machines is peak capitalism.
Aaaaaand made in China. That says it all.
Bonus points for the fact that it's supposed to be minimalist in design and purpose but people are hoarding it
Also peak irony
Peak late-stage communism, that is.
my mom loves Rae Dunn, and my favorite part is how all of the ‘imperfections’ are the same on each mug. the dents on each mug are mass-produced, so they manufacture them to have little imperfections and that’s so funny to me.
Oh my gosh. That makes sense. So much sense. Why was I thinking that there was dozens of people making them and that it was a quality control pwrsons dream because hey they don't have to be perfect!
Damn.
She could get pieces from local independant artists if she likes the imperfections. The mentality around Rae Dunn specifically is so weird to me.
I assumed as such. I’d imagine they’re made in molds.
All uniquely the same!
@@noodlepoodle3582 its also really tacky i mean the labeling is just silly,, its like labeling everything in your house and calling it fashion. Like I know those are eggs, I know that's sugar, what in the world.
it is actually so dystopian to me that people are so obsessed over mass produced “imperfect” pottery that literally has identical “imperfections.” there’s so many unique small creators whose work is infinitely more appealing to me
It's truly surreal.
I have a cookware jar I put spoons and spatulas and various things in made by my friend. It has beautiful imperfections and looks way better than this mass-produced stuff.
Yeah, had the same energy when I sae a giant stack of those funko-pop dolls, god those are just so creatively bankrupt
Thissss..... Please don't make rich people richer, support your local small businesses.
draakgast oh my God your comment just spoke to my soul… I thought I was the only one that doesn't get the appeal of those ugly Funko pop things. Atrocious and lazy. All the faces are exactly the same.
Just thinking about the amount of Rae Dunn pottery that is gonna be on goodwill shelves years from now
You see it occasionally now. With the store stickers.
Imagine the teens of the next generation loving the vintage minimalistic aesthetic and the craze starts up all over again, except this time its for rare old pieces 😭
i just brought a rea dunn mug that says "dad" on it for $2. I don't even have a dad. I just bought it because I couldn't stop laughing at it
visit any goodwill or local thrift store, they have shelves FILLED with them.
@@SpiceyHalo101 put an e in between the d and the a lmao
All the comments about "the thrill of the hunt" of these moms trying to track down pottery like it's an addiction, I'm just thinking... we need to introduce these women to the world of Shiny Pokemon hunting. Let them go ham on their Switch
Until they find out about foil cards and then we're back at square one lol
Unironically yes. When my gacha addiction got really bad I turned to shiny hunting. Scratches the same itch, doesn't break my budget, lets me indulge in a fond hyperfixation :)
Nah they probably think Pokémon is satanic
I'm glad I'm addicted to shiny pokemon and not things that cost money lmao
I also feel anxiety when I look at this stuff. I don’t want my own stuff to tell me what to do and what to feel. “Mix. Stir. Stay. Hope.” I’m not gonna be bossed around by my dishes.
It also reminds me of something Marie Kondo pointed out in her book: constant exposure to printed words is deceptively stimulating and can be truly exhausting
Wow I couldn’t put my finger on what was so unsettling about them but that’s exactly it! All those one-word imperatives jumping out at you visually feel like intrusive thoughts, somehow. Imagining having a whole shelf of them stresses me out
@@TheFluorescentFish Yeah, it's annoying wherever you find it. A lot of ads take that imperative tone, too. I think I'd be more interested in the stuff, though, if it said something odd... like "Eat and grow fat!"
There’s also something very unsettling about the font itself. It wouldn’t look out of place on some Halloween decor, but instead it is an “inspiring” or instructive word on a stark white piece of minimalist pottery and it just feels Wrong and Menacing.
@@BeeWhistler I’m a fat artist. You have just inspired my next piece. lmk what you want it printed on fam lol
It's almost subliminal messaging. I'm pretty sure there's a better term
“Mom groups are the backbone of society” - this not the truth I wanted, but it’s the truth we have
"boo you s**k"
"and they h@t3d swell........they h@t3d her cause she told the truth"
@@ddjsoyenby you OK?
I feel like this has probably been the case for hundreds of years, (if not longer) but no one really talks about it. Mom groups are the true Illuminati! But joking aside, Mothers are often the unwritten but very true Head of the Home in traditional western culture (and probably eastern, but I don't know enough to say for sure) the motivational power and knowledge passed down from mothers to their children like language and emotionally-tied-morals/values is often unappreciated/unregistered. for example, historically, Mom groups in Victorian England had HUGE buying power for fashion, home decor, etc. You think the fathers/husbands told the staff what wallpaper to purchase and put up? HELL NO. It was the mothers.
this made me LOL
tbh mom groups and teen girls could take over the world if given the correct incentive via pottery or boybands
Society: "Capitalism breeds innovation"
Rae Dunn: "What if a butter dish said butter!?!?!"
😂😂😂
STONKS
Ah this gave me a good chukle.
Right!! 😂 or a bag said “things” and “stuff” lol. I think some of the holiday things are cute though but I’m not freaking out over it lol
It's not brilliant art, but Rae Dunn isn't going to go bankrupt any time soon. So, wherever she may be, she's wiping her tears with hundred dollar bills. She made something, regardless of how stupid these dishes and knicknacks may be, it is worth something to enough people who hoard these products. Innovation, in this instance, is a matter of opinion as it seems very successful
Omg I’ve wanted to make a video about this for months it’s so bizarre hahaha
do it
Oh hay scott. Would love to see ur take on this as well tbh love your vids.
Damn it Scott. Dont hesitate next time
The struggle is real
CREATE
I really think that this is what happens when suburban moms lose their identity to their kids or their marriage.
I don't get how a responsible mom has 5 hours to be waiting in a store. It makes no sense.
Probably when the kids are in school
especially when the kids are older and moved out and they have to find something else to make their entire personality
@@josephanglada4785 escapism
Plus, if the kid is young enough, you just take them with you.
my husbands family labeled stuff in the house to learn English and Rae Dunn just reminds me of that but permanent
That sounds like the kind of environment that these products would actually be good with
@@Graycata but I don't think that holders with aesthetics like ✨create✨ and ✨believe✨ could help much😭
Yeah I’d imagine it’d be good for kids to learn what is what or for new English learners, like personally I’d like the concept with more colors
As a TJ Maxx employee, I can confirm these people exist and are extremely aggressive. We once had two women get in a fist fight over a serving platter. I hate Rae Dunn with every fiber of my being, but watching these women fight over boring ass pottery is the highlight of my day. It’s like going to the zoo.
You're so right! It is SO boring!
Same here. People are really insane over it and it’s so odd
If I saw that, I'd smash the item and then pay for it. Fuck them.
@@Nakia11798 I love this idea. I would pay to spectate.
I mean... they could take a pottery class and write words on their homework. Shoot, get a thrift shop plate and a sharpie... This whole thing is so weird!
Live, laugh, debt
Amanda needs to put that on a mug and sell it immediately
I’d buy that honestly
Perfect!
'merica
Merch idea
This reminds me of the die-hard cloth diaper mommy groups for brands like Applecheeks. There are some discontinued colors that have sold for over $600. For a single diaper. Over six hundred dollars for a single diaper.
Reused diapers secondhand? Uugh
Imagine shitting in a piece of cloth you paid 600 dollars for
holy crap
@@sail253 lmao literally
Are they framing the diaper? What on earth... it's cloth that catches shit why would you collect them
I work at tj and the Rae Dunn moms scare me. Our policies for when and how we put out stock changed because of them. I once told I woman I wasn't allowed to just grab her some Rae Dunn she saw through the window to our back room and she started cursing and demanded to speak to a manager. When the manager told her the same thing she accused my manager of not really being the manager....
I want to make "They Live Pottery". Pottery with words like "Obey", "Consume", "Conform", and "Submit"
ID BUY EVERY SINGLE PIECE OMG
I'll bet if you look for sex dungeon stuff you can find something like that
Isn't that kind of what the Rae Dun stuff is already? Just without explicitly stating it on the pieces
I would totally buy that lmao
@@zebraloverbridget how is it less explicit even?
Nazis probably said similar shit like "lächeln fraulein" or something, I dunno, I don't speak angry compound words,
But my point stands
"Live , laugh, love" is culty shit
I mean, props to Rae Dunn for being able to sell enough plain white pottery with black lettering for scalpers to pick up on it.
She must be laughing her way to the bank 😂😂😂🙌✨
This is why I’m glad my aesthetic leans more towards maximalism, I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on pottery unless it looks like an ancient greek psykter or something from the Ming dynasty
same but i just looked it up and the butter holder/bowl is so cute~
Omg I read that as Ancient Greek sphincter lol I’m dying 🤣.
@@mandaleemilly6367 Greek sphincters were a hot commodity back in ancient Rome. 💁♀️✨
If it isnt blasted with patterns, colours, gilding etc i will not buy it
sameeee if its not old and crusty or bougie af or both i DONT WANT IT
Bath and Body Works is another store that I see people spending absurd amounts of money collecting from. They'll buy hundreds of candles and body products even though the body products have a limited shelf life.
I personally like Bath and Body Works, though I don't have a huge collection. I can attest on people obssessing on it. Lots of resellers in my country and it's a popular gift among adult women (especially the perfumes & lotions).
I am in this comment and I don't like it.
Wow, Bath and Body Works is still a thing? I used to be into it when I was in middle school and high school. That’s where I would go to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for my friends and family because I could actually afford the stuff there.
It's wild to me. The lotions aren't good and the candles are basic. They smell nice, but so do a lot of things.
The most frustrating thing is people still buying me those giant gift sets from bath and body. I’m an adult women, I don’t want to wear “watermelons lemonade” body spray. I have two pricier perfumes I invest on that last me two years, and no matter how many times I tell people, they’ll buy me those sets with 28439;9 middle school perfumes and lotions. I appreciate anyone who gives me a gift, but I have no way to offload all this.
I feel like the Targets Bullseye playground items, Starbucks cups, and Hobby Lobby seasonal items are also apart of the ‘what feels like a cult but isn’t a cult’ category 😬
Yes on the Target stuff! I follow a couple Instagram pages that show it and I never actually find the items in my stores. The bullseye areas are almost always picked pretty much clean.
@@pamelalansbury94 Yes! And I’ve also tried to buy some stuff online and it always sells out so quickly! 😳
my sister works for starbucks and is also in a fb group for employees and i 100% agree on the cult of the cups. people are truly wild and the posts on that group really show how cutthroat some people can get over the "high-value" cups
Yes!!! God forbids I want one freakin cauldron candle to put in my halloween decor....when in stumble upon two or three resellers literally ripping apart boxes to fill their carts. What is wrong with society and making a decent living at a normal job. Nope...imma buy up ALL THE STUFF and resell it for quadruple the price!
The Starbucks cups 100% 😭 anytime there’s a limited cup that I’m actually like “oh that’s cute, I’d like that” NEVER AVAILABLE cuz the cultys have to buy all the merch up immediately 😭
I worked at [TJX store] when Rae Dunn got huge, and we would have people opening boxes off U-boats or peeking into the back room looking for it on the daily. It got to the point where we couldn't put any Rae Dunn items on hold, or even tell people over the phone what items we had in stock. And yes, we recognized all of the Rae Dunn women as they power walked to the back of the store at 9:30am, and we were warned to stay out of their way.
We eventually had to separate Rae Dunn items from everything else as it came off the truck and then we would wait to put it out on the floor until about an hour or 30 minutes before we closed.
Damn
Current TJX employee here and yeah we had to stop holds on Rae Dunn stuff as well. We also for a while did the "wait until it's almost closing to put it out" but right now the hype in our store has died down. It'll pick back up when the Halloween stuff goes back out later this year, though, for sure.
I work at T.J.Maxx too and we have to do this as well (expect we wait to put it all out in the morning before the store opens so they don’t accuse us of “hiding it from them”) lolol. They are the reason why we can’t tell people we have stuff in the back or offer to look back there bc people got jealous and said we were “picking favorites” 🙄
Talk about a Rae Dundant collection, am I right. Im here all week folks
Take my like you fucking legend. Do I have your permission to use that?
Commenting because this needs more likes.
😂👍🏾
Come back next week too please. 💯
im cackling
My mom was a huge Rae Dunner, the fb groups are insane, in my area a few women went to jail for assaulting another over a birdhouse
Did you see they do tshirts now?? I saw them yesterday at tj max.
The way I just snorted when read the last part of your sentence!!🤭🤭🤭
sounds like they need a shirt that says "jail bird" on it. ;-)
WHAT.THE.HELL?! lmao, that's insane and also hilarious! 🤦♀️😂
Sounds like Pokémon cards. I can’t remember if that started up four months ago or if it was more recent
Ahh Rae Dunn..the very mention of that name makes me quiver. I worked in HomeGoods during the peak of the Rae Dunn craze. So many fond memories of being stalked by moms that would offer me hush money to save items for them or cuss me out for “hiding” items from them. My store created alternating daily schedules of when to put out Rae Dunn items so the morning crowd wouldn’t buy everything out. I would scatter items throughout the store in obscure places and watch them go on a treasure hunt for fun. This lady I worked with got fired for operating her own lil reseller market on the side lol. Good times!
I'm a middle-aged mom who has no interest in Rae Dunn and has never purchased any but I have literally lost friendships with people who got so obsessed with it that they "didn't have time for anyone who wasn't a collector." 🤷♀️
... wtf.
Oh my god no way 🤣
That is genuinely scary.
that... sounds like an addiction :(
Wait what? If you don't like their brand of mugs they can't be friends? Looks like you dodged a bullet.
Love minimalist hoarding. 😂 That 'clean, simple, tidy' aesthetic kind of goes away when you have 500 pieces of aesthetic pottery cluttering everything.
Omg yes" I had a tiktok on my fyp about a mom being like: Iam going to declutter the shit out of my kitchen today. As the timelapse went on I saw this huge Rae Dunn collection in the back. Needless to say that wasnt tackled at all haha
I worked at a liquor store for a while. We opened at 10am, and would always have people waiting to come in and get their morning fix. A lot of them would be in a rush because they needed it. I later worked at a Marshalls. We got Rae Dunn stuff all the time. Easter, ceramic Rae Dunn eggs. Halloween, ceramic Rae Dunn pumpkins. Christmas, Ceramic Rae Dunn Christmas trees. The rich suburban moms would be waiting at the door each morning waiting to rush in and get their Rae Dunn fix. Sometimes they would argue over who got there first and sometimes that led to altercations. The parallels between the alcoholics and the Rae Dunn moms made me realize that you can be addicted to anything.
Which crowd would u rather deal with
@@klear19634 Drunks and alcoholics. It would be like going to a family reunion.
lolol
i worked at a marshalls too, it’s insane
That's honestly so sad. And I'm specifically talking about the Rae Dunn freaks. The alcoholics have an excuse. The rich moms do not......
i have one(1) raw dunn item, a mug gifted to me that reads “honey”, and i keep it turned around on my shelf because the font makes it feel like it’s screaming at me.
Other people, including in this comment section, have mentioned how the font is unsettling
i didn’t realize my parents had 2 rae dunn mugs until this video lmao. they’ve got a “hubby” and a “wifey” mug and that was just because my dad wanted to find something cute for their wedding anniversary
i don’t mind wifey as much but the word “hubby” makes me irrationally angry
@@amiyahancock3056 That's funny, because the word "hubby" only mildly annoys me, whereas the word "wifey" makes me wanna break a window! LOL
We have a "bride" and "Groom" pair and that's it. That's all I need.
That's kinda nice though. It wasn't for the brand, it was for a cute matching gift.
my parents have PILLOW CASES that say "mr." and "mrs."
Mom Fandoms intrigue me so much
same I love these vids, it's like a peek into a world I didn't know existed
"I spent nearly $15k in 6 months." That would bankrupt me. I wouldn’t be able to pay rent. I cannot imagine the kind of credit card debt this person must have. I was laughing up until this point and now I’m just sad lol
15k is like, a cheap car. 15k is rent for over a year. Im spending probably 3k on my honeymoon... i cant imagine being someone that spends, lets be real, thousands of their husband’s money on what? Decor????? Christ save these people
This is a good enough year earnings in my country. 80% of the population can not even dream of having such a salary.
@@carelsby 15k is not a cheap car.. cheap car is 3 k
@@Ihavepinkeye i guess i meant for a new car, not a used car
@@carelsby ohh ok ok makes sense
"No one is having sex on top of a pile of Rae Dunn pottery" -- wait, why am I watching this then
Not yet
So that you can start doing that lol
She didn’t say you can’t
I’m sure they probably have
Be the change that you want to see in the world...
*A pottery artist:* I think I'll put some silly little words on my product :)
*Every soccer mom in North America:* you could make a religion out of this!
In 2016 I was dealing with transitioning from high school to college, as well as the death of my grandmother, and during that time I got really into collecting vaporwave cassettes. That niche was starting to explode around that time, and buying them filled the social hole that had grown in my life. Once I took stock of what I had, I realized that I had about 60 or 70 tapes, which at around 8-12 dollars a tape probably meant I'd spent around 600 dollars. I never felt I was an addict but I did take stock of why I was buying, and whether I needed more tapes after that, and now my music collection has slowed immensely.
This video is interesting to me because it reminds me of that period of my life. Ceramics, cassettes, action figures, Pokemon cards, what have you, it's all the same really. Rae Dunn is more cottagecore than my own collecting interests, but I get why it holds these people. It's interesting then, that if you held up a mug, and for example, an anime figure, I'd say the anime figure was more worthy of value, more artistic, despite the fact that they are in essence the same, a thing we buy to fill the holes in our lives, and maybe show some friends, or flex to randos online.
I don't think $500 is bad to spend on a collection if you're financially stable, as long as the joy of spending that is worth it to you. I don't necessarily think $20,000 is a problem either, if you enjoyed getting and arranging everything, and that money is spent within your means.
But it's definitely good that people can step back and decide when enough is enough. Perhaps it would be good for many men to step back and look at the things they collect as though it were a china cabinet full of live laugh love mugs, and consider whether it's worth continuing to have around. There are a lot of people who might be helped by that evaluation.
who were your favorite vaporwave artists? i bought an OSCOB tape once just because I thought his tumblr presence was funny.
@@Fopenplop OSCOB's old label Bedlam Tapes actually used to be my favorite tape label for sure, he was dropping great stuff and everything was so well presented. I was really sad when he closed it down. Dante Mars Ajeto! and Christtt both released on there, and they are definitely faves. I hope DMA comes back some day.
Death's Dynamic Shroud is maybe my number 1. I consider I'll Try Living Like This to be my favorite album of all time. George Clanton/ESPRIT is super important to me, and I love how he's grown since then. Saint Pepsiand Luxury Elite of course! Vektroid! You gotta love the classics. I loved Blank Banshee back then, but for some reason I don't care for his stuff anymore, it's strange. Not HKE, heck that dude! Lmao. I hated telepath back then but now that I'm older I can fuck with some slushwave occasionally. Oh and VAPERROR! I've been listening to his DJ Camgirl project a ton this week in fact.
Vaporwave was more or less my introduction to experimental electronic, indie music, interesting music in general. I listened to everybody doing interesting stuff at the time, and was super invested in following the scene. I could list people forever. Today I don't really know what's going on with vaporwave. There are some labels I keep up with, mainly Business Casual, but not many more. Reddit R/vaporwave used to be much more usable back then and was a decent central hub for the scene. Now it's moderators have RUINED IT (which everyone said it was ruined back then, but they really did it this time I swear) and everything is so scattered, I don't know how to track things beyond following individual artists. Vaporwave has blown up in terms of the money that can be made with it, and the scope of the projects it can contain though! It's really quite something. Thanks for the memory trip! Lol
i bought a rae dunn bread box at either home goods or tj maxx when i first moved into my apartment, just because i needed a simple bread box that wouldn't draw a whole lot of attention when sitting on my counter, and now i'm seriously debating putting a hefty price tag on it and make some bank off a suburban mom that is desperate to get their hands on a white ceramic box that simply reads "bread" lmaooo
Please do it and update us with how much you sold it for! (Make sure you put ‘rare’ when selling 😂)
DO IT
Just putting a comment here in hopes of an update if you do choose to go that route c;
Do it
Doooo it lmao and maybe if you still need a box, check out truly handmade boxes made by indie artists 😁
I got a sanitizer pouch that said "🐝 safe" it was cute so I bought it. Flipped it over at home. . .. Rae Dunn. She got me with a pun
Hahahah omg, but it’s sooo cute!
@@jessicadelgado8473 I bought another that said "Positivity is 🔑" I'm weak
@@myafigs6065 okay but is it wrong??? Positivity is key and how are you gonna remember that if it’s not written somewhere in pun format lol
My best friend in college's mom used to track her phone and call her anytime we were near a HomeGoods, Marshalls, or TJMaxx to make us check for Rae Dunn. If we didn't stop my friend's mom would threaten to turn off her phone.
That’s terrifying, some of these collectors seem to have actual addictions to this.
Is your friend okay
In college??!! Wtf her mum shouldnt have power over her phone poor girl
Thats... Depressing :( i hope shes okay.
I....😬
You are a saint for having captions on your videos. I was heartbroken when TH-cam removed its user-submitted cations because I struggle to follow videos and would occasionally add them when especially frustrated. It’s a lot of extra work and it’s wonderful that you do it.
This reminds me of video game collectors. Scalpers, intentional scarcity, fomo, shopping addictions, "a full collection" valued more than ones you like. Maybe this is just a larger example of how capatlism creates the same envoirnments, with different types of people, over and over.
I thought I was having a stroke when you described an exclusive, financially stressful product and then held up a cheap looking little pot with a font that looks like the love child between Comic Sans and Papyrus
STOP 🤣 why is that so accurate!
omg i have a black insulated mug that says ‘spooky’. i just realized it’s rae dumb 😭😂 i feel powerful
edit: autocorrect edited dunn to dumb. it knows.
Came back to comment on this video because I went to Home Goods the other day, saw a bunch of Rae Dunn stuff and proceeded to way too enthusiastically tell me fiancé all the stuff I learned from this video when all of a sudden a girl pops out of an aisle excited because she knew EXACTLY which TH-cam video I was talking about. After a quick bonding moment over Swell videos, we essentially teamed up to horrify my fiancé with Rae Dunn fan information. Thank you for the best Home Goods trip ever. ❤️
I was at a marshall once and I accidentally dropped/broke a Rae Dunn craft and you'll swear I murdered someone with the looks every middle age woman gave me afterwards as I stood there trying to get an employee to help me pick it up
I’ve witnessed this once, I had to stand over a broken Rae Dunn mug like I was standing over a dead body
I have a sudden urge to break a bunch of this stuff now.
OH MY GOD YOU COULD GET FAMOUS IF YOU BOUGHT TON OF THIS STUFF AND JUST SMASHED IT ON CAMERA but like obviously make something out of it, like smash it to dust and then make some pots or whatever instead of just being wasteful
As a potter who is having a very hard time making sales because of the panorama, seeing people spend that much money on mass produced stuff makes me irrationally livid.
Just put some dents in your best piece, the mom groups will lose their minds
Do you have an Etsy shop or anything? I’d love to check it out 😅
Or... rationally livid.
Girl, shamelessly self promo! Plug your Etsy shop or social media for your pottery!
My insta is TaterTotsClayPots, there is a link to my website in my bio there.
perfect example of “you can get addicted to anything.” dopamine is a hell of a drug
"when i say the name rae dunn, it may not mean anything to you"
no trust me. i know. i work at homegoods. there is no escape.
my (least) favorite piece of merchandise is probably just this mug that showed up around easter that just says "egg hunting" like What???
The two types of people that get to those stores early are Rae Dunn collectors and squishmallow collectors
Or, even scarier, the rae dunn and squishmellow collectors. There's 4 of them at my store (technically they're resellers but whatever)
they literally call us in advance to ask what we have
I work at learning express and I can attest that it gets crazy and I really don’t wanna go to work today bc we got a shipment of squishmallows on
my mom’s friend is obsessed with rae dunn and she’s been complaining that they came out with a whole new pink set or something and now she has to get it, and it’s like....... you don’t, though
Omg it’s literally an addiction at this point
complaining? she doesn’t even want it??? 😩
Yeah, but she's gonna.
Hahaha why are people like this
So apparently we’ve reached the “moms forming rival gang groups to secure Rae Dunn pottery” part of 2021
i'm a former gymboree employee and i'd love to see you research the crazy obsessed moms of that tbh. i only met a few myself but it was wild when i heard them asking about collections and stuff. i worked at the 'lower end' store in the chain called crazy 8 and moms would absolutely come in and be like 'well i dont really like crazy 8 because it's trashy compared to gymboree' basically because of the price point LOL likeeee
Omg my mom was one of those mom's when I was a kid, I spent so much time watching whatever knockoff Sprout channel they would have playing in the back of kids clothing stores lmao. My mom also used to save up the Gymboree/Crazy 8 promotional cash/coupons.
Ya that was my first job and I worked there for 3.5 years. I have loads of stories >.>
I spent at least 60% of my income on the clothes. I started working there when my first daughter was 18 months old, she’s 9 now and I’m just finally getting rid of her old clothes.
It's not just pottery anymore -- my local Homegoods had a whole stand of Rae Dunn body towels, hand towels and kitchen towels. There was even a set of Rae Dunn bed sheets. The pillows say "ZZZ" in that font in case you forget what to do
So wabi-sabi is about appreciating the simplicity of using the natural, aged & well-worn.
And our society turned it into hoarding huge collections of low quality mass produced items.
That just hurts.
damn, you put it into such good words
@@kaemincha - Thank you.
Hope you have a wonderful day. Blessed be.
You have no idea how freaked out I was for a second thinking you were calling me out before I remembered "oh yeah that's the aesthetic I named myself after"
Yeah it's sad because there are artists who make really cool unique pieces that are imperfect and beautiful and just...why would you want a mass produced thingy instead ? Like I get some people genuinely prefer certain aesthetic but I'd rather have something unique if I could afford it
My boyfriend's mom got me a hand sanitizer holder from Rae Dunn and then I noticed her entire house is littered with that...I couldn't describe how it made me feel, but the cult aspect may have hit it on the head. However, she has no social media presence, so she's just blissfully unaware that every other mom has her kitchen in their house.
I have an aunt who is super into Rae Dunn and she has always had an obsessive personality and I think its probably the same for many RD collectors. I don’t think its so much about the pottery but the need to obsess over something and if it wasn’t RD, it’d be something else.
I personally prefer “Live, Laugh, Lube” energy.
brb going to school to become a mechanic so i can open a mechanic shop with the name live laugh lube
@@jesslynch94 Your mind went the appropriate way.
... Wib, Waff, Wuv.
Idk I blame you, I only thought of this after seeing your comment. If I had to have this in my brain, y’all do too now.
Filling the void with more empty vessels that you have control over
When you have four kids and your husband doesn't love you, you must fill the shelves with Rae Dunn. For she will free you.
As a Homegoods employee, I can confirm that these people exist.
This is so wild because my local homegoods was always full of Rae Dunn shit
Fellow homegoods employee, yes
@@idiot-abroad you probably went on a shipment day and at a good time!
Honestly I kinda get it. My grandma was having a hard time with her mother’s death & used to go crazy and take me to a fancy China store every day. She bought EVERYTHING they had and still has a lot of the collection today but she hasn’t bought anything in like 10 years but she definitely spent hundreds. She told me later it was an outlet for her sadness and now I feel bad for people who get caught in the chase of those things.
I have a rae dun teapot, honey pot, dog treat jar and four mugs. Most of these except for the mug and dog treat container were gifts. My mom bought me the teapot and honey pot and a mug as a housewarming gift because there were bees on it and I love bees but I had no idea it had such a hold over people
I have the dog treat jar. It is crap. Chips super easy. I picked it up because I wanted a treat jar with the plastic seal to keep treats soft.
It’s usually the moms who also have “boss babe” and could be in an mlm. They’re the “live laugh love” moms who own a hoard of these items. Lol
It's not though. Everyone I know who has these items are the opposite of boss babe types.
It's generic white woman stuff
@@Nakia11798 generic white soccer mom who dyes her hair a funky color to seem “edgy.” Aka a Karen😂
My anti vax small town real estate agent MIL is a avid Rae Dunn. She has the smallest kitchen ever & sacrifices half of the useable space for stupid pottery…. It’s insane.
Could be in a man loving man??
God. I was once one of those “wait for an hour outside of homegoods and flock the store when the doors open” collectors. For about two years, it seriously had such an intense hold on me it was absolutely ridiculous. I was all in. Apart of all the FB pages, admin of a local groups, checking Mercari various times a day. I spent so much money on this stuff I have truly put a mental blocker in my mind on how much because I would probably vomit if I knew the true number. Fast forward to now I have 100s (300 to 400 pieces) of Rae Dunn collecting dust around various parts of my house. I HATE it. I am so embarrassed about the way I used to act over pottery that I have since completely outgrown and can’t seem to get rid off. I don’t even want the hassle of selling it and have literally contemplated about just shoving it all outside my house on the curd and posting on marketplace for someone to come and get it.
You could hold a garage sale. Or, if your really want to get rid of it, donate it to goodwill
Depending on how much effort, donating to a place like good will, leaving a box on your curb with a free sign taped to it. Or a garage sale. Any way to get rid of your stuff you can do
Melt it all down into a molten effigy to Rae Dunn consumerism. Turn the items into a gargantuan misshapen blob of pottery that screams into the void "MUG", "SALT", "AGONY". Maybe the last one isn't one a Rae Dunn word, but it could be.
If you're held down by these things still, you COULD take them to a rage room and destroy them all. It could be cathartic?
girl pls take them to a rage room
I’m ashamed to say I was a RD collector. About 4-5 years ago (I’ve been out of the game for a couple yrs now). A closest store was 30 minutes away so I was only a casual collector. I refused to over pay for a piece I wanted so I went to an opening maybe once a week or biweekly. Those bitches are CRAZY. I wasn’t in their circle since I never went to the same store and they were legit pissed I was infringing in their territory. And they ran...sprinted when the doors opened. I never did. I live in actual farmhouse in a farm town and it was just my aesthetic. Now I’m stuck with this shit. Too many mugs and birds houses. Can’t be bothered to try to sell it because those ladies will want to buy one mug for 3 dollars and expect me to deliver it to them 40 miles away. Nope. I’ve slowly been donating it to thrift. Yes, I wasted money. I chalk it up to lesson learned. Don’t buy into the trendy collection games.
My first job was Homegoods, I worked there 50 hours a week mostly in the warehouse for about a year. My store definitely had a group of Rae Dunn women. They would all get their Starbucks and start to gather outside the doors between 7:30-8:00 even though we wouldn’t open till 9:00. They would walk in immediately and start circling the store. If we had received any Rae dun we were instructed to put it on a tank (shelves on wheels) and set it at the front of the store for the women to get. They usually would buy what they wanted from the tank or leave after 15 minutes. I would almost never see any of these women buy anything else from Homegoods. I’ve never seen a true fist fight, but definitely pushing and shoving, and trash talking. We were instructed to tell them we didn’t know when we’d get more Rae dun, which was honestly true, every shipment was completely random. Sometimes if we opened Rae dun during the afternoon we were instructed to hold it in the back till morning to avoid chaos of too many people fighting over it. One time one of the ladies tried to give me a $25 Starbucks gift card to give her insider tips on our shipments, and then asked to speak with my manager when I explained I could get fired for doing that. They seemed to be the most interested in certain Rae dun items. The traditional style was the most popular. I’m not sure if there still is, but back when I was working there we would get items with pops of color, or different fonts/decorative motifs that were Rae dun, but would almost never sell. We would joke in the back as we opened these “oh it’s Rae dun! But there’s color on it, it’s not good enough.” The first reseller I met was telling me about how the classic cookie jar can get you up to $200 with the right collector. Thank you for this video. My old coworkers and I still feel haunted by all of this. It’s hard to explain the sheer obsession these women have and how cultish it really is.
Also I always recommend washing anything you buy from any TJX store before use if you can
I'm going to admit, I was an early Rae Dunn-er, back when she was just on Etsy. I had two pieces from her but the stuff fell out of my purview. I donated them to a Goodwill when I moved apartments years ago which I am totally shooting myself in the foot for now.
I remember 2-3 years ago seeing in the TJ Maxx catalog that they had spooky Rae Dunn products for Halloween, where they were black with orange lettering. And that they had made spooky cat bowls that said things like "Hiss" and "Boo". Here I was, a Halloween fan needing some cat food bowls for my kitty thinking I was gonna be able to just go to my local TJ Maxx and casually pick up those bowls. Resellers on Ebay were selling them for $80/piece!
My rabbit's water dish says "Sip". Thinking I should sell that thing lol.
I feel like the culture around TJX is “get it now or it’ll be gone; you can always return it if you don’t want it! (But you won’t regret it).” And that kind of primed shoppers for this frenzy behavior around Rae Dunn.
as an employee this is literally exactly what we’re told to tell people, they even have us put the same clothing items away separated in the runs so it seems like there’s only one of that item in store and you need to buy it now, we’re also told to tell people there’s no stock in the back and everything we have is on the floor which is kind of true and all the commercials push the idea that if you don’t buy it now it’ll be gone tomorrow
All those words in the beginning felt like Amanda was trying to activate someone's Winter Soldier programming lol
as someone who works at a TJX store currently it *does* activate the programming that makes me sooooo angry at rae dunn products
Omg I’m dying at this comment. And also ready to comply.
the minute i saw this video on my recommended, i literally shivered with fear and remembrance of working at HomeGoods - one of the worst jobs i ever worked at, i distinctly remember my boss telling me that if a customer returns a rae dunn product, then we have to immediately hide it from customers or else people will brawl over it. i remember a rae dunn woman buying out a whole collection and having to painstakingly wrap every individual one. i still haven't been inside of a HomeGoods since i left and i don't intend on returning...
I used to work at HomeGoods and I was there at the grand opening for our store. We were even warned at orientation about the Rae Dunn people. Day of the grand opening there was a huge ass line of people there and most of them were just there for the Rae Dunn. I'll never forget the crowd of people who went straight for the Rae Dunn. After our first day, the Rae Dunn was all gone.
you should make one of these about the squishmallow community... very similar vibes
That one just makes me sad lmfaooo. I have a few bc they're adorable but like the fact that theres a whole squishmallow exchange market? and people get so vicious about it? So weird like can't anything just be simple and wholesome?
*me, reading this while laying on my giant squishmallow cat while holding my squishmallow axolotl* ....oh no....
Jfc yeah we put out an entire display the other day and this couple came in 20 minutes later and literally bought every single piece we had. Probably 6 or 700 dollars worth. I can only hope they were for a cause or something
i googled them. just to look. no thought given. no effort involved. it is 15 minutes after reading this comment and i am just now pulling myself out of a haze in which i almost bought three of these little monsters. one of them was *30 dollars.*
I need Rae Dunn to do a marketing tedtalk on how to sell mediocre stuff cuz that's weirdly impressive.
this is so weird cause i see rae dunn stuff at marshalls all the time and i never thought about it all that much. i've never seen 'rae dunn women' and there's always stuff laying around even near closing time
Rae Dunn peaked at my store about 2-3 years ago. The first time I heard the name was from a call at our store asking if we had any Rae Dunn. I ask for clarification on the item, cause lady, just tell me what you need, what purpose does this item serve in the house. She finally told me mugs and I send the call over to the home dept. And it was literally so funny that my coworker was like yep I'll take care of this. Sometime after that we had to go into the silence on the items. At that point I was always a little happy when a box came in and it was broken. A sick sort of joy. It's cheap pottery with childish don't printed on it.
The only nice things I will say about is that some of the seasonal stuff is kinda cute. (Mostly the Halloween collection.) And they made sets of couples mugs for gay and lesbian couples. (His/his, hers/hers)
The best are listings for "vintage" Ray Dunn.
I work at a TJX store called Sierra, and even we still get these Rae Dunn products despite us being marketed as a more 'outdoors' store. And they always sell. always. It is 100% culty, the 'Rae Dunn' women are a type of their own.
And we always get new ones. Plates, napkins, containers, random desk clutter, hell- even facemasks now. I have a growing hatred for Rae Dunn.
Now I can’t stop picturing a crisp, white Rae Dunn face mask that says “Breathe” in that stupid fucking font.
@@SwitchSilver I'm pretty sure it was set 3 black masks and they just said dumb shit like "smile" in the font. My brain cells have melted by this point.
I got the face masks so I could dunk on the rae dunn moms
Reminds me of all the mornings spent with grandma lurking outside the local hallmark waiting for the latest beanie baby drop
My grandma had a china cabinet full of beanie babies 😂
Or the day after Christmas.
Ug..yes. My elderly Mother still has some of those Beanie Babies in plastic cases on her shelves in her office. The things are totally worthless now and you can’t pay people to take them off your hands.
I worked at McDonald’s during the beanie babies madness. I saw Moms practically beating away grown assed women in the parking lots for harassing their children over their happy meals. We had to put a limit on how many happy meals you could purchase in one go, and these crazy people would spend the day ... and A LOT of money circling thru the drive thru. This reminds me a lot of that . ( a terrible terrible time.)
I collect Funko POPs pretty religiously and they would absolutely be a good topic for this series if you do plan to make it a series. I’ve heard/seen stories of people getting into fights over chase/alternate variants of exclusive figures. It can get that bad
they're pretty ok.................i'm allowed to be a dork ok!
I think the difference is people buy funkos of characters they like. I'm not spending money on a show I have yet to watch or hated. Rae Dun seems more like "I just have to buy everything." Collecting both can lead to debt if you enjoy retail therapy too much though lol
Oh my god yes. I personally hate the design of them and never understood the hype so that video idea is really entertaining to me
OMG yes! My boyfriend's sister has hundreds of them floor to ceiling in her house and every time I see it I'm like damn these could buy a new car lmao!
I never even heard of them until I started dating my boyfriend. In the years we’ve been together, his collection has gone from being worth $5000 to $40,000. He went from being able to display all his pops on his walls to having an entire storage unit full of them (one of the large units, he sized out of a small one), and still filling walls and boxes in his room with them. He also makes really good money reselling, so I can’t exactly come at him for spending $100 easily on one pop (or sometimes more) but it is a bit bizarre. He follows every pop launch instagram or social media account, waits obsessively down to the minute for launches, and if he gets a notification on his phone he’ll leap to check it no matter *what* we’re doing to see if its a pop announcement or launch. He’s bought me pops himself and I now have a $1,000 collection with some pretty rare pops, but it’s all things he’s gotten me and I doubt I’ll ever search them out on my own.
My cousin started giving these mugs away (she has over 50) whenever someone signs up with her “company”.... and guess what it’s ItWorks an mlm scheme 😅
Weirdly enough Lululemon has an obsessive community built around it too, I have an old friend who would literally by thousands of dollars worth of it and then even go to thrift/second hand stores to search for it so she could resell pieces. There's a huge resale value for it, especially certain fabrics and cuts. It's a nutty place to be.
Same friend is who told me about the Rae Dunn collectors and I didn't understand it although I will probably eventually get a mug if I see one I like because I like how big they are.
The next exposè should be the craze over Disney Loungefly backpacks specifically the Minnie's Main Attractions pieces and how that whole saga has made Loungefly mini backpack collecting a current frenzy
Seeing how much some people spend on Disney hurts my heart. It’s definitely a compulsion. Going on family vacations when they live paycheck to paycheck & collecting every single thing that has any Disney element.
We all collect something, it used to be books & music for me, before ebooks & Spotify. But to give multi-billion $ corporations your last dollar makes me want to cry.
Yes! A video on this. I bought one on clearance once for $45 to use in the parks. Six months later is worth a ton and I sold it for $700.
I bought a Ratatouille Loungefly a few years ago (because I like Ratatouille and I needed a backpack or something when I walk my dog). Spent $40 for it, it’s reselling for something like $300 and up. Truly the take away is you can’t have anything nice or something you like to collect because resellers will always ruin it.
As soon as she mentioned men buying Rae Dunn to resell, I had flashbacks of dads selling beanie babies at McDonalds. I wonder if these men also have bins of beanie babies in their garages that they never managed to unload.
I worked at Marshall’s for 3 years and we would have women trying to sneak into the back and get Rae Dunn stuff. Or even better they would try paying us to bring it out for them. And it wasn’t like $5-$10 no I literally had someone offer me $100 to take a $10 item out
And I would have taken every single $100 dollars they were offering me and hand them what they wanted !!!
Why is this so fucking funny though
dude me too. At 16 when you're leaving in a month anyways, 50 bucks/item isn't bad and I absolutely took it 😂
I used to work at Homegoods and I have so many stories. We had to change up our policy because someone clotheslined an old lady over Rae Dunn.
One thing that I’ll never forget is a man came in with a cart full of Rae Dunn items. He said he found these all over his house and that his wife had been hoarding them. He found an even bigger stash in their basement. He said that they were going to lose everything but she was still going out every day buying this stuff and hiding it from him. He had no idea and when he found everything he told her that he wanted to divorce. So they’re in the process of getting a divorce. He was going to HomeGoods, Marshall’s, and T.J. Maxx because he didn’t know where she got each item from. It was a very long process for him and he had to do this almost daily because of the amount of stuff that she bought. I still think about him and I hope he’s doing okay.
Hi! Ex TJ Maxx worker here. I was a front end manager for almost 3 years. The amount of rude soccer moms waiting for the store to open squeaking the windows like vultures is really wild. It’s funny our store even changed our stocking hours and days! They would all figure out. My store was kinda smaller than most so these ladies would all be friends. They would text each other and buy/trade with each other. Some were kinda catty and shady but not my problem. The amount they would buy is crazy any and ALL Rae Dunn is wild too. They would buy huge canister that say TEA. or SUGAR. just bland and tasteless lol. I had one lady who would be my “friend” and try to get me to text her about new items during my shift, would even try to talk to me about her life ask about mine, and she would be so excited to see me when she was checking out with a cashier due to her retail therapy high. It’s funny we would have to train all new employees about the Rae Dunn ladies. We would tel them they aren’t allowed to tell what we have in stock they have to look for themselves. One lady started working there and she was a “Dunnie” she eventually got fired for trying to buy items during shifts (not allowed). I remember after almost 2 year there was 3 specific ladies that came in to return a bunch of Rae Dunn in batches (since they had so much) and I ask one lady and she said she hated the designs and only like them since her “cool” mom friends liked them. She also said she hated having food everywhere as well. It just goes to shot market something as exclusive and people will eat it up regardless. You can literally walk into Burlington or Ross and buy something similar but it’s not “Rae Dunn” kinda wild.
I will admit Rae Dunn is mass produced but TJ Maxx, Homegoods and Marshall’s are all owned by the same parent company TJX. The reason why resellers label them all as “rare” is because the store have no control over what the trucks bring everyday. I mean specific items are not listed to the manager just departments on the shipment Tuesday will be more Home and Wednesday will be more Women’s apparel. Also not all the stores are close together so it’s hard to travel to 2 or 3 different stores to find an item they may not even have.
My sister used to work at Marshall’s and she said the Rae Dunn women are insane😂 They would wait outside 20 minutes before open and run to the back to get their Rae Dunn
Girl 20 mins is nothing compared to the women at the [store] I work at 😭 they show up 3 hours before opening
The woman who SLEPT IN HER CAR at my store.
I think a comparable phenomenon for my generation is the current state of squishmallow collecting. Like they’ve also gotten super popular to the point of scalpers/resellers snatching them all up, and people trying to get to stores first so they can actually find some.
I’m actually really sad squishmallows got popular, I like them so much but now people hoard and resell the most popular ones which makes them harder to buy.
I'm into squishmallows but theyre so hard to find now :( Scalpers can d*e
I live in a ruralish Australian city so I was completely unaware they were that popular. My friend and I just to hang around Kmart occasionally and just sit in the toy aisle debating spending money on them. There were never many there but again small store.
ugh that reminds me off the sanrio amiibo cards for Animal Crossing people scalp them and they're a Target exclusive in the US and no Target around me even sold them to begin with. I ended up buying spoofed nfc cards not even the real amiibos for like $15 when the actual card pack is $5.99 retail and most of the resellers won't sell the whole pack for under $30 like one card would be sold for $5 if ur lucky and then I realized I can spoof the nfcs myself really easily too
I have two of the 16 inch ones and had no idea that they were collector items. That bums me out.
Their names are Mr. and Mrs. Fluffers and I’ve been wanting to get a mini one to be Baby Fluffers but I guess I won’t be able to find them lol
The thing about minimalism art is that it’s so easy for non-artists to do it and then pass it off for millions
The thing is it’s actually not… color theory and other designs premises take a lot of work to get right! I will not stand for modern/minimalist slander! 😭😡😡
This is hilarious. I went to Home Goods with my sister, after having spent like 16 months avoiding going anywhere that wasn’t essential, and we were cracking up at all of these pieces that said “COFFEE” “TOOTHBRUSH” “STUFF” “THINGS” etc and we were joking about replacing all of our stuff with labeled versions. I had no idea it was a “cult”. 😅
As someone who went to art school, the idea that she would center her entire artistic identity on rebelling against some very common advice a teacher gave her on the first day is just... wild.
Imagine an English teacher suggesting you use the Oxford comma and deciding to center your writing around never using a single comma ever.
Inspirational.
Pretty much every art movement is just people breaking the ‘rules’ set out by the previous movement.
That's not exactly the same analogy since wabi-sabi existed before Rae Dunn, and she just happened to like that style, where-as there is not any kind of writing form that is specific to -only- dropping the use of commas as far as I am aware.
Essentially, a professor told her to smooth out the pottery and she said, "Nah, I like it".
The Oxford Comma annoys me because I'm told not to use it in AP Style, but Microsoft Word is like holding me at gun point to use it.
that's just josé saramago :p
@@weasel7491 journalism life ✨
I used to work at tjmaxx and I hate that lumpy pottery with a passion and it's spindly font AND THE HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS OF RETURNS FOR BOWLS THAT SAY "DOG" OR "BREAKFAST" AND YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO WRAP THEM RIGHT OR ELSE THE WHYWJOMEN WILL YELL AT YOU. BROOOOOOO. I hated this woman who would come in like 20 minutes before closing with her mega haul to return back because she would always forget which ones she already had and she'd buy in bulk to help her friends and family's collections bro I'd be scanning them shits in the DARK because it would take so long that basically we were closed and waiting for the transaction to finish. It's ugly and tacky and cougey
It’s disgusting how little shame some people have.
I have two rae dunn mugs, but I’m autistic and the shape of the lip of the mugs when you drink from them is perfect for my sensory needs. Also one was a gift, the other was $0.99 at a goodwill 🤷🏻♀️
Oof. Now I might need to try one. But TJ Maxx contributes to Autism Speaks, so I also need to look at thrift stores/poshmark.
@@AppalachianAllegory thanks for the heads up, never want to give a penny to anyplace supporting A$ 😬
I might give one a try too if there was a suitably ironic or Halloween-y enough one at a goodwill or something though. definitely wouldn't pay more than like 2 bucks for one of those mugs.
Mee too! Honestly, i thought that the Rae Dunn pottery would be more useful to people to have trouble remembering things and to us neurodivergents as well.
Happy to hear you got a mug that works for you.
@@3possumsinatrenchcoat Just a reminder that Goodwill also supports Autism Speaks
I found two large toiletry cases labeled “Essentials” and “Cosmetics” at a TJ Maxx and loved them so I bought them. Months later, I am now hyper aware that they are “Rae Dunn”
This is not the first time a pottery/china obsession has happened, but it's the first time we have captured for everyone to witness it in history.
Learning that Rae Dunn is disheartened by the cult like obsession some have with her pottery is honestly really sad.
yeah the fucking millions shes making off mass produced factory labour really makes me shed tears for her
Right? As a creator myself, and a minimalist, I feel kind of bad for her. Sure, she's probably extremely rich, but life isn't all about money. Especially when you're creating art that means something to you. And the whole aesthetic of it is very minimalist, which seems like something that might be important to her. It must be frustrating to have people taking your creation in a direction you don't support or like at all.
@@lemonworm I get where you're coming from, but she had made a deal with a company when she was a small pottery artist to actually get her work into stores, and they started demanding more from her and eventually the company seems to have taken the aesthetic she had originally created for one piece and start mass producing it on everything. I doubt that she designs any of the pieces anymore, given her stating she was disheartened with this obsession, and the style is something that can be easily replicated by others. I don't think she wanted to have her stuff being mass produced, but to keep up with what was demanded of her to keep the deal she had to agree with it getting made in factories, and eventually the company decided that they would just have other artists produce similar art under her name and give her a small cut of it. The laborers deserve better, as well as the artists who create original work.
The Rae Dunn obsession goes hard in military wives communities,especially if stationed overseas where they are not as easily available. Here in Germany Rae Dunn pieces are sold for ridiculous amounts of money and are highly sought after. I’ve been contemplating buying some just to resell 😂
Is that a nesting secruity thing? I feel like if my partner was in the military I'd control my home to deal with the stress of it
@@nr5076 I haven’t thought about it in that way before but I do think that could also be a factor.
Would you like a partner????? I’d be willing to buy them. And mail them to you. 👀
No frickin kidding. We are overseas in Germany as well and it’s a 50/50 tossup between Rae Dunn and polish pottery.
There’s Rae Dunn in Germany ??? I didn’t even know that omg 😂
I love that I have no idea who rae dunn is, but i'm ready to find out in the next 30 or so minutes
30 minutes later. Was that educational or what? I know I feel wiser. Not better, but wiser.
I bought a Rae Dunn waterbottle once from Marshalls once. I didn't even know who she was. I just thought it was funny because it said "ugh" on it, and as a college student, that matched my overall mood every day.