True Value

>> Black Friday, Cyber Monday, January sales that really begin in December, the sample sales that are in full swing in London at the moment… the flurry of discounting activity in all sectors of retail is hard to ignore. RRP – recommended retail price is fast becoming the price we look at with a #NotImpressed rolling of the eye, before we await its heavily discounted destiny. I’m not , save for a few exceptions, that’s fast becoming the case. Blame eBay, flash sale sites, discounters like Yoox and the Outnet and then of course the traditional retailers, who go on sale earlier and earlier in a bid to get rid of unsold stock.

As I was looking back at some outfits back in September during Paris fashion week and what I’ve been wearing a lot recently, the primary source was Vestiaire Collective. They had set me the challenge of wearing their pre-loved and past season wares for a few days during fashion month. No challenge there. Preloved and past season denotes most of my purchases these days as I continuously re-adjust the scales on what I consider to be the “true value” of clothing. I remember visiting Vestiaire Collective HQ and hearing about the fact that unlike bags, clothing gets extra discounted as the seasons wear on because their value diminishes rapidly. One glance at the site currently and you’ll find a Celine dress from SS14 at half the price it would have been in store and a Miu Miu coat from AW13 down 75%. Going back further in seasons and you find some veritable bargains – a Prada top from their memorable SS08 fairy collection for £200 and a Rochas by Marco Zanini (my current hunting obsession) printed top available for a snippy £70.

When you get into the semantics of it, the “true value” of fashion becomes a tetchy subject, and one that brands definitely don’t want consumers discussing, even as we’re bombarded with discounts and sale tags. You have cost price – the cost of what it took to make something, which incorporates everything from the cost of materials to the wages of design teams. Then there’s the wholesale price that a designer will charge to retailers, that might be double the cost price or more depending on what other costs of branding, running stores and other overheads need to be worked into that. Then you have the retailers’ mark-up of anything between 2.2 to 2.6 times that cost, giving them enough wiggle room to do their discounting. Bruno Pieters of the label Honest By is one of the few, if not only label, that will have their customers privy to the exact breakdown of this information.

But it’s not as easy just to say that “true” value is the wholesale price that a designer or a brand charges retailers. What price do we attribute to that feeling of buying a brand new brocade padded jacket that has just landed into a Miu Miu flagship store, with its lush cream carpeting and tactile walls? I’m using a personal working example there as someone, who pays full prices for a few notable exceptions. It’s what retailers and brands bank on, that we will constantly yearn for that feeling of the new and the fresh, as well as the fear that something might sell out in our desired size or colour way if we don’t buy it as early as possible. There’s an unquantifiable value on buying the new, that accounts for the way sites like Moda Operandi work in their periodical trunk shows or when fashion insiders make personal orders without seeing the product in question.

Then there’s more of an more of an emotional value when it comes to shelling out full price in other instances. How do you value the feeling of say buying something from an independent designer, taking satisfaction that you’re contributing to their upward trajectory? Or wanting that blue sequinned dress because it’s there in front of your eyes and all you ever ever want to wear is that blue sequinned dress, and all sensical knowledge of it eventually being discounted goes out of your head? Or memories, associations and attachments to specific designers and collections that spark off imaginary notions of value in your head. A metallic silk pleated jacket from Balenciaga’s S/S 09 collection is currently hanging about on Vestiaire Collective for a princely sum but I’m being swayed nonetheless…

In the end, “true value” is still a subjective thing that’s for each of us to grasp and figure out as we wade through the myriad of seasonal sales and discounts or at the other end of the scale, the New In boxes, the exclusives and the limited editions.

I’d be interested to know how YOU determine a “true value” of something.