Some folks have all the luxe
A $140 Frederic Fekkai hair band, $80 Donna Karan cashmere socks, a $350 Eric Javits beret? Please! Some people may be aghast at the prices of the items Winona Ryder was found guilty last week of shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue. But in Beverly Hills, where plenty of women make shopping a full-time job, it’s just a drop in the burnished platinum bucket.
At Neiman Marcus, try $275 for a black plastic hair clip by France Luxe; $875 for Judith Leiber sunglasses, $98 for a patchwork print Roberto Cavalli thong (that’s just under $100 for underwear that doesn’t even cover your rear); $840 for a John Galliano T-shirt. At Barneys New York, how about $530 for Alexander McQueen blue jeans as tight as pantyhose, or $1,830 for a Lucien Pellat Finet skimpy cashmere sweater with a marijuana leaf design on the front.
“They are priced kind of high, but they are the hot sweaters of the moment,” the Barneys salesman said sheepishly, adding, “And they last forever!” (Seems like the price may not be the only thing that’s high.)
This is, of course, the part of the world where Julia Roberts went on her “Pretty Woman” shopping spree, where, legend has it, Tori Spelling buys one of every color of the $160 Juicy Couture sweatsuit at Fred Segal each season, and where Rodeo Drive stores open their doors at all hours to accommodate the shopping whims of A-list celebrities like Madonna.
At Saks Fifth Avenue last week -- the scene of the crime, as it were -- it was business as usual in the Chanel department. A leather-clad lady ran her bejeweled fingers over a $510 quilted brown leather belt with faux gold hardware and said, “If you have another one, I’ll pick it up for my friend.”
A few doors down, at Neiman Marcus, the Manolo Blahnik department was hopping. On a couch littered with four open boxes of $455 suede pumps, a salesman chatted up his well-coiffed client, showing her two photographs of herself in the latest issue of Beverly Hills 213, a weekly magazine that chronicles the social lives of the rich and the ridiculously rich.
On a couch nearby, Barbara Smith watched her 20-year-old daughter, Vanessa, a student at the Otis College of Art and Design, choose between Prada’s $375 chained mule and $420 chained D’Orsay pump.
“Sure, clothes are too expensive,” said Smith, clutching a Louis Vuitton logo bag that matched her daughter’s. “But that’s not going to keep us from shopping.”
The economy may be sluggish and profits at luxury companies down, but you’d never know it here. “It’s a culture,” said Mark Pingol, senior project director for New York-based market research firm Envirosell. “These people have everything they need.”
At the Ryder trial, Deputy District Atty. Ann Rundle found herself in the position of defending this spend-to-no-end culture to jurors. In a lighter moment, she explained to the jury that the law on shoplifting does not say that Saks deserves to be ripped off because it sells $200 hair bows.
Still, why would any sane person, even one with limitless funds, spend $1,830 on a cashmere sweater when Target has $50 versions cut from the same goat? Or $530 on a canvas beach bag with the Chanel logo when L.L. Bean has nearly the same one for $17?
“In this case, the actual cost of goods has nothing to do with why people buy them,” said market researcher Pam Danziger, author of “Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need.” “These people are buying a feeling. The product is just a means to an end. It’s giving you the feeling that you are someone special and that you deserve it.”
Ask representatives of any luxury company why their clothes and accessories cost so much and they’ll tell you that quality doesn’t come cheap. Chanel handbags run from about $490 for a small canvas bag to $10,000 for an alligator tote. “There are about 150 steps that go into making each one of our bags,” said the company spokeswoman Anne Fahey.
The “quality argument” is weaker than single-ply cashmere, according to Pingol. “It’s all about the brand they’ve created,” he said.
Danziger agrees. “I advise my luxury market clients to push the envelope as far as they can with prices. It’s all about what the consumer thinks something is worth.”
Perhaps charging sky-high prices is a way for designer brands to keep their products off the riff-raff. One assumes, after all, that Miuccia Prada doesn’t want just anyone carrying her highly sought-after name in their hands. “There is a sense of gauging who you want your customers to be,” said Danziger.
More than anything, say those who study purchasing habits, what’s at work is as simple as the law of supply and demand. “People were willing to pay inflated prices for handbags in the 1990s, so prices went up. And up,” said Pat Tunsky, creative director of the Donegar Group, a trend consulting firm. “All of those luxury brands did very well then. But now, as a result of the economic situation, they are not selling as much as in the past.”
Outside of the baubled bubble, shoppers are savvier, and it’s become as chic to spend at Costco as at Maxfield.
“We’ve hit the wall. More and more, consumers are asking for real value,” said Danziger. “Even luxury consumers have become professional shoppers. They know who’s got it for less and what it’s worth.”
Even so, no amount of value shopping or outrage over Winona’s champagne shoplifting tastes is going to crush the market for $5,500 Hermes Birkin bags. (The waiting list at the store here is so long, it’s closed until next year.)
Like Palm Beach and Dallas, Beverly Hills will always have insanely acquisitive, price-oblivious spenders. “There’s always going to be a handful of people that go out of their way to spend the extra money,” said Marshal Cohen, an executive with the market research firm NPD Group.
“It’s about showing the world that tough times haven’t affected them. Or it’s that they don’t want to admit they are being affected by tough times.”
