Expensive designer clothes: a ripoff?

Great Debates
1

My wife and I were discussing Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and how she reportedly spent 25 million dollars of Onassis’ money in the first year of their marriage on ultra-expensive clothes and furnishings. My question is, are the fantastic prices charged by top name designers really worth it? Does spending $20,000 for a dress get you anything in terms of workmanship or style that $1000 wouldn’t? Could you even tell just by looking at such a dress that it was a “so-and-so original”?

I have a suspicion that the ultra-rich and the fashion designers have simply formed a feedback loop. Designer X charges a huge sum for his clothing. Rich person buys clothing. Designer X’s clothes get a reputation as what the rich and stylish buy. The rich and stylish buy his clothes to show how rich and stylish they are. X jacks up his prices even more. Eventually it becomes a feedback between Designer X’s reputation and the rich buyers’ conspicous consumption, that has as little to do with the actual merits of the designs as the stock prices of the dot.coms had to do with their company’s actual earnings.

2

Well there is first the practical aspect of clothes, and it doesn’t take much until that has been achieved, durability, suitability and fit.

Then you start on with making them feel good, and look good, and although you can start to pay very high prices, you then come up with the law on diminishing returns, the more you pay the less great the differance.

Some clothes consume an immense number of man hours to create, think of hand embroidery or zillions of sequins stitched individually.

Is that worth the effort? probably not, you can go so far in human input and intrinsic value, and then things goes stratospheric.

I have come across those who would pay over £500 streling for a woolly jersey, and if you can’t recognise that fact then you are not the sort of person they wish to be seen with, in other words they are snobs.

You get to a point where clothes are a portable display of wealth and power, percieved good taste becomes a valuable commodity and to be seen to have it is something beyond price, for some folk.

This is where the designer comes in, and we are mostly all part of it, we will say that we maybe bought an item 'cause it is better made than another or some other justification, but the truth is that very often you can get stuff as good quality for less money, it’s just not as cool to be seen wearing it.

If someone can afford to pay $2000 or more for a dress without even batting an eyelid in surprise and they are so wealthy they don’t even notice the money leave their account, that might be more sensible behaviour than the person who spends their last dime on a pair of jeans with one label, rather than another cheaper pair that are equally good quality.

It’s easy to poke fun at the glitterati for their pointless extravagance, it’s not so funny when one of your kids refuses to wear a pair of trainers because they are not fashionable, and the alternative is going to cripple your budget for a month.

3

The question of worth comes down to the person buying the product and the person selling the product. To me and you a $20,000 dollar dress might represent a downpayment on a home or a brand new car. But to other people $20,000 isn’t all that much money and they can afford to spend it on a dress. Many of those dresses do require a large amount of man hours to make and of course you couldn’t be seen wearing the same dress twice or the same dress as someone else. So I guess when you factor that in to the type of society they ultra-rich live in then yeah I guess it is worth it.
Marc

4

They are only charging what the market will bear. Obviously these women think that it’s worth 20,000 smackers to buy such an item, and so the economy rolls around. I don’t think World Series tickets are worth what they seem to go for, and others wouldn’t dream of paying $60 for a book. If someone is willing to pay that amount, the value of the object (or service) has been established.

5

Of course. What we’re discussing here is, what is it about these articles of clothing that make rich fartknockers think they’re worth $10,000 or more? I’m sure they’re of much higher quality than what you can find at Wal-Mart, but that alone couldn’t possibly account for more than $1000-2000. Low production volume is also probably a factor, but most of the price is due to snob appeal, and Lumpy’s theory seems to be the most likely explanation as to how designers get people to pay what they do.