How to Pay Less for Expensive Luxury Clothing
You love to leaf through fashion magazines to see what’s hot on the runway this season. Sometimes you pause and sigh, “I could never afford that!” This post is for you, wistful fashionista!
Expensive luxury items may seem beyond your financial reach, but shouldn’t you be able to grasp those items you long for? While that may sound like magical thinking, there are many ways to reach out and grasp luxury fashion for much less. This post explains how you can do it and why you probably should!
Fashion Crimes
You’ve already read a million online appeals to cut back on your fast-fashion clothing purchases, so we won’t labor the point too vigorously. But we will say that the average woman in the USA spends $2,000 on clothing each year. And for that sizable chunk of change, that average woman only wears 80% of her clothing 20% of the time, from an average of 103 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe.
What’s responsible for this wanton consumption of clothing that languishes in our closets? It’s not surprising that some pieces get lost in the crush when our wardrobes are this stuffed but why do we hoard clothes?
Sale pricing, a sense of obligation to be “fashionable”, and the breakneck speed of fashion change are all part of the reason for closet stuffing. But there’s a more intelligent, environmentally friendly way to dress.
Luxury Quality is Bang For Your Buck
If you’re spending $2,000 a year for clothes you mostly wear only 20% of the time, don’t you think it’s time you re-considered your sartorial strategy? Maybe you’re first in line for a sale, but do you really need what they’re selling? Getting hypnotized by sale pricing is often our worst enemy.
Fashion itself can be the enemy if we allow ourselves to be its victims. Bubble skirts long forgotten in the back of closets everywhere whisper, “Amen.” Fashion minimalism may not be your bag, but if you’re not wearing what’s in your closet, you need a little minimalist restraint in your life.
You may blanch at some of the price tags you see, browsing through the latest edition of your favorite fashion bible, but there are other ways to get your hot little hands on the latest. And what’s more, $2,000 spent on quality is an investment. The clothing you spend more money on is more likely to be worn regularly as a pillar of your wardrobe. And it will last much longer, be less subject to the whims of fashion, and become a beloved seasonal friend you’ll cherish. Isn’t that better than looking at a closet full of mediocre clothing you don’t even wear?
Online Vendors Respond
The online market for luxury items for resale is growing exponentially. In fact, luxury resale is emerging as a force to be reckoned with in the hyperactive fashion marketplace. This Holiday Season, shoppers are embracing the trend of high-end fashion resale, giving second-hand luxury items as gifts.
Luxury fashion brands are partnering with online retailers to build platforms that feature high-end fashion with smaller price tags and areas where third-party sellers can offer new or gently used items for sale. This trend is answering a demand for overall product sustainability on the part of consumers while responding to a concurrent call for fashion with a more sustainable commercial profile.
Style Over Fashion
As designer and style icon Coco Chanel once said, “Fashion fades. Only style remains the same.” The difference is that style is a reflection of personal taste, favoring classic lines, quality fabrics, and traditional construction techniques. Fashion, on the other hand, is an ever-evolving kaleidoscope, often cheaply reproduced by imitators to cash in on transient trends.
Style is no stranger to fashion but it’s not fashion’s subject and certainly not its victim. Style is eternal, living in the present while referencing a past in which people spent less time shopping and more time thinking about specific wardrobe pieces and how they fit into a set wardrobe. The stylish fashionista isn’t worn by clothes. The clothes are worn to express the wearer’s personal style.
Reduce, Reuse, Resell
Fashionistas reading will already have the skills required for online luxury resale outlets. All they need to do is adapt their retro shopaholic strategies to the “new normal”. Fashion sustainability demands that we buy 75% fewer pieces of clothing to help keep our fast fashion errors out of landfills.
Because luxury resale is growing by such leaps and bounds, you know there are others like you out there, ready to sell their luxury finds for a better price than you could ever imagine. So, your fashion finds can be resold, too, and that’s the sustainable glory of online luxury resale.
The world is changing, and with it, fashion. But as Coco Chanel so sagely said, “style remains the same.” Your job, aware fashionista, is to meld your style with luxury items to create a look that’s all your own — accessible, planet-friendly, and imminently stylish.
