There are two charities that I typically support – the St.Joseph Center in Venice, CA, which does incredible work with low-income families and the homeless (for now, at least…), and the Long Beach Opera, where I serve on the board.
Each charity typically does an annual fundraiser and auctions off random items, and I typically buy random things depending on my enthusiasm, solvency, how closely TG is monitoring me, and how much free wine I’ve had to drink.
Two years ago, I bought a gift certificate at a men’s store in West Hollywood (and yes, I deducted the cash value of the certificate from my donation when I took credit for it year-end). It was for $500, and I figured I could get a couple dress shirts and a tie, or a blazer, or something.
Yesterday, in an effort to broaden my clothing choices from black Gap polo shirts, Royal Robbins pants, and Vans – something TG and others have teased me for quite undeservedly – I went to the store.
And was ushered into quite another world. My $500 certificate would buy me one – that’s one (a single) dress shirt. I went from counter to counter, my level of amusement rising at each stop. They had unremarkable (although finely made) dress shirts for $400.00; sale blazers for $1,100, etc. etc. I wasn’t going to let the certificate go to waste, so bought some fine sport shirts and a tie – and burned a nice little divot in my debit card on top of the gift certificate in doing so.
But I’ll be a well-dressed blogger, for sure.
Anyone who has met me knows I’m the wrong person to talk with about fashion. Someone why buys black Gap polos by the half-dozen every four months isn’t someone with a highly developed fashion sense. Back in the day that I had to wear suits and such, I was lucky that a very good tailor used to come to our offices and basically dress us with custom suits and shirts (made in Hong Kong or India, and actually quite reasonable – I’d love to find another one like him). In current dollars, I used to pay $200.00 for a shirt that was the fashion and quality equivalent of the shirts this store wanted $400 for…made to measure.
…so how does this boutique stay in business? It’s a puzzlement to me, because I encounter businesses like this all over – but only in the major cities – Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. Is it only there that there is a large enough body of insecure strivers? Or it is just that the population of fashion obsessives is high enough there?
I’d love to know what you think about that.
The Gap?
Old Navy usually has better deals on good old polo-type shirts. You can often get them for ten bucks each, and they’re great.
Yeah, and they last like three weeks before they fade and fray…the quality gap is actually pretty significant…
A.L.
Only TWO Americas?
I buy designer dress shirts at the resale shop for $15; I’m not going to work and getting ink or crud on a $50 shirt. (I save that one for events like the annual charity fundraiser.)
And a $500 shirt? For that kind of money, I can put new tires all the way around on my sportscar! What kind of fool fritters money away like that?
But yes, we do have some $500 shirts in San Antonio, and fools to match.
My baby sister lives in New York city with her husband, who is in advertising. She is in PR, so they have two NYC salaries, but no kids.
There’s a shop on the corner, she tells me, that sells womens’ Wrangler blue jeans for over a hundred bucks a pair. You can buy exactly the same pants here in north Georgia at the Tractor Supply Company, or the local feed and seed. They run twenty bucks.
You can buy a cheaper variant at Walmart, which isn’t as well made, has thinner denim, etc., for about twelve bucks.
Now, that’s a sensible difference — if you just want pants to wear to school or whatever, the WalMart Wranglers will be fine. If you’re going to be working in them outside, or especially if you’re going to be riding horses, the top-of-the-line Wranglers are a good investment. They’ll hold up to the wear and tear and last a long time in the saddle.
The price difference between Tractor Supply and the botique in NYC? I can’t see any good reason for it at all. Used to be you could say, “Overhead — the real estate/taxes are more expensive.” ($80+ dollars a pair of jeans more? Maybe, or maybe you don’t sell as many pairs of jeans so you need more profit on each to make it worth carrying them… and maybe you’re sticking people a little in the name of “fashion.”)
Now, though, you can order the jeans online and have them shipped to you.
But people still buy them at the botique. Two Americas, as you say.
The other point, of course, is that they insist on buying “the best” Wranglers, even though they probably aren’t going to need the extra quality. The only people riding horses in NYC are the cops, and they have uniform trousers they have to use.
AL —
It’s all about the endless chasing of status in places like LA or NYC.
People buy expensive stuff and flaunt it to flaunt their status.
Status, status, status.
Women seem more obsessed with this in terms of clothes at least than men. Most guys buy $40 or so Levis or Wranglers. Women’s jeans will run $200 or more in many cases.
They told us in psych class that jewelers move slow moving product by raising the price rather than discounting like normal retailers.
Don’t know if it’s true, but it makes sense
On a similar note, what’s the reason for a pimped-up car? Flauntig status, that’s it.
Grim:
Maybe the cost of real esate has something to do with the cost of the jeans.
I meant to say real estate.
Right, Davod, that was the old excuse (which is why I said, “Used to be you could say, “Overhead — the real estate/taxes are more expensive.”) But I don’t see how it still survives today. These botique-shoppers are internet-savvy; and it looks to me like you can get the jeans for “around twenty bucks”:http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=wrangler+13mwz+jeans&btnG=Search online. With shipping, you’d be saving… oh… seventy dollars or more a pair.
One possible explaination is that wealthy people have (or think they have) very exacting tastes. When they find an article of clothing (or of whatever) that fits their tastes, they will pay whatever for it, because the time that it would take to bargain-shop is not worth it to them. Thus the hundred dollar Wranglers.
Maybe they know perfectly well they can save $70, and just like to say that they don’t bother. “Oh, sure, I could save seventy bucks a pair, but then I wouldn’t get to try them on first [although they’re made to standard sizes]. When you have as much money as I have, you just don’t have to make sacrifices like that.”
It would be interesting to learn if, on average, people who buy $50 shirts spend the same percentage of their income on shirts as people who buy $500 shirts. If so, one is no more fashion or status conscious than the other. To Mr. Rockford, spending $500 on a shirt might seem outlandishly exhorbitant. On the other hand, whatever he might be willing to spend on a shirt might seem equally exhorbitant to someone in, say, rural China, where, I understand, a significant portion of the world’s populations spends a lot of its time. I think we all flaunt what we’ve got; its just that some of us have more to flaunt than others.
In China, those “made to order” suits are not uncommon. There were several back alleys in HangZhou where you could be measured by kind older ladies, who would then produce for you whatever you desired for prices quite below what you could imagine paying in the West. Out of the best silk in the world, if you wanted — HangZhou is China’s silk capital.
None of them are on the internet, though. Wrangler is — there are several places you can get your Wranglers online. When the Chinese silk ladies get up on line, I’d expect the “off the rack” crap suits you can buy to vanish.
I say this as a very occasional wearer of suits; but why wear a crappy expensive one, when you could have a hand tailored one for less? Hell, for the price of two good off-the-rack suit that are then tailored to fit you, you could fly to HangZhou, have ten suits made, and then fly back again.
Come to think of it… business plan! Anybody want to capitalize this? I know the right alleys. 🙂
I don’t know, the last time someone told me about a business deal down a back alley, it didn’t work out too good.
$500! My entire wardrobe isn’t worth that, including shoes. If I spend that much on anything, it better have at least a two horse motor. But then, I live out in flyover country, where folks still have some sense of proportion.
I’m with you. Though even in flyover country, if something is worth having, it’s worth spending some money on. I have a couple of hats that are worth more than one hundred bucks, and boots worth about that much.