Amanda Mull, a senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek and expert on consumer culture, dives deep into the rising costs of fashion. She discusses how wealthy boredom during the pandemic fueled luxury price hikes and why younger consumers struggle to enter the luxury market. Amanda explores the shift from craftsmanship to merchandising among brands and the intriguing success of the Marc Jacobs Tote Bag. The conversation also highlights the emergence of dupe culture as a response to high prices and the evolving landscape of social media and its impact on fashion.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
First Luxury Purchase
Alyssa Vingan bought her first Chanel bag after a cancer diagnosis.
This luxury experience set a high bar for future purchases.
insights INSIGHT
Handbags as Pricing Guides
Handbags are a good way to study pricing in fashion due to their consistent production over time.
This allows for clear comparisons and reveals pricing trends.
insights INSIGHT
Luxury Price Inflation
LVMH's strategy fueled price increases in the 2010s by expanding production and accessories while pushing pricing upward.
Pandemic boredom among the wealthy further accelerated luxury goods spending, leading to significant price hikes.
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From handbags to designer ready-to-wear to mass market brands, when — and how — did everything in fashion get so damn expensive? This week, Alyssa is joined by Amanda Mull, senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek and consumer culture expert, to discuss one of her industry passions: pricing. Tune in for an enlightening episode and Amanda’s insights on how studying pricing structures can help you understand the world around us; how rich people being bored during the pandemic played a role in luxury good price increases; why the contemporary category in fashion has all but disappeared; why brands have gotten out of the fashion game and into the merch game, which can only entertain people for so long; what consequences brands could face now that consumer perception of them is no longer fully accurate as prices climb and quality falls; the existential problem that people are getting priced out of the luxury consumer category; how brands can onboard new, young customers if they can’t afford any of their products; why the Marc Jacobs Tote Bag is an interesting success story; how brands like Coach and Tory Burch have succeeded without raising prices; why conglomerates have less leeway to be creative, but a good creative practice is what yields real hits (see Prada and Miu Miu); The Row, Calvin Klein, and how much consumers will pay for minimalism; why resale prices are a real testament to exactly how popular a brand is; how Hermès in-store shopping videos and The Row sample sale hauls on TikTok affect brand perception; how dupe culture and influencer marketing play into all of this, and much more.
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The New Garde with Alyssa Vingan