Most Overpriced Designer? #3

[Alquimista]

This is why I buy dupes with zero shame. It's all made in the same places by the same people anyway.

 

[yslforever]

But if Sandro is able to make Saffiano from PU, why wouldn't Prada do the same? This is why I assume they even stopped using leather for Saffiano products since ages...

Their website still claimed it's calf leather with a Saffiano treatment.
"The accessory, presented in the large version, is made of iconic Saffiano, a calf leather patented by Mario Prada that is resistant to scratches and water and defined by its crosshatch texture. "
But tbh, after a Saffiano treatment, calf, old cow hides or PU, it looks the same.
And they claimed it's patented, I am sure it WAS then but it's ancient, and everybody can claim, make and sell Saffianos now. No patents last a hundred year.

 

[Frederic01]

Interesting article about Dior, which mentions the increase in pricing, around 60% from 2020 until now.

Tough luxury market dims Dior’s shine​

Sales stutter at LVMH brand run by Bernard Arnault’s daughter Delphine as luxury downturn deepens

At one of Shanghai’s most exclusive malls, a Dior store is spread across four floors and includes special tea rooms for premium shoppers, in a market that was once associated with rapid growth for luxury brands. But on Thursday afternoon there were few customers despite it being launch day of the French company’s new spring collection in China. “You can’t compare it to before,” said one assistant. “The entire market is like this”. Chinese consumers helped drive an unprecedented boom in the global luxury sector in recent years but a deepening slowdown in the crucial market is now taking its toll on some of the sector’s biggest names. Shares across the industry dropped this week after Dior owner LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury group, reported a fall in third-quarter sales on the back of weakening Chinese demand. Sales in LVMH’s core fashion and leather goods division — the industry bellwether that houses top brands including Louis Vuitton and Dior — fell 5 per cent, the first contraction since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and worse than consensus expectations.

“If you look at growth rates from 2021 to 2023 . . . eventually something has to give. It’s not sustainable. So you have this very, very fast normalisation, and I think the problem at this time is Dior,” said Flavio Cereda, luxury investor at GAM. “Louis Vuitton is holding up OK — not great, but it’s an amazing brand. The rich, the poor — they’ve managed to make products for everyone. But Dior has now become more difficult.” That presents a challenge for Delphine Arnault — the eldest child of LVMH’s billionaire owner and chief executive Bernard Arnault — who took over as Dior CEO at the start of last year following a period under her predecessor Pietro Beccari when the brand’s sales grew fourfold to about €10bn, according to HSBC estimates.

LVMH does not release financial data on the performance of individual brands. But chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony said Louis Vuitton’s sales in the quarter had been “a little bit above the average” in the fashion and leather goods division, “while Dior is a little bit below”. People familiar with the performance say Louis Vuitton sales were down by low single digits, while Dior’s decline was in the low double digits. Smaller Fendi, which had an estimated €2.5bn in sales last year, is also facing a drop in revenues, the people said. “While Louis Vuitton and Dior have tended to trend similarly previously, we see quite a dichotomy now,” analysts at HSBC wrote, adding that “the success of [smaller brands] Loro Piana, Loewe and Rimowa will have been negated by declines in other parts of that portfolio.” LVMH and Dior declined to comment.

The world’s biggest luxury group with a market value of €312bn, LVMH owns almost 100 brands ranging from hotel chains to perfumes, but Louis Vuitton — a megabrand with roughly €22bn in annual sales — and Dior are the two biggest contributors to profits. Together they accounted for about 65 per cent of group earnings before interest and tax last year, according to HSBC. LVMH is not alone in facing tougher times as the industry adjusts after years of record growth, but is faring better than some peers. In central Shanghai, Burberry and Gucci stores were also quiet at the same downtown shopping complex.

Another Dior store in the city’s financial district had more customers for the new collection, although an assistant at one of the company’s make-up stalls elsewhere in the city said footfall was down 20 per cent and that they had reached out to repeat customers to drum up business. Shares in LVMH rival Kering are down more than 40 per cent this year after a series of profit warnings, a rarity in the sector. Sales at its flagship brand Gucci are expected to have fallen 23 per cent year-on-year when the group reports third-quarter revenues next week, according to Barclays. But within LVMH, Dior now faces the challenge of forging a path forward under a new chief executive after a period of turbocharged growth.

“There is some resetting happening,” said one luxury financier, adding that Delphine Arnault’s “energy is not the same” as Beccari’s, and “she’s coming into something that is perhaps a bit stressed after being milked for growth”. Beccari, now chief executive at Vuitton, transformed Dior by moving it into new categories and gaining market share across women’s and men’s fashion, leather goods, jewellery and homeware. During his time at Dior, he was “all about volume, being aggressive, and is very very good at that”, said Cereda at GAM. “But exceptionally strong growth also came from excessive price increases as we saw at Chanel.” Average prices for luxury goods tracked by HSBC have risen 50 per cent since 2019. Dior has raised them the most, according to Bernstein analysis, pushing up like-for-like price tags on “evergreen” products by more than 60 per cent between 2020 and 2023.




“At some point in the consumer’s mind, the absolute numbers just don’t make sense,” said the luxury financier. For the industry as a whole “you can no longer just grow through price” — particularly at top brands such as Dior and Vuitton that are now so big that they need to look beyond the ultra-wealthy for sales.

Delphine Arnault has been focused on “long-term desirability”, a person close to her said, investing in the Dior brand through big destination runway shows — such as a recent one in Scotland — and dressing stars from Céline Dion to Lady Gaga at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Industry players say a recent investigation by Italian authorities into poor labour conditions at factories working as subcontractors for brands including Dior and Armani has had little impact on customers, but that Dior faces broader questions about the quality of some items particularly in light of the scale of price increases.

“We’re already at a price point where affluent customers have problems with spending power, and there is an issue with the price point at Dior,” said another person close to the group. Analysts at research firm Third Bridge also note that Dior — where Maria Grazia Chiuri has been creative director since 2016 — has not launched a new blockbuster bag since the “book tote” hit the market more than three years ago. “Handbags are the cornerstone of luxury brands, as they are often the most prominent and lucrative category,” said Third Bridge analyst Yanmei Tang. “The lack of relevance with customers in the handbag segment appears to be part of a broader issue affecting Dior’s product line-up.”

A person close to Delphine Arnault said recent launches such as the Toujours bag released six months ago were performing well. Under her leadership the brand has also increased the number of bags it includes in Chiuri’s runway shows to build out the key product offering, with a focus on appealing to the brand’s highest-end clientele. “This is where most of Dior’s growth is coming from,” the person said.

For luxury’s biggest brands, sustaining momentum is a challenge once a certain scale has been reached. After €10bn in sales, “you need an exceptional storyline, heritage and product for a lot of different customers while managing the dilution of exclusivity”, said Cereda. “Walking around any Dior megastore quickly flags what the challenges are today.”

FINANCIAL TIMES

 

[FashionPower]

Gotta love my queen MariaGrazia for still putting basic tulle gowns coming straight from her first (2017!) Dior collection on sale!
15k for a tulle prom dress looking like Sherry Hill or Jenny Packham?

 

[tourbillions]

This is why I buy dupes with zero shame. It's all made in the same places by the same people anyway.

i only care about getting good quality leather and if its an exotic i want it to be genuine. Otherwise i dont care if its a dupe 😂

 

[velvetandsilk]

This is why I buy dupes with zero shame. It's all made in the same places by the same people anyway.

It depends where it comes from, if bought at a market, you are supporting mafias and organized crime groups, but these factories sometimes have their own shops where the bags of well-known companies are sometimes sold without a logo, if it is not some unique design and you can break various laws.

 

[tourbillions]

you are supporting mafias and organized crime groups

as opposed to what? greedy conglomerates?

 

[velvetandsilk]

^
If you want, you can find a local manufacturer of handbags and other products, there aren't many of them, but they do exist. The company doesn't spend a fortune on marketing, they have a permanent offer of basic models, so there isn't a ton of overproduced goods that have to be discounted because the warehouse has to be cleared, they have one store where they sell - all their margin. Secondly, there is a market for second-hand goods or you can sew a bastic model of handbag yourself, it's not as difficult as it seems. High fashion companies like to present everything as something complicated, so that customers think they have to pay so much because it's something special.

As for high fashion companies, they spend a lot on marketing, if they wanted to, they could easily afford to produce handbags for 300 euros. At work, I see prices at different stages and the problem is that there is no problem with cutting production costs, but spending crazy amounts of money on shity celebrities is not a problem, despite the fact that they don't always sell...

 

[Thefrenchy]

A few years ago, it was easy to pick a few. Now, we could consider pretty much the entire industry to be overpriced...

 

[Alquimista]

It depends where it comes from, if bought at a market, you are supporting mafias and organized crime groups, but these factories sometimes have their own shops where the bags of well-known companies are sometimes sold without a logo, if it is not some unique design and you can break various laws.

I didn't know that. Probably sold for a banana's worth of the brand's price.

As for the mafias, they seem less greedy than the Arnaults of europe

 

[velvetandsilk]

As for the mafias, they seem less greedy than the Arnaults of europe

Because they have to launder the quality cash from human and drug trafficking, on which they make more money...
He is obsessed with being the richest man. If you listen to some of his interviews, you might get the impression that he lives in the 90s. The French government is also to blame for allowing this monopoly...

 

[FashionPower]

How do we feel about Schiaparelli by Roseberry prices? Those price tags are verging on CHANEL ready to wear if you ask me...
- Fully embroidered gown: 18k...looks reasonable, considering the Dior gowns with basic appliques embroidered in India that I posted few days ago retails at 15k. If this dress was by CHANEL it would be price upon request on the website and at least 30k LOL



- The basic ready to wear pieces are totally overpriced and even worse than CHANEL: 7k for a basic leather skirt? Come on...the bags prices are also ridicolous, they are priced like a timeless classic from CHANEL and a Birkin...

 

[JohannesL]

I didn't know that. Probably sold for a banana's worth of the brand's price.

As for the mafias, they seem less greedy than the Arnaults of europe

 

[Lola701]

How do we feel about Schiaparelli by Roseberry prices? Those price tags are verging on CHANEL ready to wear if you ask me...
- Fully embroidered gown: 18k...looks reasonable, considering the Dior gowns with basic appliques embroidered in India that I posted few days ago retails at 15k. If this dress was by CHANEL it would be price upon request on the website and at least 30k LOL

View attachment 1321806

- The basic ready to wear pieces are totally overpriced and even worse than CHANEL: 7k for a basic leather skirt? Come on...the bags prices are also ridicolous, they are priced like a timeless classic from CHANEL and a Birkin...

View attachment 1321807

It’s very expensive but it’s coherent.
The production and distribution are fairly limited, it’s coherent to the positioning as it is so linked to the couture.
A lot of products are tacky but at least, with this positioning, they won’t pollute the market.

We saw it with Balmain by Decarnin. The prices were insane but they reflected the reality of Balmain at the time. It was literally a Couture atelier making RTW and a very small production entity to facilitate.

And Balmain RTW was more expensive than Chanel RTW at some point. But are they comparable? Balenciaga RTW under Nicolas was sometimes at the prices of Chanel HC.

I think it’s clever for Schiaparelli but at the same time, the avenues for expansion are not wild. I think eyewear and perfumes would be the entry-priced items for them in the future.

 

[90sfan]

Whats the point of even making a coat like that? It will never sell.

I just bought it on Yoox for $129.99!!!
😋😋😋😋

 

[reese06]

I just bought it on Yoox for $129.99!!!
😋😋😋😋

Might have believed you if you posted that before the mytheresa acquisition which just finalized. Haha

Everyone on TikTok is complaining about how the party is over at yoox and the sale finds are slim to none now. More merchandise to just sit in warehouses.

 

[visvim2001]

Might have believed you if you posted that before the mytheresa acquisition which just finalized. Haha

Everyone on TikTok is complaining about how the party is over at yoox and the sale finds are slim to none now. More merchandise to just sit in warehouses.

How does that work?

Isn’t the point of Yoox to offload garments nobody wants and/or in strange sizes at steep discounts, with a low-cost business model?

If the prices weren’t good nobody would buy anything.

 

[FashionPower]

Since when Dolce got the CHANEL Couture treatment? 85k for termostrass?
You can really get a full CHANEL Couture experience with fittings at Rue Cambon and personalized sketches and packaging for much less

 

[reese06]

Since when Dolce got the CHANEL Couture treatment? 85k for termostrass?
You can really get a full CHANEL Couture experience with fittings at Rue Cambon and personalized sketches and packaging for much less

View attachment 1322517

And it doesn't include the belt which is $11,000 USD.

That dress is terribly basic for what it is intended to be paying homage to.