When Fashion Boutiques Go Bust

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Anyone with a few brain cells left floating between their ears understands that the economy is lousy and times are tough.   They may not know why that happened, or, like most, they may be blaming any number of things.   But the rich are feeling the pinch and those who were pretending to be rich or were rich for twenty minutes, are discovering they can no longer afford what they are used to having.

So the independent boutiques are suffering.  The same great fashion forward, taste making, trendsetting, repositories of cutting edge fashion are looming as an endangered species.   The same tony venues that brought such clothing designers as Giorgio Armani, Jil Sanders, and Dries Van Nooten to the American consciousness are faced with the reality of customers who can’t afford the goods they sell.

While the department stores are faced with the lack of customers, the big guys can offer incentives that the little goes are uncapable or presenting.   Instead they have to cut budgets, which means ordering less stock, or ordering stock on consignment.   They must haggle with their star designers to get cheaper pricing and extended payment terms.

This is not the way of the fashion forward boutique.   A few years ago, hell, even a year ago, most would look at you funny if you wanted to buy something for a mere hundred bucks.   The sales people would smirk at your ignorance, if you seemed either unprepared or less aware of the newest, latest, greatest new names making their presence felt on the runways.   But now the duties alone on some of the imported clothing can put the price points out of range.

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Surely the rich will still buy fashion.  Although, surveys reveal the rich may buy the same brands, but they are not buying the quantity they did before.   As for those consumers buying over their heads, they are drowning.  And the great purveyors of cutting edge fashion are falling by the wayside, one by one.

New designers will come along.  Deisgners who can sell cheap enough or have domestic roots, eliminating the need for the surcharge related to duties.   These will be designers who may make clothes that are rugged and built to last.  No little nothing shoes for $1 Thousand Bucks that can barely make it through a season.  And forget those $5 Thousand Dollar bags.   As for jewelry, if you want to wear expensive bangles and bling, you are liable to get robbed.   Others out there don’t really care who designed it.  Only that it can buy them another meal, or another fix.

But new designers will emerge.  Over time they will be pronounced the new kings and queens of the runway.  They will influence our sense of aesthetics and impact our lives.   And then they too are liable to out price themselves, putting their fashion sense just out or reach of their adoring public.   The retailers who believed in them, who heralded them, and introduced them in their shops, will be faced again with another crisis.   People who need to be cool but who can’t afford to pay the price.

High School was never this stressful.

Author: Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic behavior in the late twentieth century. He has recently published The Cuban Quarter, The Blood Orange, and The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He is the author of The Constant Travellers. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.