Designers and retailers are realizing that “aspirational” shoppers—who used to swipe their credit cards and pile on the debt to purchase whatever was trendy, and who might otherwise be known as wannabes—just aren’t buying like they were during the boom consumer times of a few years ago. These days, when shoppers are inclined to make a purchase, they’re more likely to seek out practical, classic merchandise that they’ll use for more than one season. In other words, as crazy as this sounds, they expect good value for they money they spend.
So what do most of today’s fashionable-yet-budget-conscious (or at least debt-averse) shoppers want? In the words of more than one designer quoted in a WSJ story about luxury designers refocusing on value, today’s shoppers want “real clothes.”
Donna Karan, for instance, describes her spring DKNY line of navy blazers and tailored pants thusly:
“I don’t think we’ve looked at real clothes for a long time, so it’s sort of like a new reality.”
Designer Tracy Reese said that she is …
“ready for real clothes, things that I want to buy and keep for years … I don’t want trendy, crazy contraptions that you’re going to wear to one party and toss aside. And our customer, she wants that from us. She wants real clothing, she wants value.”
Aha! So consumers want real clothes. Wait, what? Just what in high heaven were consumers buying a few years ago?
Proudly untrendy people (like me) have always scratched our heads at the absurd garments periodically displayed on fashion runways. Even more puzzling is the fact that everyday people—”aspirational” types anyway—have literally bought into these trends and dug themselves into debt by purchasing clothing that they’ll wear once and that’ll look silly by the following season. And if you feel that a purchase can be deemed silly in such a short amount of time, then it was silly all along.
But now, the idea that designers are focusing on value and “real clothes” is tantamount to them admitting that their old fashion lines were, well, not exactly real. They were fanciful, or dreamy, or downright silly and wasteful. They were the opposite of real; they were fake.
I guess this is all part of the point of fashion—to try to dress up and become something new and exciting, to transform and become something you’re not in your everyday life. But buying clothes won’t change who you are, no matter how bright the colors are and no matter how much the items costs. Trying to change who you are in this manner can change you in a way, I suppose, but not in an entirely positive way—from somebody who lives within his or her means to somebody who is deep in debt.
After a couple years of economic turmoil, the fanciful-silly garments and handbags have fallen out of favor with shoppers, according to a survey focused on luxury spending cited in the WSJ piece:
Respondents to the Bain survey said that two-thirds of their purchases this year have been weighted towards “classic” styles. Four out of five shoppers said they would be willing to pay more for apparel that would last more than one season.
As for the alternative—buying pricey clothes that’d be worn for a single season before being relegated to the attic—now that seems the silliest and most wasteful of all. My advice for fashion and money are one in the same: Keep it real.