The Cost of Things

I love fashion, always have. Clothes define the times. They also represent your self-identity. You feel different wearing a suit than a pair of sweatpants. Clothes are the first thing people notice when you walk into a room. We can look back to Princess Diana, who wore the now-famous “fuck you” dress to the Vanity Fair Gala when Charles left her. She did not have to say a word; the outfit and how it looked on her spoke for itself.

I get excited for the change of seasons, and always make a new purchase. Some things from the year before stay the course, others are put into storage for a later day. I love going back and re-wearing old favorites. I particularly love passing them on to our daughters and my nieces.

As a world, we make too many clothes. People are finally realizing how fashion is destroying the environment. The success of The Real Real and other companies like this, where people can sell their clothing and buy other people’s clothes they no longer want, is here to stay.

Luxury has gotten out of hand. The cost of marketing the goods, running the stores, and paying for design houses is extremely high. LVMH, the best of the best, grossed almost $80B in 2025 (down 5% from 2024) and made a profit of $12B (a 13% decline from 2024). LVMH has a market cap of $280B listed on the Parisian exchange.

One could ask, when does this peak? Yoox, Net A Porter, and My Theresa are now all rolled up under one roof, Lux Experience, a publicly traded company on the NYSE, housed in Germany, that purchased each of these sites. Not surprisingly, they have already laid off 100 people but plan on laying off over 700 as they restructure. This happened with Macy’s when it merged with Bambergers. Why pay for two when you can have one? In the Yoox Net A Porter My Theresa roll-up, why pay for three of everything? The big difference is that roll-up is all online, not brick-and-mortar, and with AI, there will be less need for people.

I thought about all of these things when I saw a red Chanel bag in the latest Elle magazine. I am not a Chanel girl, but I was curious, so I looked it up online. The bag is priced at $13,500. That is insane. I would rather buy a piece of art from an upcoming artist and keep my belongings in my pockets. The industry believes these bags cost about $500 to make. That is some serious margin. I understand that they represent an old-school elite luxury brand, but how many people can afford to buy this, or even want to buy it, even if they can afford it? As I used to say to our children, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The world is changing.

I loved the fashion shows this past week, and it is fun to watch them streamed on Instagram, and the shows absolutely spoke to the times we are in, but I can’t help but wonder where this is all going? Where does it end up? Change is absolutely afoot.