Dress on a Dime!

I have mentioned the amazing consignment shop in Dallas before, the Clothes Circuit, but just came across this article from the Fashion and Style section of the NYT and found it tres interesting. You can find such amazing steals and deals in consignment shops and on eBay. They are such a great outlet and how fabulous is it to know they are becoming chic again! For those of you that live in or near Dallas I urge you to visit the Clothing Circuit on Sherry Lane in Preston Center. They have everything, Lilly, Kate Spade, DvF, Chanel, Manolos, JCrew, Milly, Tibi, CK Bradley St. John's, Fendi, Chanel...you name it they have it. The best part is that ever two weeks the price of an item is reduced until it is eventually half the original price. They also often have 20% off sales (I will post next time I get an email). All in all just as this article proves I firmly believe any consignment is always worth a trip.

When Conscience and Closet Collide

By Ruth La Ferla

June 12, 2008

REVIEWING her wardrobe earlier this season, Elizabeth Marvin had a moment of reckoning. “How did this closet become so massively overstuffed?” she mused, disconcerted by the sight of so many Marni jackets, Chloé bags and Jimmy Choo shoes jostling for space on the racks. “From my green perspective, part of me feels guilty about being such a major consumer.”

But Ms. Marvin, the New York sales director for the National Audubon Society and a self-described “major environmentalist,” felt neither so guilty nor so strapped that she planned to stop shopping cold turkey. “Instead of buying that Chloé jacket that I want right now,” she said, “I’m much happier purchasing something at a consignment store that is much less.”
In recent months, high-end designer resale shops have been the beneficiaries of a subtle shift in consumer thinking, as fashion lovers, even those who can afford to splurge, reassess their priorities. Unsettled by continuing recession fears and the soaring prices of designer clothes, and assailed by queasy consciences as well, many find these shops a way to update their wardrobes without seriously denting their bank accounts — or their sense of social propriety.
“Everyone is feeling the pinch these days or knows people who are feeling the pinch,” said Linda Kenney Baden, a prominent lawyer in New York. “It’s good to buy a used car again, and it’s chic to buy used clothes.”
Shoppers like Mrs. Baden, some with formidable retail habits, are turning to consignment stores to offload designer clothing and accessories and to accumulate spare cash, as often as not plowing the profits back into the very same store. Cash-strapped bargain seekers and affluent trophy hunters alike are paring their closets, earning 40 to 50 percent of the resale shop’s asking price. Resale shoppers pay roughly a quarter to a third of the original market value of still-coveted Saint Laurent Muse bags, Stella McCartney jumpsuits and Louboutin pumps.
Merchants report that the number of shoppers and consignors is climbing and that business has rarely been so robust. “The rise of the euro, sky-high retail prices and the idea of recycling — those are some of the things that drive customers right to our door,” said Laura Fluhr, an owner of Michael’s, the 54-year-old grande dame of fancy resale stores on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
“In an otherwise bleak retail scene, consignment is a thriving area,” Ms. Fluhr said, noting that her business is 30 percent ahead for the first four months of 2008. She added that the extravagant prices of new designer fashions and the influx of European visitors scouring New York for bargains have contributed to the growth.
“People are really resenting designer prices at conventional stores,” said Ina Bernstein, the owner of Ina, the designer resale chain in Manhattan. “In a way, that’s why our business is up.” She said that sales are ahead by 15 percent from January through April at each of her five boutiques.
Vicki Haberman, who sells privately and through a Web site, ascribes a heightened interest in consignment shopping partly to consumers’ apparently unquenchable appetite for luxury labels, even those that are gently worn. “Every time you open a magazine, you see somebody wearing a quote-unquote vintage designer gown,” she said. “Shopping vintage and consignment has lost much of its stigma and become mainstream.”
April was a record month for Ricky’s Exceptional Treasures, a luxury resale store on eBay. Ricky Serbin, the owner, reported that his site had about 150,000 hits and some 4,000 visits a day. “These people do not need to be shopping on eBay,” Mr. Serbin said of his well-heeled customers. “They tell themselves, ‘I’m getting a $13,000 gown for $2,000 or $3,000,’ which is nothing to them.”
If a customer parts with $1,000 for a jeweled Lanvin necklace at the site, it’s a bargain compared with the original $8,000 tag. “They may see that as a tightening of the belt,” Mr. Serbin noted tartly.
Certainly the rewards of buying and selling through resale shops can be more emotional than practical. As Judy Yun, a customer and consignor at Ina, acknowledged, there are no savings in getting back $350 for a Balenciaga bag that cost $1,600, then spending the money on a $400 pair of Manolo Blahnik sandals. She buys and consigns nonetheless because, she said: “I like seeing that little bit of extra cash. Actually, it’s not so little when you’re talking about a Balenciaga handbag.”
Among the covetable pieces at Ina last week were a Prada pink mock-crocodile evening bag, which was selling for $825, compared with the original price of about $2,200; a D & G evening dress in bronze-colored lace for $475, $1,800 new; and a $325 pair of Louboutin pumps, originally $775.
At Act II, a designer resale store in Kansas City, Mo., pieces from St. John, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada and Dior are quick to vanish from the racks, said Gloria Everhart, the owner. Chanel bouclé tweeds and Hermès handbags can fetch prices in the thousands wherever they turn up.
Other labels that once sizzled have lost their draw. “Escada has gone cold, and so has Armani,” said Barbara Nell, the owner of the Daisy Shop on Oak Street in Chicago.
But for the most part, clothes that have gathered dust in closets for months rarely molder on consignment racks. That is because high-end merchants turn their inventory frequently, buying pieces that are no more than a few seasons old and dropping prices every few weeks to ensure that the wares look fresh and will sell at a reasonable cost.
Both merchants and consumers say that purging the closet and buying castoffs can be cleansing for the soul. “The whole idea of recycling and going green motivates some of our customers,” said Ms. Fluhr of Michael’s. “People are aware that Jimmy Choos fill landfills, too.”
Ms. Yun said she has grown increasingly sensitive to environmental issues. “Selling to resale shops becomes a platform to recycle,” she said. “Besides, I tell myself, ‘It’s obscene to have so much.’ ”
Five years ago, Mrs. Baden, the lawyer, rarely gave much thought to paying full retail for an evening dress she was unlikely to wear again. But in the weeks approaching a recent gala, she bought a Chanel gown at Ricky’s on eBay for one third of its original $10,000 price. “I was going to wear it to just one function,” she recalled. “To spend that kind of money — I couldn’t justify it.”