King and Royal Family show more 'human' side after difficult year

Royal family's key moments from 2024 - From cancer diagnosis to royal tour

The Ultimate Cleaning Shoe Brush - Wild Boar Bristles from Paul Brunngard / Arterton London.

Showroom and Private Lounge:

12 & 13 Princes Arcade

London

Opening Hours:

Monday - Friday, 10am to 6pm

Saturday, 11am to 5pm

https://arterton.co.uk/

 

Who We Are

In short, Arterton is a London-based design atelier of sartorial and lifestyle "desiderata". Our modus operandus is creating fine goods that sell on their own accord. And hence, our vision is two-fold:

 

Keep our selection small, so that we can refine our focus to articulated designs and proper craftsmanship that bring value to sartorial enthusiasts.

 

Steer away from the usual and, instead, aim to innovate on classic designs. After all, we are, first and foremost, a design firm and atelier, rather than a stock-holding department store or reseller.

Our Design Philosophy

In developing a good product, there appears to be two approaches stemming from opposite directions, which, dare we say, are equally valid. The first is to proceed from a marketing perspective, which is to discover lacunae on the market and then aim to fill those gaps. No doubt, this is the preferred method of a savvy entrepreneur.

 

The second is to approach product development simply from design; that is -- to attempt to create a quality product that embodies practical, functional, and aesthetic value.

 

At Arterton, we found it easier to create from design. After all, we believe that if a product is really good, then it will sell itself. Cue our latest innovation: the Arterton Signature Garment Bag. Made of the heftiest double waxed cotton, 12oz, available on the market and boldly features a unique double-zip opening for easy insertion and retrieval. Greater production costs -- yes ; but, in the name of design , worth it for the sartorial enthusiast.

Ireland's weavers fight to save Donegal tweed from copycat products

DONEGAL TWEED

Donegal tweed is a handwoven tweed manufactured in County Donegal, Ireland. Donegal has for centuries been producing tweed from local materials in the making of caps, suits and vests. Sheep thrive in the hills and bogs of Donegal, and indigenous plants such as blackberries, fuchsia, gorse (whins), and moss provide dyes. Towards the end of the eighteenth century The Royal Linen Manufacturers of Ulster distributed approximately six thousand flax wheels for spinning wool and sixty looms for weaving to various Donegal homesteads. These machines helped establish the homespun tweed industry in nineteenth-century Donegal.

Donegal Tweed fabric.

With the characteristic small pieces of yarn in different colours.

While the weavers in County Donegal provide a number of different tweed fabrics, including herringbone and check patterns, the area is best known for a plain-weave cloth of differently-coloured warp and weft, with small pieces of yarn in various colours woven in at irregular intervals to produce a heathered effect. Such fabric is often labeled as "donegal" (with a lowercase "d") regardless of its provenance.

Much of the development in textiles in Ireland from the C18th was based on linen. The growing commercial linen trade attracted families who had woven for themselves, so that linen had a very long history, albeit only in pockets of rich soil in the west.

By the late C18th, premiums were also paid to flax-growers in the form of wheels and looms – in a single year 6,000 wheels and looms were distributed in Donegal alone. Without them and the knowledge of their use, it is improbable that efforts would have been made to develop a tweed industry in those parts of the county. Woollen yarn for knitting and weaving could be made on the old flax wheels; spinning needed no revival, it had never died out. The woollen products of the area had been sold at Ardara Fair for many years.

In "Reminiscences of Donegal Industries" published by the Irish Homestead Journal of 1897, there is a description of how "Homespuns have been manufactured in these mountain districts extending from Ardara to Glenhead from time immemorial. In my childhood's days, the peasantry made their own blankets, flannels, etc. …. The woven goods were cleaned, dressed and finished in "tuck mills"…[one of which] is on a tributary stream of the Ardara River."

In the mid-1880s a parliamentary Select Committee on Industries in Ireland began an official survey of conditions throughout the over-populated, under-employed poor regions of Ireland, including county Donegal. The Donegal Industrial Fund, directed by Mrs Ernest Hart, began to press for some sort of quality control for flannel and frieze. Dr Townsend Gahan, inspector for the Congested Districts Board, advocated a depot where webs of yarn could be checked for consistency in width, colour and quality of fibre.

Inspections took place on what became known as "Depot Day".James Molloy of Ardara established an export market in New York for knits and tweeds. Spinning and weaving survived into the 1950s, enduring peaks and troughs, often due to quota systems placed on textile imports to the USA.

The industry began to lose its cottage-based element with the arrival of the power looms. In common with today's textile manufacturing companies in Ireland, cheaper labour overseas has put paid to the large-scale production of woollen goods produced here. However, the larger companies have diversified into the production of soft furnishing and high fashion clothing. Noted Donegal author and environmentalist, Judith Hoad states:

"Only a generation ago, Donegal Tweed embodied the integration between the sheep, the plants (used in the dyeing process) and the human population of its place of production – a kind of symbiosis existed. That symbiosis in the domestic production of tweed has disappeared. Mechanised, factory production may clothe more people, but it is in essence impersonal. The individuality…has gone. I'm a Luddite at heart and I mourn its passing*."

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/heritage-towns/the-heritage-towns-of-don/ardara/ardara-and-donegal-tweed/

Nov. 21, 2022: He Helps the RealReal Keep It Real

 

He Helps the RealReal Keep It Real

Dominik Halás, 29, is entrusted by the company to authenticate vintage clothes — many of which are older than he.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/style/realreal-authentication-luxury-vintage.html

Marisa Meltzer

By Marisa Meltzer

Published Nov. 21, 2022

Updated Nov. 22, 2022

 

The trash bags seemingly contained a treasure trove. Comme des Garçons, Maison Margiela, Helmut Lang and Jean Paul Gaultier were all names on the tags of the clothes stuffed inside.

 

The 10 black plastic bags had arrived in September at a 500,000-square-foot building in Perth Amboy, N.J., where the RealReal, the luxury resale marketplace, operates one of four authentication centers. They had been sent by a seller who said the clothes came from a vintage store that her aunt ran in Florida. After poring over the bags’ contents, about 100 garments in total, it was determined that the clothes were real — and that they could sell secondhand for as much as $100,000.

 

“These are some of the best Gaultier pieces we have ever come across,” said Dominik Halás, a master authenticator at the RealReal who specializes in vintage clothing, which the company defines as pieces that are at least 20 years old.

 

Mr. Halás, 29, is one of youngest people entrusted by the RealReal to authenticate garments, jewelry and other accessories. Previously a men’s wear merchandising manager and archival expert at the company, where he started working in 2017, he was asked to join the authentication team soon after it started reselling vintage clothing in 2019, the same year the RealReal became a publicly traded company. (Its stock debuted on Nasdaq at $20 a share; it currently trades for less than $2.)

 

“We needed the right experts,” said Rachel Vaisman, its vice president of merchandising operations. Although the RealReal has carried vintage handbags since it started in 2011, vintage clothing required “a specialized expert with the extensive knowledge and passion,” she added.

 

A Passion for (Vintage) Fashion

At the authentication center in Perth Amboy, clothing racks are arranged in rows that appear longer than city blocks. One Monday earlier this month, Mr. Halás was working his way through pieces from the shipment of 10 trash bags that had arrived weeks before. The clothes, most of which were from the late 1980s to early 2000s, included a double-breasted black-and-white Jean Paul Gaultier jacket lined in fabric featuring a male torso. The jacket was from the designer’s fall 1992 collection, which debuted before Mr. Halás was born.

 

Another piece plucked out of the trash bags: “the iconic Margiela tattoo top” from the spring 1994 collection, which Mr. Halás noted paid homage to an earlier piece introduced in 1989. “It’s sheer and tight and the tattoo print resonates with the audience,” he said. “They look so relevant to fashion now, which is why they retain their value.” Mr. Halás added that the top probably sold for “a few hundred dollars” when it debuted; the RealReal listed it at $7,000.

 

Many factors determine the RealReal’s pricing. Condition is considered, as well as whether a piece was ever was worn by a celebrity or featured in a museum exhibition. Commissions paid to sellers vary based on factors including sale price and type of item.

 

Mr. Halás said that there has been interest lately in clothes from Romeo Gigli; specifically pieces from the early 1990s, when a young Alexander McQueen worked at the brand before starting his own line. “It’s great work and people are really paying attention to the McQueen seasons,” he said. Other brands that have become more covetable in recent years are the French label Marithe and Francois Girbaud and the Japanese line Matsuda, he added.

 

Born in Slovakia, Mr. Halás moved with his family to Montclair, N.J., in 1997, when he was 4. “We were working class and against spending money on nonnecessities,” he said, adding that his interest in fashion was in part stoked by a 2007 article on the designer Helmut Lang in T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

 

As a student at Montclair High School, he started a fashion club and became more familiar with the vintage fashion business from working at Speakeasy Vintage, a boutique in Montclair that is now closed.

 

Mr. Halás started buying and reselling secondhand clothes online as a teenager. “If I had $100 to invest, I would buy something on Japanese eBay and sell it on the U.S. site for $300,” he said. After graduating from Brown University, where he studied art history and architecture, he worked at showrooms including Goods and Services in New York, and then consulted for Helmut Lang before joining the RealReal.

 

Along the way, Mr. Halás amassed his own fashion archive, which now contains some 500 pieces stored at his home in Jersey City, N.J., his parents’ home in Montclair and his brother’s dorm room at Bard College. “A significant part of my net worth is in clothing so I hope it pays off,” he said of his collection, which includes men’s and women’s wear from such designers as Yohji Yamamoto and Helmut Lang. Hedi Slimane is another favorite, particularly his pieces for Dior Homme’s fall 2003 collection.

 

In addition to clothes, Mr. Halás also collects old look books, which he and other RealReal authenticators use for research.

 

Weeding Out Fakes

When asked how often he sees a fake item, Mr. Halás looked visibly uncomfortable and glanced at Ms. Vaisman, his boss, before responding. “Several times a day I see pieces that have failed to be authenticated,” he said. “I’ve come across counterfeits that are made now to resemble clothes from the ’80s or ’90s.”

 

All items sent to the company are ranked one to five for how likely a piece is to be counterfeit. At the lower end of the scale, Mr. Halás said, would be a pair of contemporary designer jeans, because the resale value wouldn’t be more than the cost of producing a fake pair. At the higher end: bags with labels that say Chanel, Gucci or Louis Vuitton, which are often counterfeited. With bags, authenticators receive help from a proprietary patent-pending software called Vision, which catalogs photos of authentic styles that can be used for reference.

 

“This is how we scale the Dominiks of the world,” Ms. Vaisman said.

 

The hardest to judge items are reserved for master authenticators like Mr. Halás. While looking at a black Yohji Yamamoto coat, he paid particular attention to the tags, which noted the coat’s size with a number, a detail that meant the piece was introduced after the spring 2000 collection (before that, he explained, sizes were noted with letters). The tags also used a serif font, a detail that Mr. Halás said indicated the coat was from a collection before 2010. The coat’s YKK zipper with two pulls was a common element in pieces from the label, he added.

 

“I know this fits in with the collection,” said Mr. Halás, who ultimately determined the coat was from the fall 2002 collection.

 

More suspicious was a sweater with a Louis Vuitton tag. Like other pieces from the brand’s fall 2018 collection, it had a graphic that read “peace and love.” But a closer inspection revealed that the garment’s stitching was not neatly aligned, and that its tag felt thicker than those of other Vuitton pieces. The tag also noted it contained wool from vicuñas, which is very fine. Mr. Halás said he could tell by touching the sweater that it was too coarse to contain the material, so he ruled the garment a fake.

 

Most sellers are notified when the RealReal cannot authenticate an item. Suspicious pieces sent in unknowingly are returned. “We have a three-strike policy,” Ms. Vaisman said. “We’ll inform the consignor as to why we cannot accept the item.” When authenticators suspect an “obvious intent to defraud, we sequester the item and destroy the item, and work with law enforcement,” she added.

 

If customers think something they buy from the company is inauthentic, Ms. Vaisman said, “we’ll always take it back and have an expert look at it.”

 

Watching Mr. Halás in action suggested that his job is not exactly a science. Determining the authenticity of certain garments — the Louis Vuitton sweater, say, or a light blue nylon jacket with a Prada logo on it — can sometimes be more of an art.

 

“The quality of the material is throwing me off,” he said while handling the nylon jacket. “I feel authentic Prada ready-to-wear every day and the best way I can say it is this doesn’t feel expensive enough.”

 

A correction was made on Nov. 21, 2022: An earlier version of this article, relying on information from a spokeswoman at the RealReal, misspelled the surname of the company’s vice president of merchandising operations. She is Rachel Vaisman, not Viasman.

February 10, 2021: From The RealReal to Rebag, Unpacking the Rise of Resale

 

Magazine

From The RealReal to Rebag, Unpacking the Rise of Resale

By Lynn Yaeger

February 10, 2021

https://www.vogue.com/article/the-rise-of-reseale

 

I WAS KILLING TIME outside a fashion show a few years ago when I noticed a woman in the distance wearing a beautiful deep-blue coat decorated with a flourish of fuchsia sequins. I know that coat, I suddenly realized—Dries Van Noten! I had tried it on at Bergdorf’s a couple of seasons back, and part of me loved it, but the other part of me thought it was maybe too flashy, the tiniest bit Honeymoon in Vegas—and it was $2,000. Still, as so often happens, now that I saw it on someone else, it seemed like the most desirable garment in the world.

 

Until recently, it would have been near impossible to turn up this elusive item—if only I had bought it when I had the chance! Not anymore. Some months after that fateful glimpse, this exact coat—in my size! New with tags!—showed up on The RealReal at a fraction of its original price. Now it is happily ensconced next to the other resale treasures I have gleaned from various sites: the rare circa-1996 padded velvet Comme des Garçons jacket; the extraordinary black Marni collar with velvety petals; the campy Balenciaga bag printed like a souvenir tote from Paris. (Someday we will go to France again.) A few of these items came to me brand-new, but others were gently worn—and if I didn’t care that another person with great taste wore them a few times before consigning, well, the rest of the world doesn’t seem to, either.

 

It’s not just me. Practically everyone I know is addicted to vintage and resale sites, spending untold hours both looking for things to love and consigning things that, despite their exquisite provenances, they just don’t want anymore.

 

“The rise of the resale market has been incredible—everyone wants to get into this space,” says Tatiana Wolter-Ferguson, the CEO and a director of HEWI (Hardly Ever Worn It), a business started by her mother in 2012 in Monaco—where, Wolter-Ferguson explains, an excess of wealth created a situation ripe for resale. “At first it was hard to get people to understand that they could off-load clothes and spend the money they earned in the primary market,” she says, “but now the taboo has blown up.”

 

“Blown up” is putting it mildly. You can’t argue with the numbers: In 2019, resale grew 25 times faster than retail—and what is now a $28 billion secondhand-apparel market will more than  double to an astonishing $64 billion by 2024.

 

“People like nice things!” says Julie Wainwright, The RealReal’s founder and CEO, explaining in the simplest terms this explosion. “And if these things are in nice condition, people don’t care if they are previously owned.” If anyone understands this phenomenon, it is Wainwright, who founded her site in 2011—the name, cooked up over drinks with her friends, was meant to convey that everything sold would be authentic high-end designer goods, no dodgy fakes allowed—and now boasts 20 million members. “The world is coming around to the fact that there is too much product—you need to get people recirculating goods.”

 

This new movement to recirculate arrives at the apex of a perfect storm encompassing an increasing focus on sustainability, a growing antipathy for fast fashion, brilliant new e-commerce technological innovations—and the realization that you can make money offloading your old clothes. Add to this mix the inordinate amount of time we’ve been spending recently in our homes, surrounded by all the stuff we’ve bought over the years, thinking hard about the value—both literal and metaphorical—of our wardrobes. What do our clothes really mean to us? How attached are we to the things we own? This revolution in the way we relate to consumption has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives: Why have a car when you can call an Uber? Why own a bike when many cities allow you to grab one from a street stand? Who needs a country house when you can just Airbnb?

 

 

 

And even as we sat sequestered in our living rooms, roaming the virtual universe, searching Vestiaire Collective for Phoebe Philo’s Céline and Byronesque for Ghesquière-era Balenciaga, we began to realize that the maxim so many of us once lived by—that too much is never enough—was not only false but downright dangerous. Too much was indeed just that—too much stuffed in our closets, polluting our fragile environment; too much for one person to ever wear and enjoy. “Forty-eight percent of millennials or Gen Z–ers,” Wainwright says, “tell us that sustainability is the main reason they consign.” But that doesn’t just mean being aware of what overconsumption is doing to our planet: It also means holding fast (literally) to what sustains us—the precious material things we cling to season after season; the clothing that has real worth for us.

 

Giorgio Belloli, the chief commercial and sustainability officer at Farfetch, says that his company is also tiptoeing into this burgeoning market. Farfetch’s main business is linking shoppers to thousands of stores all over the world selling current merchandise, but they have recently launched Farfetch Second Life in the U.S., which lets you trade in your designer handbags for credit to be used toward—guess what?—future Farfetch purchases. It’s part of a larger story, with luxury behemoths waking up and realizing the power, both commercial and aesthetic, of owning their histories, burnishing their legacies, and controlling the narrative. Dolce & Gabbana’s Domenico Dolce explains it this way: “In doing research we realized, with great satisfaction, that some of our vintage pieces are highly priced and often requested. This made us reflect. We have a large and well-kept archive, and some items are duplicated, as we tend to have a second collection to try to cover all the editorial and celebrity requests we have.” So, he says, the pair is now considering offering some of these coveted originals for sale.

 

Other luxury companies took notice when younger people began snapping up iconic products, spurring houses to delve into their own back catalogs and reissue versions of their greatest hits: Witness the renaissance of the Dior Saddle Bag, the Gucci Jackie 1961—the name says it all—and the Fendi Baguette. Prada even launched a line called Re-Nylon, which turns plastic and fishing nets salvaged from the ocean into their trademark satchels. “This is not just a trend,” Belloli predicts. “Technology will make people look at their wardrobes in a different way.”

 

Some luxury labels have already been forging partnerships with resale sites, with Stella McCartney again a forerunner: In 2017 the designer, who was thinking deeply about sustainability and overconsumption long before they were on everyone else’s radar, entered into a partnership with The RealReal, encouraging her customers to recycle and resell their Stellas. This revolutionary stance was echoed by Bur­berry, and last fall Gucci went a step further, not only inviting fans to part with their old pieces but putting some of their own mint stock—direct from their warehouses—up on The RealReal.

 

“We want sustainability to be built into the way we operate, and we want to encourage our community to really think about the idea of circularity,” says Robert Triefus, Gucci’s executive vice president for brand and customer engagement. As this year marks Gucci’s 100th anniversary, the house is also assessing how its instantly recognizable icons and symbols—all those magical Gs!—enhance the value of its vintage items. Triefus even reveals that Gucci has not ruled out selling older merchandise on its own website. “We are constantly thinking about how to enhance the life cycle of our product—and we are the best equipped to do it, since we can repair, renew, and ensure authenticity. The more that we can do to facilitate circularity, the better.”

 

Maybe it’s because they are so literally durable, or maybe it’s because we aren’t dressing up all that much at the moment (I mean, it’s a pandemic—where are we going?), but fine jewelry and handbags are, unsurprisingly, the hottest resale categories right now. In times of crisis, jewelry, particularly signed pieces, is almost as good as money. (In some cases, better—have you checked the price of gold lately?) Erin Hazelton, an extremely avid RealReal-er, tells me she is hell-bent on finding a large gold Tiffany Peretti bottle pendant (she already has a pre-owned medium-size one), and I confess: I would not be averse to a vintage Cartier Tank Française at a really good price.

 

Charles Gorra, the founder and CEO of the handbag-resale site Rebag, says that what everyone wants these days are smaller handbags—including scaled-down Birkins and Kellys. And regardless of size, Dior and Bottega Veneta—especially Dior’s insanely popular book bag—are selling secondhand for almost as much as they garner brand-new. (On the day I Zoom with Gorra, he is in his warehouse, and in the background I can see miles of packages stacked to the rafters, ready to fly out the door.) On The RealReal, the most sought-after label is Louis Vuitton, with demand for their petite Pochette skyrocketing.

 

“You’re at home, focused on dollars, thinking, How can I monetize?” Gorra muses. But as eager as you are to sell? That’s likely also exactly how anxious you are to feed the beast and buy, okay, just one more bag to replace the seven you’ve already said goodbye to—after all, it’s an investment! As a sweetener, Rebag will credit you with up to 80 percent of the purchase price should you choose to part ways with any of the purses you buy from them—guaranteeing you will get some of that investment back. “It’s the idea that your risk is capped,” Gorra says. “It keeps our relationship going with the customer.” In yet another example of the felicitous marriage between resale and tech, Rebag has just launched Clair AI—image-recognition technology that promises to identify luxury handbags within seconds. Snap a photo on your phone, and Clair AI will instantly generate the price Rebag is willing to pay for it. (Do we sense a whole new party game?)

 

If the resale CEOs are bullish on this new way of getting and spending, customers are equally enthusiastic. No one thinks we will go back to the old days, locked in a moribund system of one-sided consumption—not when we can indulge in the pure joy of buying and selling (and then buying again!) at a time when joy may seem to be in short supply. Take the case of the downtown New York artist DeSe Escobar, who’s been able to indulge a passion for vintage Prada, circa 2008 to 2016, “especially the banana collection! I was on The RealReal every day at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., when they refresh the inventory.” (She has since moved on to a Rick Owens obsession.) Escobar prides herself on being a poster child of circularity—she lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Chinatown, where storage space is severely limited, which means she is constantly editing, selling things, and then hitting the resale sites to replenish her wardrobe. “I get bored easily and excited for fresh things,” she says with a shrug.

 

And really, who among us is not excited by fresh things? We may be thinking seriously about the environment; we may finally be realizing that less is indeed more—but we still want to cheer ourselves up and enliven our days with things that are beautiful and that charm and delight us, especially in tough times. The world may be upside-down, but the thrill of wearing something new endures—even if it’s only new to you.

 

Lynn Yaeger is a native New Yorker and a contributing editor at Vogue and Vogue.com. When she is not writing about fashion, she can be found haunting flea markets all over the world.

Why Chinese Shoppers Are Not Buying Luxury Brands Like Gucci, Louis Vuit...

Luxury industry faces crisis: China slowdown and soaring prices

King praises response to 'lawless' UK riots in Christmas message

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR !

 

Prince Andrew skips Christmas after bringing ‘huge embarrassment’ to royals

Prince Andrew’s ‘spy’ scandal threatens to BRING DOWN Royal Family - it’...

David Saxby talking about Vintage Clothes - Land Girls / Goodbye to Old Town, the beloved Norfolk clothing company

‘I can’t imagine wearing anything else’: Goodbye to Old Town, the beloved Norfolk clothing company

 

Stylish but timeless, Old Town’s utility-inspired tailored clothes have won many fans among artists and celebrities. Now it’s to close, leaving devoted customers bereft

 

Luke Turner

Thu 19 Dec 2024 07.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2024/dec/19/goodbye-to-old-town-beloved-utility-inspired-norfolk-clothing-company

 

The premise of Old Town clothing was a simple one: choose from a limited range of designs and fabrics (cotton drill, canvas, linen or cord), provide your measurements and, a few weeks later, a box would arrive through the post containing your trousers, jacket or skirt, handmade in Norfolk by designer Will Brown, Marie Willey and their team of 10 seamstresses. But this year Old Town announced they are not taking any further orders and is winding down the main business – news greeted with anguish among their regular clients, including myself.

 

“We’re 68, we are tired,” Willey says. “We made a rod for our own backs because we’ve micromanaged things to the point it’s worn us out.” Each had clearly defined roles – Willey dealing with customers and ordering fabric, Brown the designing and making. In fact, he was the only person who knew how to operate the buttonhole sewing machine so he did them all himself, for years.

 

Old Town began many thousands of buttonholes ago, in 1992, as a Norwich-based shop selling household wares – vintage enamel items, Welsh blankets and “expensive string”. A few years after they opened, Brown (who started cutting cloth in the late 1970s when he was part of the New Romantic Blitz club scene), made the first Old Town jackets.

 

Perhaps reacting to what Willey describes as their “Spartan simplicity”, a passerby once called them “prison clothes” – a low point in a period she says was “absolutely dismal – what we were trying to sell fell on stony ground.” In 2000, they retreated to the small Norfolk market town of Holt, started selling online, and quickly gained a reputation for their durable and simple clothes.

 

 

Old Town took inspiration from pieces Brown had designed in the late 1970s and early 1980s for clients including David Bowie, along with traditional clothing and workwear. This influence has been everywhere in recent years, from the cod-Bloomsbury Group aesthetics of Toast to fabric sellers Merchant and Mills encouraging the home tailor to DIY.

 

In menswear, the trend has seen the iron run out of steam with the drearily ubiquitous chore jacket. Old Town did all this first, and better, but with a modern edge. “There’s no particular time reference,” Brown says, “I was trying to achieve the desired effect with a minimum number of strokes and not much clutter.”

 

The company’s Unity jacket and trousers – loose, comfortable, with a draw-cord waist and the look of a boiler suit – is a case in point. While Old Town focused on menswear (there were just a few dress patterns available), the Unity combo has a relaxed and elegant simplicity that has made it a unisex hit – so contemporary, practical and hard-wearing that hip restaurant Brat use it for their staff uniforms. Rather than cosplaying the past, this is workwear that is still worn to be worked in: one of their first customers was Monty Don, who wears Old Town while toiling in the oomska of his garden.

 

These are clothes loved by their creators – Willey and Brown are rarely seen out of them– and this enthusiasm extended to their fans, who include historian Tom Holland, musician Billy Childish, writer Rebecca May Johnson, designer Giles Deacon and actors Toby Jones and Maxine Peake. Novelist Ben Myers, an Old Town regular, says that the personal touch was as important as the quality of his trousers: “I rang to order my first pair and ended up talking to Marie for an hour as she’s from my neck of the woods in the north-east. I don’t think we even discussed the trousers.”

 

It was all of this that made me fall in love with Old Town’s clothing a decade ago. Frustrated by the high street and yet another pair of shapeless, uncomfortable trousers that had fallen to bits in no time, I took the advice of writer and antique dealer John Andrews to make the pilgrimage to Holt. In the shop, racks of sample Old Town designs in their various fabrics hung along the walls. At our first meeting, I told Willey that I wore a 34” waist. She looked me up and down sternly, informed me that men always claim they’re two inches less than the truth, gave me a 34” and a 36”, and told me to try both. She was right. I ordered a pair of 36” olive green Stovepipe cords and have never looked back.

 

They arrived six weeks later and I wore them every day, autumn and winter, for years. I’m only now on my second pair and bought a third in khaki cotton drill, a fourth in black cord. Old Town made my wedding suit (navy linen Vauxhall trousers, Stanley jacket, waistcoat) at a fraction of the price it would have been anywhere else. When I took it to a traditional City of London tailor to get the trousers taken up, the boss was amazed at the quality of the stitching, cloth, and how little I’d paid for it – and admired the topstitching on the seams. Whereas most high street brands use overlocking, the quick and therefore cheap zigzag stitch, Brown preferred this sturdily functional and decorative traditional alternative.

 

Despite these expensive techniques, Old Town’s pricing has always been competitive. The final price of a pair of Stovepipe cords was £190. A far lighter wale cord at Folk is £140; the closest equivalent from Toast £175. Other brands are far more expensive – old-style cords will set you back a princely £535 at Margaret Howell. “We’ve probably under-priced but we’re happy with the mark-up,” says Willey, “I’d never want to do things that I couldn’t afford myself.”

 

Even a suit becomes better value in price per wear if it’s adaptable. It’s informal enough to wear out and about, and in hot weather I can pair the trousers over a white tee or linen shirt. It’s tough as anything, too – I didn’t even need to have it dry cleaned after our wedding, despite the party ending with a four-hour rave that kicked up so much dust we lost the deposit on the filthy PA.

 

Willey might have been strict over my waistline, but she and Brown created a brand that generously offered a helping hand to the fashion novice. Male customers have said that wearing Old Town gave them a newfound confidence. This feeling of an intimate connection with the clothes is the core of the reaction to the recent news. As well as the inevitable outpouring on social media, customers have offered to buy the business to keep it going, and there have been emails that are “almost poetic and quite heavy-duty”, a response that has left Brown and Willey “shell-shocked” and reduced to tears.

 

Where do we lost souls go now? While there are plenty of traditional and workwear inspired labels out there, only a few – including Hebden Bridge’s HebTroCo, London’s Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, Kent micro-brand AWMS or, farther afield, Sweden’s French militaria-inspired Casatlantic – stand out from the crowd. Other similar operations, Willey feels, take an easy route that doesn’t offer value. “They buy an old garment, take it apart, give it to a pattern cutter, give the pattern to a factory to make it,” she says, “they’re not designing it, they’re not making it, they’re not involved in the process, and at the end of the day it shows.”

 

There is a grain of comfort for the Old Town faithful. Labour And Wait, a retailer specialising in traditional household goods, will continue to sell the Unity trouser and jacket, with a view to finding a factory to produce them under licence. Brown will continue making their own clothes. “I cannot imagine wearing anything else,” Willey says; “wherever we are, Will will always have a sewing machine”.

Obscene Prices, Declining Quality: Luxury Is in a Death Spiral

 

Opinion

Guest Essay

Obscene Prices, Declining Quality: Luxury Is in a Death Spiral

Dec. 19, 2024

By Katharine K. Zarrella

Ms. Zarrella is a longtime fashion editor and lecturer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/opinion/vuitton-chanel-burberry-lvmh-hermes.html

 

The holiday shopping season is hitting its apex. And do you know what I, a longtime fashion editor, will not be buying my loved ones this year? Big-name luxury fashion. I’d sooner set my eyebrows on fire.

 

Why am I betraying the industry to which I’ve dedicated the better part of the past 20 years of my life, you might wonder? Let me tell you a story.

 

When, for the fall 2023 season, Marc Jacobs reissued the runway-show version of his Kiki boots — a sought-after, supple-leather style that I’d been lusting after since their 2016 debut — I found a way to squeeze them into my budget. I’d had a tumultuous few months, and I figured I’d treat myself to something I’d treasure forever. Something that would last.

 

They did not. The right heel cap fell off after a handful of wears, revealing a flimsy plastic cavern. I got it replaced, only to have a four-inch platform base snap off like a rotting tree limb days later. Timber! Two passers-by heaved me up, and I limped home, barefoot. In February, I demanded a refund, which I promptly put toward much-needed physical therapy.

 

My experience sums up everything that’s gone wrong with what once served as semiotic shorthand for the good life. In recent years, luxury of all kinds has become obscenely, disgracefully, inconceivably costly. And the price hikes we’ve seen are steeper than what inflation would dictate. What’s worse? As costs climb, quality hasn’t. In fact, it’s largely declined.

 

“Luxury is in chaos,” said Gill Linton, a fashion and marketing expert and a co-founder of luxury vintage platform Byronesque.

 

I’d go a step further. Luxury is in a death spiral. After a decade of nearly unfettered growth, the sector is bombing across the globe. Analysts point to less-affluent buyers reining in their spending and slowing demand in China. I believe there’s another culprit: a growing realization that many luxury houses have broken the principles that made them so successful. These hoity-toity brands, which cheapened their essence and eviscerated their desirability with down-market celebrity partnerships, licensing deals and influencer advertising, have no one to blame but themselves.

 

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

This started at the source of so many modern woes: social media. For those not glued to TikTok or “The Kardashians,” social media, helped along by reality TV, has instigated a frenetic game of one-upmanship in which top social-media content makers aim to project wealth while outdoing themselves and their competition. This means flaunting luxury goods in posts that are then spread widely by algorithms. Kyle Richards, a cast member of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” has become infamous for hitting the gym with a difficult-to-get Hermès Birkin bag — which costs anywhere from five figures to hundreds of thousands — dangling from her arm.

 

At the same time, the rich were getting richer — and more people were joining them. According to Swiss bank UBS, there were 7.64 million millionaires in the United States in 2000. By 2023, we saw that number nearly triple.

 

For those who aren’t comfortably in the millionaire class, technology offers a solution. The exploding popularity of financing apps such as Klarna and Afterpay — online lending services that allow users to break payments up into installments — has ushered in a whole new era of buy now, pay later. It’s stigma-free layaway for nearly any item. Nobody has to know, and you get the product upfront.

 

Suddenly, brands accustomed to catering to a select few found themselves pursued by a surfeit of less discerning customers — some literally children — seeking a status boost for their social media profiles. Meanwhile, the platforms continue to both stoke class anxieties and offer a seemingly unlimited amount of data on what to want next. Confronted by hordes, companies tried preserving their images the one way they knew how: jacking up prices. In doing so, they followed the longstanding Veblen goods principle. Derived from the economist Thorstein Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” written in 1899, it states that demand for luxury goods will actually increase as their prices increase, because such hikes thin the herds and make scarce goods that much more desirable.

 

Which prices have skyrocketed? The better question is which haven’t.

 

From October 2019 to April 2024, the cost of Prada’s popular Galleria Saffiano bag increased 111 percent. In the same period, the cost of Louis Vuitton’s canvas Speedy bag doubled, and Gucci’s Marmont small matelassé shoulder bag went up by 75 percent. Chanel is particularly notorious: Its iconic medium 2.55 leather flap bag, which cost $5,800 in 2019, will now set you back $10,800 — and is increasingly the subject of quality complaints.

 

What about that perfect exotic backdrop to show off your new goods? A thousand bucks for a night in a normal hotel room, once unheard-of, is surprisingly common. Rooms at the sought-after Amangiri resort in Utah started at around $1,800 a night in 2018. Now they start at $3,509. Jaclyn Sienna India, the founder of a travel and lifestyle company that caters to individuals and families with a minimum net worth of $100 million, notes that the prix fixe menu at the exclusive Ibiza restaurant Sublimotion was about $1,675 a head in 2022. Today, she said, it’s $2,380.

 

Under the Veblen goods principle, shoppers should view luxury brands’ higher prices as a sign that the goods are precious and hard to obtain. The problem is that neither of those is the case.

 

Luxury has become nearly ubiquitous. Open Instagram, and everyone has a Louis Vuitton Speedy or a Chanel Boy Bag or some other instantly recognizable four-figure-plus purse from a mainstream luxury label. Some of that comes from the rise of resale (people disposing of their used luxury wares, usually at deep discounts) or dupes (similar-looking copies that trade for far less). And a growing number are superfakes — highly convincing counterfeits that seemingly offer similar quality for a fraction of the cost.

 

On top of all of this, some luxury purveyors also began expanding their product categories and selling overstock via off-price outlets. Boutiques that were once decadent salons offering fittings to clients when they sipped champagne are now tourist destinations for the rich and the upper middle class, trading in wallets and key chains, which, despite their comical price tags, are among the cheapest options. We are mere minutes away from a Chanel- and Gucci-packed outlet store popping up in a midtier strip mall near you.

 

For a while, it worked. After the pandemic, newly minted millionaires were eager to spend and show off. The Chanels and Vuittons jacked up prices “so the ‘wrong’ people stop buying,” said Erez Yoeli, a research scientist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. But part “of the pressure in the marketplace comes from the fact that you do have to be legitimately better,” he said. “And if you’re not, you’re going to suffer the consequences.”

 

They weren’t better. Ms. India found that service at many top-tier hotels nose-dived during the pandemic, partly from staffing shortages, and has yet to recover. And how about those $10,000 handbags? Taleen Akopyan, who with her husband has worked as a cobbler and a leather restoration expert for the past four decades, said her business has shifted from bags that are 50 years old and still in good shape to brand-new Chanels, Louis Vuittons and Guccis that need help after a few wears. “There’s definitely a quality deterioration across the board,” she said.

 

It had to end. By many measures, the luxury market is in free-fall.

 

LVMH and Kering, which owns brands including Gucci, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent, reported losses this year. Same goes for Burberry; Richemont, which owns Alaïa, Cartier and Chloé; and Capri Holdings, owner of Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo. A fall study from the management consulting company Bain predicted that 2024 would be the first year of luxury slowdown since the 2008 financial crisis (excluding the pandemic). Certainly the luxury sector tends to be one of the first hit by a slowing economy. But many of the reasons for today’s problems the companies brought on themselves.

 

Some brands are responding by dropping prices, which risks turning a luxury label into a line that’s carried by outlet malls and desired by virtually no one. Investors shouldn’t have lauded Burberry’s new C.E.O., Joshua Schulman, when in November he announced that among other adjustments, the brand would be reducing the prices of its handbags.

 

Perhaps the most egregious sign of the problem is the fact that luxury goods are winding up on the shelves of discount outlet stores. Dumping excess product in less-than-glamorous locations can be so destructive to a brand’s perception that some companies used to set excess product on fire to avoid such a fate. And yet, according to Bain, at the end of 2023, that’s exactly where about 13 percent of all luxury goods were purchased, compared with 5 percent a decade earlier.

 

Some brands are trying to hold the line. In a July interview, LVMH’s chief financial officer, Jean-Jacques Guiony, implied that price increases won’t “end just because the aspirational customers are a little under pressure.” Fun fact: LVMH’s fashion and leather-goods sales did a 5 percent belly flop in 2024’s third quarter. So perhaps pressure isn’t so much the problem as subpar, overpriced goods, like the $2,816 Christian Dior bags that were discovered to have been made in an Italian sweatshop for around $57.

 

What happened to these once-prestigious bastions of craftsmanship and fabulousness? The eponymous founder of Louis Vuitton was born into a family of artisans in 1821 and dedicated his life to studying and perfecting trunk making. Chanel was founded by Coco Chanel in the early 20th century and brilliantly designed sporty wares for women that freed them from corsets. Christian Dior invented the New Look in 1947, an immaculately designed, hyperfeminine silhouette that was a return to belle epoque glamour after the austerity of World War II. These brands and their peers long upheld the traditions and standards of their founders — until they didn’t. When short-term bottom lines matter more than history and heritage, corners get cut, the soul gets snuffed out, and the product becomes trash in a fancy box.

 

An exception is Hermès. The company has raised the cost of its Birkin 30 bag in Togo leather just 15 percent from 2019 to 2024, taking it from $10,900 to $12,500. That said, many claim you may have to spend a great amount on other Hermès items to “earn” the privilege of buying one.

 

Like my sad Kiki boots, much of old-school luxury — the kind that was so glamorous, lush and exquisite that everyone understood it, many craved it and few could have it — is beyond repair. Once-revered establishments that prided themselves on craftsmanship, service and cultivating a discerning and loyal customer base have become mass-marketing machines that are about as elegant and exclusive as the Times Square M&M’s store.

 

Today, instant gratification, profit and appearances are more desirable than substance, depth or intrinsic worth. And while the decline of “luxury” might not seem like the end of the world (especially with so many apocalypse-adjacent events unfolding), its fall represents a deeper decay that’s gnawing at so much of our existence — from education, media and literature to interpersonal relationships and quality of life.

 

But back to shopping. Now is the perfect time to seek skilled, independent craftspeople and designers who remain uncompromised by the luxury conglomerates’ production quotas and politics.

 

If something is obviously awful and obscenely expensive, don’t buy it. Don’t tout it on Instagram. Tell the manager you know it was mid. I certainly won’t be dipping my toes into any Marc Jacobs platforms again. One bruised tailbone was terrible enough. I’ll happily tell you all about it.

 

Katharine K. Zarrella is a longtime fashion editor, critic and lecturer.

393 Years of British Craft! John Lobb and Henry Poole | World's Greatest...

5 Images.

 

Prince Andrew will not join rest of Royal Family for Christmas at Sandri...

England's Lost Country Houses

David Saxby talking about Savile Row - Moss Bros - Harry Hall tweed and More - Tailoring and Style

Vintage Pytchley Hacking Jacket. Brought to you by JEEVES

 Brought to you by JEEVES, TWEEDLAND ( Image: JEEVES IN PARIS, some years ago )

For those looking for the robust, authentic and timeless Hacking Jacket, Pytchley offers a quality, often comparable to Harry Hall ...

This specimen was found in a Vintage shop where he pleaded to be recognized and rescued from Oblivion.

Greetings JEEVES ( António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho )

Pytchley Tweeds

"Pytchley Tweed are an iconic vintage tweed and are highly desired by our tweed experts as they are truly a signature piece for most of our traditional country equestrian customers. Pytchley are renowned for tailored tweed jackets and equestrian horse-riding coats.

These jackets are hard wearing some with tight weaves, thornproof, or just made to last and ideally for the sporting gentleman who enjoys riding, shooting, hunting and the outside country life."

Pytchley Advertisement.