Modern Jewelry Trends

The Tuesday edition of Women’s Wear Daily had a fascinating report on the rising prices for luxe handbags. Prices have basically doubled in the past few years and designer handbags at the top of the range are now five and six figures. “It’s astonishing how high a price point we’ve been able to sell and not a few but a lot of handbags at these prices,” Terry Lundgren, president and CEO of Federated told WWD. The luxury customer buys several thousand-dollar bags each season. Rather than one “it” bag each season, customers are now looking for something that no one else has, like say the $148,000 limited edition Hermes Birkin bag with pave diamond clasp that is waitlisted at the New York store. Exotic skins are increasing the cost and perceived value of bags. “We have customers in Chicago and Boston and some of these areas who alone will purchase $200,000 worth of our product in a year,” said David Lamer of Lambertson Truex, a handbag brand that is opening retail stores which will offer custom bags starting at $3,000. So why am I talking about handbags on a jewelry site? I am sure you can see where I am going with this: men do not buy handbags. Women do. (And they sometimes pay in cash so their significant other won’t know how much they spent on that handbag, according to a recent article in the New York Times.) The self-purchase customer is able to buy very expensive accessories if she finds them desirable. She will buy them again next season. She will buy a whole wardrobe of them. And for this customer, materials cost and price matters less than design, workmanship, and exclusivity. The phenomenon of the $8,000 handbag is a relatively recent one. The designer handbag brands have done a great job promoting their products and making them desirable but the marketing campaigns are less important individually than the impact of the category combined as a whole. (Lambertson Truex isn’t Hermes, after all.) Jewelers who do a great job attracting this customer with desirable, fashionable jewelry designs will be astonished at her determination to have the latest must-have item.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Celebrity Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.