Fashion’s New Luxury Means Never Having To Say You’re Wearing Last Season

Marco Bizzarri, the charismatic CEO of Gucci, last year declared that the brand would not be discounting their latest Alessandro Michele-designed wares in store, but rather shipping what’s left to the outlet when the season ceased. Get ready for those Bicester visitor numbers to soar (FYI – as of my visit last week, it was still spring 2015 stock) – because, if you want to buy on a discount, you’ll have to schlepp out. That is perhaps, Gucci’s solution to increasing numbers of consumers holding out until the sales to bag a bargain, rather than shelling out full price – as with some of those brands, many consumers refuse to acknowledge discounts exist. If you know it’ll never be offered cheaper, why put off the purchase?How about that for an interesting business model – one which, as of yet, is unique to Gucci. Louis Vuitton famously never goes on sale, the only brand to boast of that. They also don’t operate outlets. Of course, there’s a degree of permanence to Vuitton – Burke again once told me that the Vuitton client “needs to identify with something – if that something changes every three months, every six months, unless you’re a fashionista, it’s going to become very very tiring. Most of our clients are not fashionistas. Most of our clients are luxury clients.” Read more at The Independent.