Inner Monologue

Now let’s get into one of my biggest issues about higher-end online shopping and how privileged and non-inclusive it is. Stay with me for a moment, I’m not going to go down the more obvious and previously discussed aspects of this; instead I’m going to focus on two interrelated but never discussed topics: final sale and luxury resale platforms. In a brick and mortar store I have no issue with the concept of final sale because you at least have the opportunity to try on the garment and decide if it fits and is what you were looking for (or at least it’s close enough and any small issues could be fixed by a tailor). In ecommerce, final sale is a bit nuts because you have to buy a non-refundable garment before you’ve even tried it on. This presumes one of or both of two things: (i) you’ve shopped the brand previously and know how it fits on you, sizing, etc; and/or (ii) you have a disposable income level that allows you to take a risk on a garment that you cannot return. Given a lot of the issues with sizing and fabric/color differences that I discussed in the first post, this could go wrong very quickly.

A lot of mid-range brands (garments from $250-$750) offer seemingly great seasonal sales, but every piece is final sale. I’m sorry, but even if a $700 dress is discounted down to $300, that’s still kind of a crazy amount of money to spend on the hope that it sits right on your body and the color suits you. Some garments might be easier to take a risk on (things withe more standard sixing like shoes, or garments with less fit points like a shirt or blazer), but how many people can afford to take that gamble? So even when you wait for these brands to go on sale, it’s still not really an accessible entry point because the sale prices are still higher than most people want to spend on a non-refundable piece.

This becomes an even bigger issue on luxury resale sites; the biggest “offender” here in my opinion in The RealReal. While they do have incredible pieces from high-end and luxury brands, the secret to TRR is that anything 40% or more (which is where are the good deals are to be had) is final sale. Up until only very recently, this was not something they told you on the page for the garment, it was only listed in the returns policy page; when I last went on the site a few days ago, they are now listing “final sale” on the actual page with the garment, which is helpful. Again, there is the false promise of all these deals you might be getting, but if 75% of the items on sale are not returnable, who is really shopping here? My guess it it must either be people who have shopped these luxury brands before and know their sizing, or people who are able to tailor/reconstruct a garment that they bought final sale at additional expense. Let me be clear, I am not passing judgement on any of these people, that is their right, but for those of us who wish to buy better quality and be more sustainable by buying second-hand, a lot of this just feels out of our reach.

I want to be able to access a variety of brands when I shop for clothes online, and I would like to shop second-hand to find vintage or unique pieces, but a lot of the issues I have described in these two posts makes it really difficult to do so for even middle/upper-middle class shoppers. The fashion industry operates on the thinnest of margins and I am not naive to all the backend work it takes to run these sites, stock these clothes and front the money for online orders and returns. But I do think that some of those issues, not to mention the ecological footprint of ecomm, could be mediated by making some of the changes I mentioned. Just something to consider.