Down the Drain

News broke yesterday that the fashion house Luella has decided to cease trading. While I've liked some of their looks in the past, it's easy to see why they're not surviving the economic downturn. A mushroom keychain on sale for $54? An ugly, ruffled t-shirt I could get (but wouldn't) at Forever 21 for 10 bucks, on sale for $128? Pass, thanks.

I will not mourn these labels. If fashion houses want to survive this recession, and future recessions, maybe they should consider trimming down. Stop producing such massive collections, and focus on making each piece something someone would actually want to buy.

Columnists, bloggers, designers, and rich people talk till they are blue in the face about how if we could just get over the scary price tags, we consumers would be so pleased with our purchases if we made the switch from fast-fashion to high-end lines. While Luella doesn't exactly fall into the later category, it does follow the same modus operandi - use better fabrics, debut your collections on the normal high-end fashion calendar, jack up those prices, and then bask in all your ill-gotten riches.

No, I'm not saying that all designers immediately it the jackpot with that method. A lot do. But that's not the point. The point is, you're still charging way, way more than you know you should for your product. And that's why you shouldn't be surprised that the consumers you've willfully been scamming for years don't care at all to help you climb out of your financial hole. It's the same as when the music industry started crying because of digital music, and begging us to save them, but everyone laughed in their faces because we'd paid $15 one (or a million) too many times for a CD that cost $.02 to make.

Today's generation, just like every generation before them, is a savvy group of consumers. Where you could trick our grandparents and maybe parents into become brand whores, but it's much harder now. Heck, we're the first generation to demand fast-fashion. So I'm sorry that you mismanaged your money Luella, or you made some bad decisions. But you will never see me spending that kind of money on that kind of crap just to help what to me is just another scam-artist come back from the brink.