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Writer's pictureTHE VEIL OF HUMANITY

Where do Luxurious fashion houses manufacture their garments & why are they so expensive?

Updated: May 28, 2020




 

Research cited from websites:


Fashion designers evaluate several factors when choosing where to manufacture their clothing lines and accessories. Beyond the sticker price for labor, fashion designers must consider the quality of the craftsmanship, shipping and customs fees, contract negotiations, language barriers, transparency, and more.

The large, luxury fashion houses that jump to mind when most people think of fashion often manufacture their products in multiple places because they have the project management teams, dedicated craftsman liaisons, and financial resources to do so. For these brands, it’s not just about the sticker price. It’s also about the premium quality of the piece and the fabric that it’s made of.


Where does Gucci manufacture?

Gucci leaves the sacred Italian territory only to create its noble collections of watches. Those are, of course, produced in Switzerland. Everything else stays 100% in Italy.


How to Work with Clothing Manufacturers Directly

Made in Italy is the gold standard of quality repeatedly trusted by many luxury brands, including the ones listed above. However, if you do not speak Italian and live in or frequently travel to Italy, it's usually difficult to get in touch with these kinds of artisans. That's because:

  • Most of them do not have a website and if they do, it's not written in English, nor is it SEO optimized, making it difficult to find. Why? Italian manufacturers prefer to focus their time, not on the computer, but actually working on clothing line requests.

  • English proficiency in Italy is not high, which may make communication difficult for any fashion designer who does not speak Italian.

  • Most Italian factories rely on brokers or distribution companies to manage relationships with fashion designer clients. These types of companies pass their fees onto the designers in the form of high commissions attached to the cost for manufactured product units.


Why do products sold by luxury brands cost so much?


- we are paying handsomely for the designer’s time and ‘brilliance’.


- cost of licensing it.


- Next are the materials and labour costs. A shirt made in China or Bangladesh will be cheaper than one made in Portugal or Italy. Also, the better the material, the pricier the garment gets.


- the garment that we lust for goes through a chain of so many professionals and every time it changes hands it gets a markup.


- Once the clothes are made they need to be sold. Big brands have their own shops and websites, emerging labels sell their collections in department stores and online fashion retailers. Either way, for clothes to reach shops, brands have to pay for warehousing and distribution.


- Production and distribution is just the tip of the iceberg and account for a small percentage of the cost. There are also staffing costs, rent of lavish headquarters and shops.


- The area that needs the biggest budget though is marketing. Brands spend millions on fashion shows, celebrity and social media endorsements, photographers, models, ads and ad placement in all the right magazines. So, most of the money that what we pay for clothes goes to the department that convinces us that we need those items in the first place.


- Almost all brands sell to retailers. To cover their production costs and make a profit, brands will sell it for at least the double that they paid the factory to make it. Stores, on the other hand, have their own profit margins to worry about. So, when the item hits the shop floor, the item had a markup of at least twice what they paid the fashion house. For the mathematically challenged, that’s at least four times what the designer paid the factory initially.


- Brand positioning also needs to be taken into account. Stakeholders set up prices to differentiate the market. There’s high street, contemporary (Kenzo, Carven, Tome, MSGM, etc.), lower luxury (Proenza Schouler, Altuzarra, Victoria Beckham) and high end (Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes). The chosen prices put a brand in a certain bracket so retailers know how to categorise it and decide which designers sit next to each other. Basically a brand is as good as the company it keeps.


Brands remain luxurious and we remain devoted to them because they are exclusive.

Brands don’t mass-produce, They’ll make 100 garments instead of 1,000, which drives both the cost and the retail prices up.


- Printing small runs of items is more expensive than if you were to bulk manufacture. On the other hand, if it is exclusive and unattainable, it becomes desirable and customers are willing to pay for the product.


Carlos Fialho (2017) [medium]


 

Responce:


Crucial information for the upkeep and production of a luxury fashion brand. An explanation to the manufacturing of garments and products: most high end fashion houses will keep to Europe countries such as Italy or France, whereas china, India and Bangladesh offer a cheaper price. Ethical reasons may come in to play.


important:


'Brands remain luxurious and we remain devoted to them because they are exclusive.

Brands don’t mass-produce, They’ll make 100 garments instead of 1,000, which drives both the cost and the retail prices up' Carlos Fialho (2017) [medium]


 

research:



Carlos Fialho (2017) [medium]



 


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