Synthesis Research on Designer Products and the Fashion Industry

SOURCE: HypeBeast

The economic principle I researched was “Because of scarcity people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost.” My overall research question was “How Does Scarcity in the Fashion Industry Affect People’s Choices?” Overall, I found that people will spend large amounts of money on expensive things because of the time and work spent to make them especially if they come in limited quantities. In addition, I found the different trade offs people could make instead of buying expensive clothing. 

To begin with, designer brands are expensive because of the amount of time and effort put into creating them. They are considered art, and luxury designers spend months slaving over the design of a product in order to perfect it. In addition, designer clothes tend to have be made in better quality materials which mean that they are going to last longer. Finally, most designer brands are made in their homeland instead of being mass produced in China so it keeps thing more exclusive and have limited supplies. Moreover, there is a good amount of designer products that are handmade.

Another reason why brands are expensive is because of their exclusivity. Designer brands, especially streetwear designer brands, tend to use the “drop tactic” by announcing a limited release of a certain product at a certain date and time and using social media and other platforms to broadcast the release. In addition, brands would collaborate with other brands in creating limited edition items such as a Louis Vuitton and Supreme hoodie. Ultimately, because there are only a limited amount of each product, the resale value is very high which makes some products cost 5x more than their retail.

There are many alternatives to buying designer clothing. An example is a plain white Gucci and Guess shirt from blog post 4. It is essentially the same shirt but Guess isn’t at the same caliber as Gucci so it cost $420 more. Another example from blog post 4 is the Zara shirt and Amiri shirt that have exactly the same designer and material. The only difference is that Amiri is known as a higher caliber brand.