My mother has never spent more than eighty euros on a single item of clothing. This is not because she cannot afford to -- she is comfortable, has been for most of my adult life -- but because the idea of paying more than that for something to wear strikes her as fundamentally absurd. She grew up in Lyon in the seventies and has dressed well, consistently, for sixty years on very little money. When I mention a price that would be considered modest in my professional world, she makes a specific face that I have never seen her direct at anyone else.

I think about her face a lot when I am writing about luxury.

There is a version of this industry that exists in a sealed bubble, where a three-thousand-euro coat is discussed as if its price requires no explanation or justification. I have spent enough time in that bubble to understand how it works. I have also spent enough time outside it to understand how it looks from the outside, which is: strange, at best.

What the Price Actually Includes

The honest answer to what you are paying for at the luxury end is complicated and interesting. Some of it is genuinely the cost of exceptional materials and skilled labor -- a properly made garment in quality fabric, cut by people who have spent years learning to cut, does cost significantly more to produce than a fast fashion equivalent. This is real and defensible.

Some of it is brand premium -- the accumulated cultural value of a name, built over decades, which allows the brand to charge more than the production cost alone would justify. This is also real, and is what people are usually talking about when they say luxury goods are overpriced.

Some of it is pure scarcity theatre -- manufactured limited availability designed to drive desire and price. This is the part I find least interesting, though it is enormously effective commercially.

And some of it -- the part I find most interesting to think about -- is a bet on permanence. You are paying, partly, for the possibility that this object will still be worth something in ten years. That is not nothing.

The Investment Question

The language of investment has crept into fashion coverage in a way that I think is worth examining. The "investment piece" has become a standard editorial concept -- the idea that certain expensive purchases can be justified by their longevity or resale value.

The data on this is more mixed than the editorial enthusiasm suggests. Some categories hold value well -- certain handbags, fine watches, a narrow slice of collectible footwear. Most luxury clothing does not. The beautiful coat you pay two thousand euros for will not be worth two thousand euros in five years. It might not be worth much at all on the secondary market.

This is not an argument against buying it. If you genuinely love it, wear it constantly, and it gives you pleasure for years, the cost-per-wear calculation can make it extremely good value. But that is a different argument from "investment."

What My Mother Gets Right

What she has always understood, and what the industry mostly talks around, is that the relationship between cost and value in fashion is almost entirely subjective. An eighty-euro dress she has worn for fifteen years has delivered more value by any reasonable measure than the thousand-euro dress I bought under the influence of a particularly persuasive runway coverage piece and wore six times.

The industry would like you to believe that quality and price correlate consistently. Sometimes they do. Often they do not. The skill is in telling the difference, which requires actual knowledge of materials and construction and an honest assessment of your own habits. That knowledge is available, but the industry does not always have an incentive to give it to you.

She would probably point that out, if anyone asked her. No one in fashion ever does.

About the Author

Priya Anand

Style Editor  ·  Mumbai / London

Priya brings a genuinely global perspective to fashion. Born in Mumbai, based in London, she covers the stories that get missed when fashion only looks westward.

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