“Chanel, Dior, Lagerfeld, Givenchy, Gaultier, darling. Names, names, names!”
And they are all on sale already.
Generally the luxury brand sales in HK are very exclusive. If they are at the lower-end of the luxury scale (can you believe there is a lower end?), they tend to have a discreet sign in their windows in a non-descript font on a quality cardboard of a size no bigger than A4. It is typically at shoe height.
The next tier stores send emails with invitations to the exclusive pre / post season sale where you must bring the invitation or you won’t be admitted. These are typically sent to a few people who then send it onto a few others and so on. The sales are either in the store after hours or at a warehouse. The products will change each day.
The even more exclusive luxury store won’t advertise at all. They will have incredibly discreet markings on their price tags and those that know will know how much discount that entitles them to.
Under no circumstances would any luxury brand ever advertise they are having a sale.
Until now.
I have seen full page advertisements in newspapers, invitations that cover a number of brands on the one invite, larger than usual signage and the scariest aspect of all of this is that they are advertising when it is not even the end of season and Christmas shopping has only just started.
For Hong Kong, this is pretty bad news and shows that at least the luxury goods retailers are aware of what is happening in the financial markets and the flow-on effects. Though I would have thought that those who buy this kind of thing would not really be affected by the current economic climate but it looks like I’m wrong.
Thankfully the Chinese spacewalking astronauts are “confident HK can weather financial turmoil” (p.1 South China Morning Post, Sat 6Dec08). If they think everything is going to be ok, then the rest of us can breathe a little easier. Shame they weren’t around advising on the whole sub-prime mortgages and the credit backed securities. Then the world wouldn’t be in the pickle it’s currently in.
* Thanks to Eddy, Patsy and the Pet Shop Boys for the title to this post.
2 thoughts on “Absolutely Fabulous”
Didn’t picture you so much as a label-queen. Still, enjoy the sales while you can
Niall
Wouldn’t call myself a label queen – I work in a building where I’m surrounded by all these brands and am still too intimidated to go into most of the stores unaccompanied!
I think the HK locals have brand shopping in their dna – they are the ones that normally tell me about the sales and know what the coloured stickers mean.
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