“I can predict when a woman is about to leave her husband by the purchases she makes,” says Joan Lacey, a personal shopper to the Hollywood elite.
These days Lacey, an ex-stylist for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, is being asked to do a lot more than simply offer her advice: she’s being asked to make purchases and then immediately return them for re-sale. Indeed, as the recession worsens, this method of shopping is becoming an increasingly popular insurance policy.
“I have one client who specifically buys Hermès Kelly or Birkin bags and the best furs [on her husband’s store credit card] and then immediately takes the items – complete with tags – to Encore [a New York consignment shop specialising in designer second-hand clothes on Madison Avenue] where she sells them under her niece’s account,” says Lacey. “And she’s not the only one; these are the wives of men on Wall Street who are affected by the market.”
Certain small boutiques such as Encore and Designer Resale in New York specialise in the resale of designer label merchandise by accepting the cast-offs of the well-heeled. Rather than stock newly-purchased goods, they take in last season’s Prada shoes or gently worn Dolce & Gabbana gowns. If the item sells, the consigner receives a cheque, typically at the end of the month, for anywhere from 40 to 50 per cent of the sale price. The woman pockets the cash, and often the husband doesn’t even know.
This is not the first time such strategies for financial security have been used by canny consumers. In the book Secondhand Chic by Christa Weil and Barbara Vine, the authors were told by the proprietor of Encore, Carole Selig, that Jacqueline Onassis shopped extensively while married to Aristotle Onassis. She kept shop tags on her goods and routinely turned the merchandise over for consignment.
According to Lili Vasileff, president of the Association of Divorce Financial Planners, who works with women of high net worth, such clothes laundering is a form of desperate financial planning on the part of women who feel significant economic insecurity. “I’ve been advising for 17 years, and the women who are driven to do this are terrified that they will be destitute the next day. I had a client who would do this at Neiman Marcus because she had no cash for groceries or her kid’s school lunch. Re-selling clothes has become a means of surviving when joint assets are inaccessible.”
The situation has even created a niche profession: the consignment personal shopper. Last August Élan Barish launched The Stash Consignment, which focuses on the privatised consignment of such labels as YSL, Hermès and Chanel. Barish says, “consignment is definitely a way for a woman to gain some financial independence. Even as the market was crashing, I was able to sell Hermès bags and Chanel jackets. A client asked me to sell her Birkin [handbag]; she said her ex-husband had given it to her and it was bad karma. That bad karma turned into $1,200.”
Tony Pietrafesa, a prominent New York attorney and divorce mediator, simply sees this as the flip side of a traditional ploy exercised by males: “Most of the time it’s the men who have been squirreling the money away, as they’re afraid of being taken to the cleaners,” he says. “We’re going to see more of this because of the baby boomer statistics. You have these couples who met, say, 20 years ago and then made the decision, based on income disparity, for her to stay at home with the kids and now the wife can’t make a living for herself.”
Unless she turns to clothes ...
Syl Tang tracks trends and runs HipGuide Inc. She can be reached at ceo@hipguide.com
