#30: Fashion Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones

Yeeeeesssss! I have arrived at Book 30, just before the clock strikes the proverbial midnight. Thank god. I can't adequately express the relief I feel to have accomplished this goal for the first time in, like, five years. Five years! Seriously.

I found this book after reading a post on Jezebel.com about luxury brands. It was based on a New York Times story by Guy Trebay (link below), about how stores are discounting luxury goods by 70 percent because of the economy. Some of the Jezebel commentators were saying that when a label/store can sell a $2000 blazer for $300 and everyone still makes money, that shows you how these fashion goods are worth exhorbinant and arbitrary prices. (For the record, I would never pay anywhere near $2000 for an item of clothing.) Anyway, someone recommended Fashion Babylon as a good look at just how arbitrary it is.

Fashion Babylon uses true stories (according to the author) to flesh out the fictional tale of a fledging British fashion designer who wants to show at New York Fashion Week. For the most part, I liked the book. It was definitely a quick read -- I read it in a period of about 36 hours -- and at times, I felt like maybe the author had written it a little too quickly. The one thing that bugged me was that she relied on the same celebrity names (Kate Moss, Scarlett Johanssen) and movies (Munich) over and over again as throwaways, which tends to imply lazy writing. Also, as an American reader, I found the overwhelming usage of British slang frustrating, as there were lines here and there I just didn't understand (but which didn't contribute to the overall book in any meaningful way). Still, I learned lots of interesting things about fashion. Like how designers will blantantly copy vintage dresses (by another label) and no one seems to notice, or how a designer will go out and buy simple pieces, like a white shirt, from a regular store and then just replace the label with their own. Or how, after the initial development investment, perfume only costs about 50 cents a bottle to produce -- no matter the cost on the shelf. The main point, I thought, was how designers set their prices to establish a value for their brand; if you want to be a Dior, you set prices like Dior, and it has little to do with what your clothes are worth (which is basically nothing). Then you sell your loot to a store and if it's in the U.S., they mark it up by another 3 times what they paid, and that's how, all of a sudden, you have a $600 dress. All I can say is: Thank God I learned to sew.

Luxury link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/fashion/04SHOPPING.html?_r=2