Wealthy shoppers seem to be increasingly willing to part with their dollars, Euros and Saudi riyals, Elizabeth Holmes and Rachel Dodes report, but executives attending the semiannual New York Fashion
Week are trying hard to drum up a renewed sense of aspirational longing among the wanna-look-rich folk who really make the registers sing.
Shoppers with assets upwards of $5 million
are back in the game, according to A.T. Kearney partner Hana Ben-Shabat, and the $1- million-and-up crowd is stirring, too. But still-tight credit is hampering the consumers who drove the luxury boom
before the recession hit.
Saks CEO Stephen Sadove sees bifurcation of the market in which designers are purposely creating a sense of scarcity for some high-end products while
offering more entry-level goods. Case in point: A new canvas Chloé handbag is half the price of comparable leather models; its $1,600 "Marcie" handbag, however, is almost entirely sold out for
the spring thanks to limited production.
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