Why are Avant Garde Fashion Brands so expensive?
In a nutshell: Rarity (low quantities instead of mass production), Unique Design with great attention to detail, High-Quality Materials and fair wages are the four main reasons why Avant Garde Fashion Brands are expensive. The investment in smaller Avant Garde brands, however, automatically becomes mostly Fairtrade, organic and sustainable. The products have a smaller carbon footprint than those of the fast fashion giants. Avant Garde pieces usually hold a very good resale value and are actively traded on platforms like Grailed or Vestiaire Collective, some even become more desirable and expensive over the years.
Avant Garde Fashion, a combination of design and art, resulting in wearable art pieces
Avant Garde Fashion is a combination of design and art. Instead of following fashion trends, Avant Garde Fashion brands create their own very unique designs, cuts and lines with a high recognition value. Often decent high-end details play an important role as well. This is #1 of the 4 main reasons why Avant Garde Fashion Brands are expensive.
High Quality Materials used to produce Avant Garde High Fashion
The most Avant Garde Fashion Designers work with expensive high-end materials. For example they work with leathers that have gone through the much more lavishly, complex and sustainable vegetable Leather Tanning Process instead of widely used chromium-tanned leathers in the fast fashion and interior industry. As a result, the raw leather material purchase price for the designer is eight to ten times more expensive and as a consequence #2 of the 4 main reasons why Avant Garde Fashion Brands are expensive.
Another example are high-quality zippers, for example by riri Switzerland or the usage of 925 Silver details, for example used by Boris Bidjan Saberi on his mainline designer tag.
Avant Garde High Fashion Fair Wages
#3 of the 4 main reasons why Avant Garde Fashion Brands are expensive: High Quality Avant Garde Fashion pieces are not produced in the Far East where workers are exploited in order to provide cheap labor… In contrast, artisanal Avant Garde High Fashion Brands are often manufacturing their pieces in-house or at small European production sites. The production is often very complex, requires specialized niche manufacturers and the labor cost are 10 to 100 times more expensive than production in the Far East.
Sustainable Avant Garde Fashion, High Quality and low Quantity instead of Mass Production
Artisanal Avant Garde High Fashion Brands produce pieces in low quantities and often only made-to-order. As a result, success-economical fixed-cost-degression does not come into effect as it does for high production volumes. Low quantity collections and limited availability underline the value of the items which creates a certain desirability among customers and collectors and results in pieces from collections from the past remain to keep a very good resale value. #4 of the 4 main reasons why Avant Garde Fashion Brands are expensive.
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