KATHY TASLITZ, a Chicago decorator, is wired with a fashion Replica Louis Vuitton that functions as efficiently as a satellite homing device. In late January, only days after Azzedine Ala?a had presented samples from his fall 2005 collection in Paris, Ms. Taslitz zeroed in on a sumptuous black suede peplum coat, which she had seen in a photograph. She called her favorite boutique and placed an order, even though the $7,345 coat would not be available for more than six months. “When I see something I love, I don’t have to think about it,” Ms. Taslitz explained. “I go to work on it right away. If not, it’s lost.”
Dr. Lisa Airan, a dermatologist in Manhattan, has likewise learned to trust her eye. “I have a good sense of line, proportion and texture,” she said. That and a sense of Replica Louis Vuitton Handbags prompted her to pop into the Marc Jacobs boutique on Bleecker Street last month and put her money, $1,700, on an abbreviated peacoat weeks before it was due to arrive in the store. “When you work the hours that I do,” Dr. Airan said, “you don’t have a lot of time to shop, so you move in fast.”
Ms. Taslitz and Dr. Airan are members of a steely cohort of like-minded shoppers: hyper-informed about what’s coming next in fashion, largely affluent, driven by the same competitive fever that makes Broadway fans spring for hot tickets even before the actors have learned their lines. Adept in the Louis Vuitton Wallets of getting and spending, they close in on – and pay for – the season’s most coveted runway items at a time when other less zealous shoppers have registered them only as a speck on the fashion horizon. Their numbers are small, representing no more than 2 percent of the shopping population, according to Pamela Danziger, an authority on the spending habits of affluent consumers, but their choices are often reliable indicators of fashion’s direction in the months ahead.
“It’s all about reserves today – placing orders ahead of the selling season on items that we might have asked for in limited quantities and sizes,” said Wayne Mahler, the fashion coordinator of Balenciaga Handbags, a specialty boutique in Manhattan and Birmingham, Mich. “They see those items on the Internet or in magazines, and what they see is what they want.”
Topping the most-wanted lists of early shoppers this season are catwalk hits like a slim, sashed trench coat from Lanvin, a military-detailed jacket and vented chiffon skirt at Balenciaga and a cropped red leather jacket by Dsquared: each item an expression of a trend to refined tailoring beginning to filter into the wider marketplace. Fur-collared, embroidered pieces from Dries van Noten; a wildly zigzagging knit dress and striped beret at Missoni; crystal and paste necklaces entwined with ribbon at Lanvin; and even oddities like copper-tinted python boots by Devi Kroell – Balenciaga Wallets are in high demand this fall – and high-heeled platform loafers from Yves Saint Laurent attest to an increasingly popular taste for opulent or idiosyncratic designs.
Retailers like Mr. Mahler say the tendency to close in swiftly on such items has escalated in the last 18 months. “Nowadays customers start placing their orders so quickly that the Fake Handbags may never reach the selling floor,” he said. That practice, known in retail parlance as the pre-buy, in which consumers pay full retail price for the coming season’s wares, is proving salutary.
“It’s certainly a boon to the luxury business,” said Dana Telsey, a luxury goods analyst with Bear Stearns in New York. Consumers are aware that the most sought-after items have likely been ordered in limited quantities, she noted. “That exclusivity has made more people willing to pay full price for merchandise the moment they think they can get Replica Handbags, which has helped the bottom line.”
Some merchants view the trend as a mixed blessing: because customers are picking clothes even before a store may have ordered them, retailers’ authority as style arbiters may be eroded; but the early orders also are a cushion, limiting the risk that high-ticket items will languish on the racks. “It’s great to know that certain Louis Vuitton Handbags are spoken for,” said Jeffrey Kalinsky, the owner of Jeffrey, a fashion boutique in New York and Atlanta.