Whatever Happened To The $400 Designer Shoes?

If you watched a rerun of the Sex and the City episode “Ring-a-ding-ding”, where Carrie is forced to come up with a $40,000 down payment for her apartment, she claims not to have any money while shoe shopping with Miranda.

- Miranda grabs a shoe Carrie held in her hand and says “At $400 a pop, how many of these do you have? Fifty?”
- Carrie frowns, “C’mon…” (she has way more than that!)
- “100?”
- “Would it be bad if I did?” Carrie answers coyly.
- “Well $400 times 100, there’s your down payment,” Miranda says as a matter of fact.
- “Well no, that’s only $4000.” Carrie clearly not strong in math.
- “No, that’s $40,000.”

Carrie gasps. And so do I.

This episode ran during the 2001-2002 season, and 8-9 years later in 2010, the inflation of designer shoe prices have since risen from $400 to $600. Women could only wish designer shoes were $400 “cheap”. Nowadays, $400 can get you a pair from designer bridge collections like Miu Miu, Marc by Marc Jacob, or brands like Diane von Furstenberg. But for couture houses like Yves Saint Laurent,  and popular shoe-designers like Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik, you’re looking to spend at least $600 (sometimes $500 if you’re lucky) up to $1100. Designer boots? Expect to shell out at least $1200 to $2000 (for Alaïa). Recently, Bloomberg wrote that the shoes are the new “it bags”, where women see no problem splurging over a pair of designer sandals.

Above: Azzedine Alaïa booties for $1805 at Net-a-porter.com

Indeed price inflation seems to be inevitable, but paychecks aren’t getting bigger and prices over designer fashion are getting higher. Brands blame that production costs have risen over the years and to keep their profits, they must raise prices. It’s even harder for publicly traded brands to keep prices low as investors expect better sales than the previous year. There are a number of factors that can contribute to inflation, and though understandable, let’s not discount that greed aka profit plays a huge role in this. I don’t really believe the quality of shoes have gone up over time, in fact I think they’ve gone down and production time has gone down as well. These days, hand crafted goods are just “too expensive”.

Are we led to believe that eventually we’d have to shell out over $1000 for a pair of designer shoes by 2020? I already have a hard time paying for a single pair of basic Christian Louboutin pumps, let alone spend $1000 of my hard earned money on a designer shoe that doesn’t have a long shelf life. Is it any wonder the public is turning towards cheaper goods? Cheap fashion will still perpetuate if designer brands keep their prices high.

So, the conundrum is this: do we buy designer shoes now, as expensive as it is, in the risk to avoid paying more in the future? Or do we restrain ourselves and save up until you can afford some and/or hope to have a better salary in the future?