It's the nature of high fashion brands. a $2000 item may cost $200 to create. The high margin is based on exclusitivity. They would rather destroy it than sell it at $300.

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bryant 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> They would rather destroy it than sell it at $300.

This is exactly it. The actual landed cost is 1/10th of the sales price, and most of the rest of the margin pads the marketing and exclusivity machine. If for instance LV starts selling their $200-landed Neverfull bags at $500 or even $1,000, all the infrastructure sustaining the image becomes unsustainable.

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kmeisthax 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Related note: aren't Louis Vuitton bags being made so crap nowadays that even their own anti-counterfeiting staff can't tell what's real and what's not? I remember hearing of someone who made wallets out of discarded LV bags and got harassed for it by the company.

My personal opinion is that the business model of selling status items - specifically those which only have status because of an artificially limited supply they control - is inherently predatory and should be restricted. Not because I'm the morality police and want to stop people from buying a bag that says "I spent $2000 on a bag", but because there is nothing that stops the company from cost-reducing that to oblivion. If you are going to sell a $2,000 bag, it should be marketed on quality, not a cult.

	▲	stackskipton 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Clothing items tend to have quality roof that past that, it doesn't matter and it's not 2000$ for handbag. Clothing has been used as wealth/class indicator for thousands of years, trying to change that will be extremely difficult lift.