If you wear designer items what is your HHI and/or net worth?

[Anonymous]

HHI is around 600k, net worth around 10mm (mine). I love and have a lot of quality jewelry, mostly from family. I'm very picky about fabric and cut, not so much about labels. For example, I wear only leather lined shoes and those tend to be mostly designer. I think I'm middle of the road - Chanel, Bottega, tank francaise, not very high end (kelly, audemars piguet, dubai lifestyle jewelry). I'm also European, so designer items are NBD.

[Anonymous]

HHI is $2.5mm salary, plus an additional $2-6m in bonuses depending on the year. I have a few Chanel and Hermes bags, but most of my clothes are middle market - Theory, Reiss, Sandro, etc. All of my jewelry is fake. My husband has most of his clothes custom made, but it's made-to-measure, not bespoke, so about $500/piece. I always wonder the same thing as you, because we make a decent income but I balk at the idea of buying designer clothes, especially for every day wear. Who are all these people shopping at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf's dropping thousands of dollars on one dress or one jacket?? I probably spend more on clothes than many people, but I would estimate it's around $3,000 per year for just me. I can't imagine how much money we would have to make for me to feel justified spending that much on one piece of clothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remarried a few years ago. My income is $467k. I buy what I want. I have designer items, but I also love Zara. I am too cheap to spend $2000 on a purse, but I understand why other people do.

Is that your income alone or you HHI? What do you do for a living?

That's mine alone. I work for a think tank in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HHI is $2.5mm salary, plus an additional $2-6m in bonuses depending on the year. I have a few Chanel and Hermes bags, but most of my clothes are middle market - Theory, Reiss, Sandro, etc. All of my jewelry is fake. My husband has most of his clothes custom made, but it's made-to-measure, not bespoke, so about $500/piece. I always wonder the same thing as you, because we make a decent income but I balk at the idea of buying designer clothes, especially for every day wear. Who are all these people shopping at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf's dropping thousands of dollars on one dress or one jacket?? I probably spend more on clothes than many people, but I would estimate it's around $3,000 per year for just me. I can't imagine how much money we would have to make for me to feel justified spending that much on one piece of clothing.

I paid about $2000 for a jacket about 10 years ago. I still wear it and still get compliments. Totally worth it!

[Anonymous]

I enjoy handbags and have some luxury pieces, but I've never bought new. Only resale and I prefer vintage. I have a buy it for life mentality, so the splurge on something classic is worth it to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of wearing designer items is about striving to appear wealthier than one is or it's about keeping up with the Joneses in order to maintain social status. These are natural impulses but it's good to step back and examine them and see if they're serving us. If we're having actual anxiety about whether we can pull off an item then maybe that's more about self-esteem.

Our HHI is $800k and I can barely convince myself to buy a shirt from Athleta. I just don't care about brands for their own sake and I'd rather get 5 items for $200 instead of 2. I've been very conscious to keep my sense of what is good enough for me to where it was in my 20s so that I don't just keep increasing our spending to match our income. So I'm still happy to drive a $30k car . . . I just got the highest trim package so I could have heated seats and a moon roof, which were splurges for me.

It's funny because the one thing I've always loved was diamonds and gemstones. As a kid I used to go to the gem store and buy uncut hunks of amethyst to admire. So diamonds are probably the one thing I would have upgraded to match my lifestyle, but in the last few years the technology for moissanite and lab diamonds has really improved, and so I can have my sparklies without spending $10k+, more like $1-2k. Yay! I understand that for some people, wearing my $250 moissanite ring from Alibaba that looks like a $20k diamond is a form of lying because society uses luxury items as status signifiers, but I'd rather hang out with people with similar values who wouldn't judge me either for loving sparkly gems or for buying cheaper look-alikes.

So you would rather support fast fashion and kill the earth?

Yeah, my concept of luxury is not having to drag 5 pieces of junk into my home.

[Anonymous]

Few pairs of Loubs, 650k

[Anonymous]

I'd gamble that the women who are inclined to by designer stuff are either in the $80k-$200k range or are sahms with husbands with high incomes.

Women with good jobs ($200k+++) work pretty hard and in my opinion appreciate just how hard they had to work for that money and are more likely to realize how little value they get from buying a $6000 purse. It's pretty easy to spend that money though when someone else earned it and you're not doing much during the day. That's just my anecdotal experience of knowing a lot of households with $1m+ incomes, where some of the women work and some don't.

[Anonymous]

I have designer clothes and few designer bags, I am in much lower income range than most people who posted above. BUT, I love well tailored good quality clothes. Saying that, my wardrobe is very very small and I am very selective about what I buy. I do keep some pieces for years. I even have YSL skirt that my mom purchased in Paris more than 50 years ago, I wear it a lot and every time get a lot of compliments. I have few vintage items as well. I never bought anything from H&M, Zara and alike, so overall I probably spent less on my wardrobe than most of Americans.

I agree with the pp that woman who make $200+ usually don't spend a lot of money on designer items, but I think it is for a different reason. Those women tend to work 10+ hours per day, 70-80 hours per week. When you work like that, there is no joy in your life and they hardly care what they wear. They are pretty much in survival mode all the time. To wear designer items, you have to have time in the morning to put it on and to enjoy it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is a little over $400k and I don’t own any luxury items. I don’t judge people who do (unless they go into debt to do so) it’s just not worth it to me. I like nice middle of the road brands from Nordstroms and J crew. Anthropology still feels like a splurge to me! But I’m very lazy and finding good deals or comparison shopping and have no interest in spending time finding deals. So I guess I’m just middle of the road all around.

+1 This is me, as well. I don't think I have ever owned a single luxury item. I once won an $1800 Gucci bag in a raffle, but I gave it to my SIL. I usually shop the sales at Loft, Ann Taylor, Macy's, and StitchFix. I probably overspend on eating out or Amazon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have designer clothes and few designer bags, I am in much lower income range than most people who posted above. BUT, I love well tailored good quality clothes. Saying that, my wardrobe is very very small and I am very selective about what I buy. I do keep some pieces for years. I even have YSL skirt that my mom purchased in Paris more than 50 years ago, I wear it a lot and every time get a lot of compliments. I have few vintage items as well. I never bought anything from H&M, Zara and alike, so overall I probably spent less on my wardrobe than most of Americans.

I agree with the pp that woman who make $200+ usually don't spend a lot of money on designer items, but I think it is for a different reason. Those women tend to work 10+ hours per day, 70-80 hours per week. When you work like that, there is no joy in your life and they hardly care what they wear. They are pretty much in survival mode all the time. To wear designer items, you have to have time in the morning to put it on and to enjoy it.

That's quite an assessment!

[Anonymous]

So many veiled digs at high earning women here haha. I’m a lawyer as are several of my friends. Many physicians and consultants too in our g pup. Trust me - there’s enough Chanel, Celine, Cartier etc to create our own Fashionpnile. We all know the value of the dollar, but appreciate well designed items. Also like to reward ourselves in reason, so now that we’re all late 30s, we’ve built up nice collections. Nothing like the monster $100k collections you see on purseforum, but well loved and chosen nonetheless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is a little over $400k and I don’t own any luxury items. I don’t judge people who do (unless they go into debt to do so) it’s just not worth it to me. I like nice middle of the road brands from Nordstroms and J crew. Anthropology still feels like a splurge to me! But I’m very lazy and finding good deals or comparison shopping and have no interest in spending time finding deals. So I guess I’m just middle of the road all around.

Same

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of wearing designer items is about striving to appear wealthier than one is or it's about keeping up with the Joneses in order to maintain social status. These are natural impulses but it's good to step back and examine them and see if they're serving us. If we're having actual anxiety about whether we can pull off an item then maybe that's more about self-esteem.

Our HHI is $800k and I can barely convince myself to buy a shirt from Athleta. I just don't care about brands for their own sake and I'd rather get 5 items for $200 instead of 2. I've been very conscious to keep my sense of what is good enough for me to where it was in my 20s so that I don't just keep increasing our spending to match our income. So I'm still happy to drive a $30k car . . . I just got the highest trim package so I could have heated seats and a moon roof, which were splurges for me.

It's funny because the one thing I've always loved was diamonds and gemstones. As a kid I used to go to the gem store and buy uncut hunks of amethyst to admire. So diamonds are probably the one thing I would have upgraded to match my lifestyle, but in the last few years the technology for moissanite and lab diamonds has really improved, and so I can have my sparklies without spending $10k+, more like $1-2k. Yay! I understand that for some people, wearing my $250 moissanite ring from Alibaba that looks like a $20k diamond is a form of lying because society uses luxury items as status signifiers, but I'd rather hang out with people with similar values who wouldn't judge me either for loving sparkly gems or for buying cheaper look-alikes.

So you would rather support fast fashion and kill the earth?

Oh please. Women who buy designer clothing are the ones who are supporting fast fashion -- who do you think fast fashion is copying??? Also, do you think these women are wearing last season's clothing in the current year? No. Hello no! Wouldn't be caught dead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many veiled digs at high earning women here haha. I’m a lawyer as are several of my friends. Many physicians and consultants too in our g pup. Trust me - there’s enough Chanel, Celine, Cartier etc to create our own Fashionpnile. We all know the value of the dollar, but appreciate well designed items. Also like to reward ourselves in reason, so now that we’re all late 30s, we’ve built up nice collections. Nothing like the monster $100k collections you see on purseforum, but well loved and chosen nonetheless.

Dear god, I hope you're a troll.